Napster Downloads Continue Virtually as Usual

March 5 -- And the bands play on … most of them, anyway.

Napster today was offering all sorts of music despite promising to start banning millions of copyrighted tunes. Searches for Metallica and Dr. Dre — two artists who have been outspoken critics of the online music swap shop — turned up hundreds of copies of their songs this morning.

But Ric Dube, analyst for Webnoize, a Cambridge, Mass.-based research firm specializing in digital entertainment, says his research turned up two Metallica songs the system did appear to filter out: "One" and "Nothing Else Matters."

"Something is there and working," said Dube, "though it's not blocking the 10 most popular songs in the country or plenty of other songs by those two artists."

And later on in the day it appeared that Metallica's "One" slipped through Napster's rock blocker with a listing labeled "one04," apparently fooling the piece of filtering software the company employed. (See related story for details.) Similarly, ABCNEWS.com found "Nothing Else Matters" under a Metalika listing.

Roy Orbison tunes were available as well, even though a copyright group sent e-mails to Redwood, Calif.-based Napster last week, requesting the music be removed from the service because of alleged piracy.

Friday, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel held a hearing on an order that would halt Napster from allowing pirated music to be listed on and traded through its Internet service until the end of a lawsuit. The Recording Industry Association of America is suing the online company for alleged copyright infringement, and requested an early injunction to stop the music piracy now.

Napster is an online service that allows users to share MP3s, small music files with near-CD quality. (Click here for a complete timeline.)

While the trial has yet to begin, Patel has all but commanded the service to stop trading copyrighted files without permission. The judge is recrafting the order, which is expected any day now, that could put very tight restrictions on how the company is currently operating.