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SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge has chided Napster for its "disgraceful" implementation of filters to stop swapping of copyrighted music, but still says the record companies must help solve the problem.

At a late afternoon hearing Tuesday, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel declined to amend an earlier injunction that orders the music companies to help Napster identify works that the music-sharing site should block. The Recording Industry Association of America is representing a number of major music industry companies suing Napster for violating copyrights.

But Patel also signaled her impatience with Napster's apparent inability to effectively block customer access to some copyrighted songs. More than 1000 files that were supposed to be blocked by Napster's filters are still being traded among its users, according to Carey Ramos, a New York lawyer representing songwriters and music publishers.

"I think this is disgraceful," Judge Patel said. "You'd better find a way to get them off the system." She ordered Napster and the music companies that sued it to continue to work together.

Patel didn't add to Napster's legal woes, However. She declined to file on a request by several groups who seek class action status for additional suits against the service.

Some independent musicians and music publishers are asking the court to grant them class-action status. That would open the way for additional members of the "class" to join in the lawsuits. Napster is also facing suits from its rival, Emusic, and the Grammy organization, which both claim Napster has hurt their business. Emusic was acquired this week by Universal, one of the labels suing Napster.

Skirting the Filter

In March, Napster began blocking access to copyrighted material, by order of Patel. Napster initially pulled songs only by the artist name and song title specified by the RIAA. But users got around the filter by misspelling names and slightly changing titles. Tracking all of the user variations would be far too technologically difficult, Napster claimed.

Since then, Napster has looked for misspellings and other possible variations and has managed to block hundreds of thousands of songs.

Patel has also enlisted a mediator, A.J. "Nick" Nichols, to serve as a technology expert. He'll survey the problems with filtering songs and assess how well both parties are working to solve the technological problems in the case.

Between March 16 and April 2, Napster has blocked more than 1.7 million file names. The number of files shared per customer has decreased more than 50 percent, according to a Napster representative.

Downloads Start to Drag

Napster has seen a loss of users and a decline in the reliability of its service as a result of the filtering measures it has taken, according to Malcolm Maclachlan, an electronic media analyst with IDC.

"The filtering itself does not seem to have worked too well," Maclachlan says. "Instead, it seems to have slowed down the network and made downloads drop."

Napster's filtering techniques have not removed as many songs as the record labels intended. Users, like Maclachlan, complain that the filters just slowed network speeds to the point where many downloads fail before they are completed.

"The drops have gone way up," he says. "The irony here is that the filters seem to have destroyed Napster instead of fixing it."

The court could ask Napster to use other types of audio recognition software to ban protected songs from its site. However, Maclachlan thinks that approach would also slow Napster's network significantly. While it faces many challenges, Napster appears to be in the music-swapping game for the long haul.

Napster seems intent on continuing its legal fight against the RIAA and others. That could pay off when the litigation comes to a close, Maclachlan says.

Still, if Napster "could just keep 5 percent of their users through all of this, it would be a coup," Maclachlan says.

Also, just hours before the hearing, the company announced the acquisition of some of rival music site Gigabeat's technology and engineers. Gigabeat's cofounders will join Napster and work on the delivery and personalization of music content, according to a news release.

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