Contributed by Scott Jarkoff, Dimension Music.

The long awaited first round of the Napster Inc. -vs- RIAA legal battle was started today. In opening statements, the Napster defense has said that downloading copyrighted songs is legal and protected by the law.

Napsters legal triage cited a federal case in which a decision was made that noncommercial copying of music is protected by law. They went so far as to say that the law is even extended to making songs available on Napster, for thousands of people to download, and because of this Napster is not doing anything wrong and therefore not liable.

The more intriguing aspect of the Napster defense that David Boies, the lawyer that successfully defeated Microsoft in the antitrust battle of the century, has set forth is one that may prove to be the most harsh against the record labels. Citing internal industry documents the Napster legal team plans to show that the labels have abused their market power to block alternative methods of music distribution, and along with an obscure antitrust law, says that the labels have lost their power to enforce their copyrights.

"If you use a copyright to achieve an anti-competitive purpose, you lose the rights to them," Boies said.

This obscure law that Boies plans to use against the labels has been dubbed "copyright misuse," which states that copyright holders can lose the power to enforce their copyrights if they've used them to achieve an anti-competetive purpose. In this case, Napster plans to argue that the recording industry has acted in an anti-competetive manner by not allowing alternative distribution methods to be opened up.

The legal discovery process also turned up internal record company documents that, according to Boies, shows the RIAA is "misusing copyrights for anti-competitive purposes." That undermines their right to sue Napster on copyright grounds.

Napster and the RIAA will be back in court on July 26, in which the judge will decide whether or not to grant the preliminary injunction that the RIAA requested. Napster's legal defense has asked for the date to be pushed back so that the court can take a detailed look at the issues and evidence prior to making a decision.

Thanks to -X- for portions of this article.