Web site created a trend that music industry may have to keep up with, UA professor Jim Mitchell says

Whatever fate lies in Napster's future after last week's federal court ruling, the technology the Web site has introduced may force music companies to change the way they do business.

Jim Mitchell, a UA journalism assistant professor who teaches a class on media law, said that although record companies can use Napster's defeat as "ammunition" in future court cases, they must also deal with the trend it has created.

Napster's popularity - it currently has about 61 million users - has spawned dozens of other sites which essentially promote the same music-sharing concept.

The use of a centralized server to organize its files - which Napster relied on - may have made the service easy prey for the music industry, but many newer sites, such as Gnutella.com, are simply "peer-to-peer" - meaning they work simply by pairing computers. "