Kazaa class action ‘quietly settled’
p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Kazaa seems to be almost always front and centre in every Big 4 Organized Music cartel sue ‘em all case, p2pnet said or, to be more accurate, repeated, a couple of years ago.
Owned by Australia’s Sharman Networks, Kazaa boasts it’s ‘Fast, safe’.
Fast it may be, but thousands of people who used it in all innocence have found themselves named in an RIAA subpoena, and with threats of court cases they can’t possibly afford hanging over their heads.
Not that even one of the approximately 40,000 men, women, and even children, singled out by the Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG hit outfit the RIAA has ever been successfully sued. For anything.
There are no statistics detailing exactly how many Big 4 victims were identified because they were using Kazaa. But it’s safe to bet the vast bulk would fall into that category, one of them involving Catherine Lewan, a Kazaa user sued by the RIAA.
She was among those who paid extortion money to the RIAA and in a court document, said Sharman, “configured KaZaA such that its intended use would be illegal“.
However, her case “was quietly settled,” and behind closed doors, last fall, says Recording Industry vs The People.
Did Kazaa’s owners dispose of it because they were fearful a court and/or jury would find in Lewan’s favour, not at all incidentally also leaving a staggering number of RIAA claims open to serious doubt, to considerably understate the potential situation?
We’ll never know — unless other Big 4 victims find a lawyer or lawyers this time willing to follow through to the bitter end.
‘Suing music fans isn’t the solution’
Interestingly, Lewan was represented by Charles Lee Mudd, a Chicago lawyer who also acted for the defendant in another case, this time involving the RIAA directly, and with Canada’s Nettwerk Music paying his bill.
“Elisa Greubel, 15, made headlines when she contacted Nettwerk Music artist MC Lars to say his ‘Download This Song,’ a track on his then latest release, really meant something to her,” said a p2pnet post.
That was because Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG were, “trying extort a lot of money from her father, David, for supposedly sharing nine copyrighted songs online,” we said, going on:
“MC Lars passed Elisa’s message to Canada’s Terry McBride, who runs Nettwerk, and he decided, ‘Suing music fans isn’t the solution, it’s the problem,’ as he told p2pnet in a Q&A.
That case, too, was ‘settled’ by Mudd.
Secretly.
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
Los Angeles Times – , September , 2008
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September 23rd, 2008 at 1:43 pm
One on can buy a prety good gun for $500. and you can get bullet for about 10 cents each.
This is shiper than $4000, a lot shiper. This is the danger.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Maybe everyone whoes been sued by the RIAA should sue Kazaa to get their money back
September 27th, 2008 at 4:46 am
> Maybe everyone whoes been sued by the RIAA should sue Kazaa to get their money back
yeah, great idea. there’s a solution if i ever heard one. p.s. learn english.