Napster announced on Thursday (6/1) that it had reinstated the accounts of nearly 30,000 users who claimed that they had been wrongly identified for downloading Metallica [ tickets ] songs. The MP3 file-trading company blocked 317,377 users' accounts last month after Metallica claimed that the users had illegally downloaded the band's music.

In order to have their accounts reinstated, the 29,085 users submitted sworn statements to Napster's website saying that they had not downloaded any Metallica songs.

"It's unfortunate that Napster encouraged 29,000 people to commit a crime by perjuring themselves," said Howard King, the attorney representing both Metallica and Dr. Dre [ tickets ] in separate copyright infringement lawsuits against the company. "We have the evidence to show that the vast majority of those people lied. Napster could have done the same research we did to determine that they were lying but, obviously, they chose not to. Metallica certainly plans to use that information as evidence in our case [to show] how ridiculously ineffective Napster's copyright infringement policy really is."

Napster could not be reached for comment.

According to King, both Metallica and Dr. Dre are considering adding newly appointed Napster CEO Hank Barry and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners--the venture capital firm that recently raised $15 million for Napster--as criminal defendants in their copyright infringement suits.