Inside Napster

"Go Napster! Woo-hoo!," screams a 25-year-old woman who goes by the name Netmixia. She is standing outside the office of Napster Inc. in Redwood City, Calif., holding up Napster placards while wearing pink sequin shorts, a skimpy black tank top, and a translucent white cape with a mask. Netmixia is here with her friend Jacob Lawrence, 27, who is in a T-shirt, shorts, and sunglasses. The two drove 35 miles from Berkeley, Calif., to show their support for the embattled music-sharing site. Two vans from local TV networks are parked outside the company's headquarters, their anchors preparing to shoot live stand-up for the evening news. "I've got 3,000 songs on my hard drive," says Lawrence. "I'm the biggest fan around."

There aren't many businesses in the world that are fortunate enough to inspire this level of devotion. Less than an hour earlier, in a shock decision, two federal appeals judges in Northern California delivered a last-minute reprieve for Napster, staying the preliminary injunction issued on July 26 that could have closed the popular Web service. For now, Netmixia, Lawrence, and more than 20 million other people can trade copyrighted music--free. The news sent Napster's Web traffic skyrocketing to an all-time high of 849,000 visitors on July 28. The record industry had hoped to turn off the music. Instead, the volume just cranked up.