SAN FRANCISCO — Embattled music software company Napster Inc. remained shut down Friday, five days after the company began blocking what little free music was being swapped.
Napster officials declined to discuss the reasons for the blackout or how long they expected it to last. They directed all inquiries to the company’s Web site.
Napster recently disabled access to its old song-trading software, reacting to a legal loss to the music industry earlier this year. The old software allowed unfettered and free access to tens of thousands of copyright songs.
The company’s new software doesn’t allow users to swap music unprotected by copyrights.
“Napster has been developing and implementing our technology on a schedule overseen by the court and the court-appointed technical adviser,” the site stated. “We based the decision to suspend file transfers on what we believe makes the most sense for the company at this time.”
Napster spokeswoman Jill Mango said that this week’s outage is not related to Napster’s plan to charge users. Mango said the subscription service will begin sometime this summer but offered no other details.
