Metallica [ tickets ] has filed suit against music file-trading website Napster Inc. and several prominent American universities, alleging copyright infringement, violations of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and unlawful use of a digital audio interface device.

The metal band is the first to file a suit against the young website, which makes and distributes a software application allowing users to trade MP3 music files. While artists in several genres, including Creed frontman Scott Sapp, alto saxophonist Greg Osby and songwriter Jonatha Brooke, have expressed their disapproval of consumers who purportedly engage in piracy through Napster, no artists before Metallica have gone to the courts.

According to the band's attorney Howard King, who filed the suit on the band's behalf, the suit is broader and makes "more serious claims" than the Recording Industry of America's copyright infringement suit against Napster.

Metallica is not only trying to stop alleged piracy of its music at the Napster nexus, but it is also seeking damages from the University of Southern California, Yale University and Indiana University because those schools run computer networks on which students allegedly use Napster. The suit claims that the schools have done nothing to block piracy on their networks, though the institutions supposedly knew that copyright infringement was occurring.

The universities could use the "ISP defense," claiming that like American Internet service providers, they are not responsible for the content travelling through their networks. This is the defense which Napster is using, in part, in its defense against the RIAA suit. But King argued that because some universities temporarily banned Napster because of the network congestion it was causing, then allowed access to it again, they turned a blind eye to piracy. ''They've taken themselves out of that protection and put themselves in the area of contributory infringements," King said.

The suit is also substantially different from the RIAA suit because it leaves the door open for the band to sue students who used Napster to trade Metallica files, of which King named a half-dozen, from "Enter Sandman" to new song "No Leaf Clover." For those claims to stick, however, Metallica's legal team will have to identify the violators by name, and they will have to prove that files were actually traded--a step beyond presenting lists that show that MP3 files by a certain band were present on users' hard drives somewhere in the network.

King said that proving the violations presented a "fascinating'' problem. King claimed that Napster said it "has set up their whole system to avoid allowing anybody to prove anything. They keep no record of who the tracks come from, no record of who the tracks go to, and no record of when tracks are transferred," he said. Thus, the legal team is getting a technical group together to do some detective and programming work.

The suit also invokes the RICO statutes, which were designed to tie mob figures to each other by claiming that the actions of one were the responsibility of all.

"RICO statutes are pretty broad," King said, "They basically cover ongoing enterprises or conspiracies with continuing violations of law, which we think this fits into. We think the Copyright Act is violated every second by somebody making one of these downloads through the universities' systems and through Napster, so that is within.. the definition of a continuing criminal enterprise and subjects the defendants to RICO liability."

Napster executives did not return calls requesting comment on the suit by press time.

Metallica's suit asks for $100,000 for each work infringed, for a total of $10 million. Plus, by claiming that Napster is "a digital audio interface device," the band and its publishing company is seeking $2,500 for each device used to trade illegal files.

Napster "advertises how successful they are based on how many hits they're getting, so given that they've taken the steps to make the information not available, then it's quite likely that a court will deem it to be some number that will more than likely put them out of business," King said.

In a statement, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said that "with each project, we go through a grueling creative process to achieve music that we feel is representative of Metallica at that very moment in our lives. We take our craft--whether it be the music, the lyrics, or the photos and artwork--very seriously, as do most artists. It is therefore sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is. From a business standpoint, this is about piracy--a.k.a. taking something that doesn't belong to you; and that is morally and legally wrong. The trading of such information--whether it's music, videos, photos, or whatever--is, in effect, trafficking in stolen goods.''

Gayle Fine of Q Prime, the band's management, echoed the idea that trading Metallica tunes was stealing. Searching for the band's tracks and downloading them on Napster, she said, was like walking by a Tower Records or HMV music store, seeing that the cash register was open and that no one was in the store, and helping yourself to whatever was available.

The problem, however, is that some fans don't see it that way. They maintain that by getting a taste of music through Napster (or one of several file-sharing websites and applications), they go out and buy the CDs, stimulating retail sales. Entertainment attorney Whitney Broussard pointed out that he hasn't seen CD sales fall since the advent of Napster, and no one in the business has put any hard numbers out to estimate the real losses. Some critics contend that the Napster piracy problem is far less widespread than illegal CD duplication operations in the U.S., Mexico and Asia, so Napster phobia is much ado about nothing.

But for those whose copyrights are being violated, all of that may be beside the point. Music is being copied without compensating the artists, King said, and Napster and university networks "are allowing people to rob creative artists from the fruit of their creations. The eventual result is there's no reason to be an artist, because you have to give away your work for free."