Last Monday saw the final nail hammered into the coffin that is Napster, the file sharing Web site and software. At what is considered by many as the company's final day in court, three judges in San Francisco ruled that Napster "knowingly encourages and assists its users to infringe the record companies' copyrights". Sounds pretty decisive, doesn't it? There is still time, albeit extremely limited, for Napster to launch an appeal, but it will have to be based on heavy compromises if it is to stand any chance at all.

The monthly subscription charge being suggested may offer a way out of full closure, but many consider such a move would so seriously reduce user numbers that the whole Napster ideal of being able to find just about any music track at any time would be too diluted.

America's four big record companies, who have had their sights set firmly on the music-swapping service for some time now, have been celebrating the decision. On the surface, it is easy to see the situation from their point of view and consider their copyrighted material as being stolen.

However, many marketing experts are saying that the serious business potential for Napster-like services is being overlooked.

As one analyst commented, last year lawyers acting for rock group Metallica successfully demanded that a list of 300,000 users who had downloaded the band's material be banned from using Napster. The marketing potential for a list of 300,000 dedicated Metallica fans is immense. Many suggest that the list would have been put to far better use had it been used to mail out offers of CDs, merchandise and concert tickets, but Metallica's label saw only the negative side.

It's an opinion that I have stated before in this column, but I agree that Napster's demise will be a huge wasted business opportunity (not to mention a bit of a red herring). There is definitely a worthwhile business model that could have been carved from Napster's rock, but the heavy-handed approach of the powerful and vastly wealthy recording industry seems to have won the day. There are many other file-sharing systems out there ready to pick up where Napster left off so the whole operation is now going to be driven underground. Internet file swapping cannot be un-invented. Surely it's better to find a viable and money-making use for it than to bury heads in the sand and hope it will go away. It won't.

I thought I might as well add a few more column inches to the computer virus, particularly in light of the new Kournikova virus currently doing the rounds. In a twist to the infamous 'I Love You' virus, this new one claims to include a picture of Russian tennis player and mainstay of teenage boys' bedroom walls, Anna Kournikova.

Open it and you will send the same message to all the people in your e-mail address book. Worst of all, it doesn't actually contain the claimed photograph. For news of this and other viruses, including popular myths and scares, check out http://www.vmyths.com.