The neutering of the controversial internet song-swapping service, Napster, neared completion today as an executive of German media giant Bertelsmann took over as chief executive.

Konrad Hilbers was appointed after leaving his post at Bertelsmann's music arm, BMG Entertainment, one of the companies that still has an active lawsuit against Napster for copyright infringement.

He replaces Hank Barry, a lawyer who has served as Napster's CEO since May last year. The moves were confirmed by sources inside Napster and Bertelsmann AG, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mr Hilbers inherits a company mired in controversy, trying to resolve copyright infringement lawsuits brought by the world's five largest record labels.

It plans to convert to a legitimate subscription music download service later this summer.

Napster's song trading network has been offline since July 2, after the record labels complained that users were still able to access copyrighted material for free.

US district judge Marilyn Hall Patel, who crafted the initial injunction that forced Napster to closely police its system, told the company to remain offline unless it could provide a foolproof method of screening out every unauthorised song.

An appellate court allowed Napster to resume song-swapping last week, but the company has yet to restore its service, leaving a dwindling number of Napster users in the dark.

Bertelsmann became the song-swapping company's primary financial backer last October, and its support brought the promise of digital music downloads from BMG's premium acts, including Grammy winners Christina Aguilera and Carlos Santana.

But the long-awaited subscription service from Napster has yet to launch, and impatient music traders have migrated to other file-sharing programs such as Freenet, BearShare and iMesh, where pirated music, movies and other computer files can be found for free.

The subscription music service that is to emerge under Mr Hilbers' leadership is unlikely to bear much resemblance to the music free-for-all that had an estimated 50m Napster users swapping copyright songs last year.

Unique visits to Napster's website declined by 36% during the eight weeks ending July 15, according to a study of Napster web traffic released yesterday by Nielsen/NetRatings.

Meanwhile, the study noted that alternatives to Napster are gaining popularity.

Visitors to BearShare's Web site jumped 39% over the same eight-week period and iMesh saw a 29% increase.

Useful links
Napster
Bearshare
iMesh
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