p2pnet.net News:- With its renewed attacks on US p2p file sharers and its latest effort to turn Canada into another marketing and sales division going nicely, the Big Four music cartel members are again turning their attention to Australia and Sharman Networks ‘ Kazaa.

Under the gun are Sharman itself, LEF Interactive, Altnet, Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Sharman ceo Nicola Hemming, Altnet ceo Kevin Bermeister and two technology directors, says Australia’s ABC News Online, going on:

“More than 50 lawyers will begin waging the battle over the program, which touts about 60 million users worldwide, in the Federal Court on Monday.

“The major labels and 25 other North American, European and Australian record company ‘applicants’ brought the action in a bid to stop illegal P2P file sharing.”

Monday will see the opening of the liability phase of the trial. “If the labels succeed, they will proceed to the damages phase,” says ABC News Online.

It’s almost ironic that the music industry is continuing its efforts to wipe Kazaa out. Sharman, together with Altnet and Brilliant, have been going blue trying to convince the cartel that Kazaa and ‘associated’ products, including Altnet’s lame duck DRM technology, would be ideal for the entertainment industry.

It could be seriously bad news for Kazaa’s users - many of them still suffering under the illusion that buying Kazaa is the same as buying a carte blanche download license - if Sharman ever succeeds in its bid to get into bed with Big Music, given Sharman’s pre-dispositions.

Sharman in effect owns the DCIA (Distributed Computing Industry Association), an organization which tries to give the false impression that it represents the commercial file sharing industry.

The cartel’s ARIA (Australian Record Industry Association) sicced its faux police force, Music Industry Piracy Investigation, onto Sharman and managed to get an Anton Piller order allowing it to raid Sharman’s offices and the homes of its senior executives.

What the MPIP found, or didn’t find, has yet to be made public.

Interestingly, ARIA president Stephen Peach has been accused of using the ARIA to score free CDs for his personal collection.

“Unlike pending copyright-infringement cases brought against Sharman in the United States, the suit asserts additional claims for misrepresentation to the public, unconscionable conduct and civil conspiracy to inflict harm,” says the ABC story.

No one knows who actually owns Sharman, but it was registered in the tax-free island state of Vanuatu, “where the secrecy of private companies is sacred, improper disclosure of financial information to others is subject to criminal prosecution and tax information is not shared with any outside jurisdiction,” as the article puts it.

“Also of interest is the bundling of Altnet software with Kazaa and how that software operates,” ABC continues. “Past reports indicate that the technology in effect forms a new P2P network separate from, but connected to, Kazaa that permits the sharing of advertisements and other digital files. This may mean that the companies can control how files are shared over the P2P networks, including those shared by alleged copyright infringers.”

Sharman Networks first caught Big Music’s eye when in 2002 it bought the original KaZaA, at the time a truly independent p2p file sharing app, from Holland’s Kazaa BV.

KaZaA was created by Nikolas Zennström and Janus Friis. The former developed Skype, the free p2p online phone application which Kazaa is now touting as an add-on to its latest product release.

Sharman quickly loaded Kazaa with nasty Brilliant Digital Entertainment adware and spyware and Altnet came along soon after, offering to pay people for hosting content on the Kazaa network.

BDE, Sharman’s US business development agent, has been on the edge of financial disaster almost since Day One. At one point it tried to get people to allow it to load an application into their computers which would let it use the systems for its own business purposes while the owners slept.

Kazaa was linked to the fight waged by Morpheus owner StreamCast Networks and Grokster.

In the landmark decision, the US Court of Appeals for the 9th circuit ruled p2p operators aren’t responsible for their users’ online file-swapping activities.

A post in the Port Vila Presse, “a reliable source for Vanuatu news, sourced both locally and internationally,” quotes a Reuters/Billboard story which in turn has StreamCast ceo Mike Weiss, who’s long suspected that there’s more to Kazaa than meets the eye, saying Kazaa, “unfortunately, perpetuated the ‘bad actor‘ stereotype that Hollywood has attempted to brand all of the P2P developers (with) - but Morpheus doesn’t bundle spyware, or other pernicious software that is nearly impossible for a user to remove - such as the Altnet software.”

===================

See:-
the gun - Court battle looms over Kazaa, ABC News Online, November 27, 2004
false impression - Sharman woos Hollywood, p2pnet, June 19, 2004
free CDs - ARIA’s Peach gets pipped, p2pnet, May 31, 2004
add-on - Kazaa gets Skype, p2pnet, November 23, 2004
landmark decision - Studios and labels lose p2p fight, p2pnet, August 21, 2004
bad actor - Music Biz Heads to Australia for Kazaa Trial, Port Vila Presse, November 27, 2004

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 27th, 2004 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 2648 times