p2pnet offline for 2 days
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- p2pnet won’t be published tomorrow or the day after because on Thursday (October 23) I’m to be deposed by Nikki Hemming’s Canadian lawyer in Vancouver. (A deposition is a question and answer session, lawyer to defendant, with the answers given under oath for later use in court.)
It’s now well over two years since a summons server knocked on the door of my home on Vancouver Island to hand me papers telling me I was being sued by Sharman Networks, the multi-million-dollar Australian company which owns Kazaa, the P2P file sharing application, and Nikki Hemming, the woman who runs it.
I’d published a report under which a reader posted a comment which, claims Hemming, defamed her.
I say my post and the Reader’s Write fall under freedom of speech.
Sharman later dropped its lawsuit, leaving Hemming to continue on her own.
All this time, the weight of this case has been hanging over my head and the heads of Liz, my wife, and my daughter, Emma, who was only nine when it started. And since Hemming now wants this to go to trial, it’ll probably drag on for another year at least, and then we’ll undoubtedly have to wait for another year or so for a decision to be reached.
One could say my family and I are already being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment not for days or weeks or months, but for years without relent, and without a case ever having been heard or a verdict reached.
But I’ll be back posting as usual on Friday. 
Cheers! And all the best …
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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October 21st, 2008 at 3:15 pm
All the best Jon
Please make sure that the whole of the ‘offending’ post is read out as part of the deposition. It will eventually fall into the public domain as part of the court papers and we can then all quote it with impunity.
Dave
October 21st, 2008 at 4:07 pm
re:Nikki Hemming’s money mansion
A lawsuit over an offhand remark posted by an anonymous user over 2 years ago, that otherwise would have been long forgotten.
I have a feeling that anonymous user was an insider who knew what he was talking about, and Hemming just wants his identity. Why else would this still be ongoing?
This would be a great opportunity to spit out a lot of discovery motions to try to find out what was really going on behind the scenes.
Jon, does this mean that you now get to meet Nikki in person?
October 21st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Do Jon a favor here folks. Don’t post anything dumb.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:36 pm
In the world, there are people who I want to smack. People suing other people (for obvious stupid reasons) are one of them.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:55 pm
All the best Jon. Freedom of speech is a guaranteed right to every individual in this country and I hope you can afford to continue to fight the good fight. I’ll keep clicking the ads!
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 am
“Freedom of speech is a guaranteed right to every individual in this country”
Not in Canada.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
Jon just ask your lawyer to do this
‘Judge, we submit motion to quash under freedom of speech and thus protection from prosecution’ and also argue that you run a news service and you never intended to defame her
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
“In February 2003, Hemming bought a 1.7 million Australian dollar house in Sydney, partly funded by a $810,000 unsecured loan from a company in Vanuatu with an interest rate of 3.5 percent, well below Australian rates at the time.
In December 2004, with a new swimming pool she was having built still not finished, Hemming sold the house to John Myers, an accountant who worked for Sharman, for 2.1 million Australian dollars ($1.58 million) and paid back the loan to Vanuatu.
Cobden said to Hemming she appeared to have rushed through the sale because the Kazaa trial was close to ending “and you had formed a pessimistic view about your prospects in that trial.”
source: washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/28/AR2006042800678.html
The facts in this case might lead observers to conclude that Nikki Hemming clearly broke the law. As the saying goes, “the best defense is a strong offense”
October 22nd, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Typing error
it’s .co.uK the BBC address that is
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Reeder Rite said, “”Do Jon a favor here folks. Donât post anything dumb.”
And that includes the items in question as they ran on p2pnet, or parts of them.
So please don’t.
Cheers! And thanks …
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:17 am
good luck. best wishes.
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:01 am
When you’re up against Nikki Hemming, it would not be a stretch to say that you’re dealing with one of the most hostile sue-crazy bitches on the planet. This is just a partial list of her attack victims:
Kazaa Lite (and any site that hosted it)
Google (for showing K-Lite sites)
KCeasy (for using GiFT plugin that connects to Fasttrack network)
Oldversion.com (for hosting OLD versions of Kazaa)
Although KazaaLite (a spyware-free version of Kazaa) might have been considered copyright infringing, many of these other attacks were over completely legal, non-infringing issues.
It’s worth noting that Shawn Fanning did not sue or threaten to sue the people who reverse-engineered the Napster protocol. Neither did Jed McCaleb threaten the people who reverse-engineered eDonkey. The list goes on … Soulseek, Ares, WinMX, Direct Connect … all were reverse-engineered, but there was not one single lawsuit threat over any of these.
But then none of those other P2P companies had Nikki Hemming at the wheel. To be carrying on a lengthy lawsuit halfway around the world over a few anonymous comments (that were immediately deleted upon request) demonstrates her true vindictiveness.
Jon, is there a legal defense fund set up where we can donate? Defenders of free speech (as rare as they are) should not be left to fight the wolves alone.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Is she suing the Washington Post, as well ?
I thought not.
They have the financial means to defend themselves.
A good Judge will know what that means.