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KaZaa Ignores Court Order to Shut Down

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-that-takes-balls dept.

An anonymous reader submitted that "The Amsterdam district court ruled two weeks ago that the KaZaa P2P program is acting unlawfully by making software available that allows users to download music files and must shut down. The court gave the company 14 days to do this or face $40,000 US a day in fines. KaZaa has chosen to ignore the shutdown order."

3 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. NO... by DAldredge · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, the client has to connect to a central server to login to the network..

  2. Re:Umm... by jilles · · Score: 5, Informative

    There have been a few recent major screw ups at the dutch OM (the dutch district attorney). Consequently, they'll be reluctant to take on a high profile case that has a good chance of blowing up in their face. Legally speaking, Kazaa is not doing anything wrong (at least, that would be hard to prove). The fact that the most useful application of their software is trading warez, divx and mp3 is irrelevant since they do not actually engage in the transactions themselves (unlike napster).

    Basically what Kazaa said is that they have no way to comply with what the dutch judge told them to do (namely to put an end to the illegal exchange of the above mentioned stuff using Kazaa). It is simply not feasible since the transactions are fully peer to peer. The searches nor the downloads go through a central server.

    In any case, Limewire 2.0 is available now and has some new features that should enhance scalability of the gnutella network greatly. Gnutella is open source and has no dependencies on a login server (unlike Kazaa) eliminating the last link to a central server. If Kazaa is going to lose their case it will be because of the logins.

    --

    Jilles
  3. That was then, this is now by fm6 · · Score: 5, Informative
    The case you're thinking of involved Jackson's forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its homeland in Georgia to its current home in Oklahoma. I believe something like half the Cherokee perished on the trip. That kind of genocidal action was common in the 1830s. But nowadays political leaders who pull that stuff end up in a cell in the Hague -- or at the end of a rope in Spandau.

    What Jackson actually said was, "John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can." Please note that name. Marshall was the first jurist to argue that the Supreme Court could review the actions of other branches of government. In 1830 this concept was still controversial. Now it's universally accepted. Recent presidents ignore the Court at their peril. Eisenhower enforced court orders he empahtically disagreed with. Nixon was forced to obey an order that cost him the Presidency. FDR, probably the most popular President in history, couldn't even get away with adding friendly judges to the court.