Kazaa doomsday countdown
p2p news / p2pnet: Sharman Networks’ has 11 days to ‘filter’ Organized Music product available through its Kazaa p2p application, an Australian court has ruled.
The deadline follows an earlier Australian federal court decision that the software induced users to infringe copyrights.
Today in Sydney, Justice Murray Wilcox, who’s been hearing the case since the beginning, said Kazaa must now put into effect a 3,000 word keyword filter system by December 5.
The words will be “selected by record companies” and will “apply to all new versions of the Kazaa software,” says the IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), owned by the Big Four Organized Music cartel. “The filter can be updated if necessary on a fortnightly basis to target the latest and most popular music releases nominated by record companies.”
However, Kazaa Media Desktop is a “decentralized software application,” Lawrence Hadley, an attorney at a Los Angeles law firm representing Sharman, was quoted as saying by the IDG News Service last year.
Sharman had maintained it didn’t have direct knowledge of, or control over, file-trading activity on its network.
When Sharman’s Sydney, Australia, offices were raided by the Big Four’s Australian MIPI ( Music Industry Piracy Investigations), “I think this may answer a lot of questions about what kind of control Kazaa has over their network and what kinds of information Kazaa has been storing about its users,” the story had StreamCast Networks ceo Michael Weiss saying. StreamCast owns the Morpheus p2p app.
The MPPI searched the homes of Sharman ceo Nikki Hemming, Brilliant Digital Entertainment ceo and president Kevin Burmeister (Altnet) and Sharman director of technology Phil Morle, as well as Monash University, the University of Queensland, the University of New South Wales and four ISPs.
Weiss said the raid could “pull back the covers on what his company has long contended is a centralized file-sharing network, with Sharman wielding control over individual P-to-P software users,” according to IDG.
Also read:-
infringe copyrights – Big Music cartel nails Sharman, September 5, 2005
IDG News Service – Kazaa raid stirs up old P-to-P rivalries, February 11, 2004
November 24th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
The words will be “selected by record companies”
I would never have guessed that.
November 25th, 2005 at 9:05 am
“Kazaa must now put into effect a 3,000 word keyword filter system by December 5.”
Thank goodness, no court has yet to order googlemail to do likewise. I’m still happily sharing songs by email with my friends all over the world albeit at two MP3 songs per email because gmail only allows an attachment of 10MB. Perhaps gmail should expand it to 100 MB. Before the record companies take gmail and the like to court, we consumers should gang up and stand up for our right to share songs among ourselves. Afterall, we paid for the songs and we have everyright to give them to anyone we like. The record companies didn’t take offense when we were sharing songs through the cassette tapes and sending them to our friends by snail mail. Perhaps the record companies want us to turn the clock back and give the cassette tape recorder a new lease of life.
Let’s all stop buying any music from them, whether CDs or iTunes downloads, just for this season.
November 25th, 2005 at 12:50 pm
Given that the various illegal modifications of Kazaa, such as K-Lite, are (ironically) available on their network, does this really matter? Or will K-Lite be on that list?