KaZaa Ignores Court Order to Shut Down

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."

Comments

WHy would it matter?

[monkeyfamily]

Even if the corp shut down, we'd all still be able to use the clients, right?

Re:WHy would it matter?

[Hal-9001]

How is the parent comment redundant? This is the fundamental argument as to why networks like Napster and KaZaA should not be shut down: that corporations are not (or at least, should not) be accountable for the illegal behavior of users on a copyright-neutral network (at least before the SSSCA: IANAL and honestly have no idea what current copyright law has been bought^H^H^H^H^H^Hpushed through by RIAA/MPAA). Furthermore, neither the posted or linked stories discuss the fact that KaZaA is just one client on the Fasttrack network so, unlike Napster, KaZaA has no control over whether or not the network is available to clients. That begs the question: how are you going to enforce, either as a company or as a government, the behavior of 27 million people? (especially after Judge Patel's ridiculous 100% compliance stipulation)

Furthermore, why isn't the court going after Microsoft since Internet Explorer is the underlying layer of both KaZaA and Morpheus? Microsoft has about as much control as KaZaA over the Fasttrack network, and is even more culpable because their software is behind both of the major Fasttrack clients. If they want to pursue a ridiculous interpretation of the law, they might as well apply it consistently and not just to convenient targets.

Good

[ConsumedByTV]

I say ignore all unjust laws.

Re:Good

[telbij]

True dat...

But I don't particularly support music companies because they regularly screw over artists. This is not justification for stealing music, just an interesting fact that no one is suing the recording industry for the theft they've done...

As far as justifying the music I steal :), that is easy, downloading music has nothign to do with what music I buy. If anything, it allows me to hear a wider variety of music and probably influences me to buy more CDs (cuz I don't buy it unless I know it's good, except for zappa).

Re:Good

[ethereal]

I say ignore all unjust laws.

And get your ass thrown into jail?

Yes, that's exactly how it's supposed to work - just ask any civil rights marchers from the Deep South, for instance. Once the government realizes that they can't throw everyone in jail, the laws get changed. Or sometimes you get a new government.

Really, you're taking a gamble that enough other people will join your civil disobedience that the government can't ignore you.

Re:Good

[dangermouse]

Sometimes, that's a gamble that just doesn't make sense. Nobody's going to stage a download-in, publically load up their laptops with pirated music, and then go to jail en masse.

For one thing, most people wouldn't consider it worthwhile. This isn't about basic human rights, it's about consumer rights, and that's a whole different-- and less urgent-- ballgame.

Re:Good

[shepd]

>Take this out of the "Slashdot, info/music wants to be free" world and explain to me how this law is unjust.

Ok, lets also take KaZaa out of the IT world and put it IRL then.

KaZaa is a music sharing network that depends on its users to ensure they only distribute free music. KaZaa is no more at fault for your personal failure to use your own judgement than the city is at fault when people use city roads to traffic drugs.

Using a road to commit crimes is no harder (actually its easier -- notice how much easier it is to break the speed limits) than using KaZaa to break copyright. And, normally, the law punishes the guilty (copyright violators) and upholds the rights of the innocent (the people building the infrastructure who never broke the law doing it).

>If you made music, you'd want to get paid for your effort, too...

I agree. That's why we must go after the perpetrators (people using the KaZaa network illicitly) and not the builders.

There you go -- no slashdot mumbo jumbo. Just 100% clear laymans terms. You should be able to tell that to just about anyone on the street and they should understand. :)

Re:Good

[FortKnox]

Your analogy works great if we were refering to the internet, not KaZaa. In your analogy, KaZaa would be the "Drug Store" on the street. They sell legal and illegal drugs.

They claim that they shouldn't be shut down cause they sell "legal" drugs. The illegal drugs they can't control.....

What would a cop do?
Control it, or we'll shut ya down.

Re:Good

[foobar104]

I say ignore all unjust laws.

It is never appropriate to ignore a law. You can obey it, or you can lobby against it, or you can openly defy it, but you must never ignore it.

The strength of our society (by which I mean the modern judicial society in general, wherever in the world it is found) is based on the authority of the law. We consent to be bound by the authority of law, and in return we live in a prosperous, ordered society. If a law is unjust, you must fight-- within the system when possible-- to overturn it.

But ignoring a law, even an unjust law, trivializes The Law as a whole, which erodes the core pillar of our society.

Disagree or even disobey, but always respect and honor.

Re:Good

[Znork]

Um, considering the RIAA is behind the greatest push to remove any possibility of the artists getting paid for downloaded music (of course, the RIAA wants to get paid, but they want to be the only ones getting paid, the artists should get nothing), the choice isnt between the artist getting paid and not, it's between the the artist not getting paid and the artist not getting paid.

Since that is the case, to either through boycott or downloading, deprive the RIAA of its means to retain the stranglehold it has on the music industry isnt an ethical problem.

Once they dont have the clout to trick unsuspecting artists into enslavement and debt contracts, maybe a more healthy online distribution can be set up. Preferably where the artists and writers get the most of the money.
Personally I dont buy any CD's anymore unless from the band itself, and I dont even listen to RIAA crap if I can avoid it.

Re:Good

[Zeinfeld]

I suspect I am not the only person finding the comparison to the civil rights protests disgusting. There is a big difference between getting arrested for drinking at a colored water fountain and getting arresting for ripping off the latest U2 or Dire Straits tracks.

If you want to listen to music then pay for the damn stuff.

If someone set up a site whose sole purpose was to facilitate trading of WareZ for profit nobody would be leaping to defend them. OK Elton John and Bono probably get paid more than the average slashdotter, but the average slashdotter gets paid a heck of a lot more than the average third tier band with a major label recording contract. In 1999 the number of slashdotters with eight figure bank accounts probably outnumbered the number of musicians with one (no longer though, thanks GWB!)

What I really have no time for are the various venture capital funded attempts to make money out of ripping off music. Napster was such a shitty concept. They build up a big user base by giving away other people's property for free then they turn round and 'monetise' the base - spamvertising, pop up ads, spyware and of course screwing up your DNS to point to the Idealab! creation of the week. So the deal is Napster gives away $10 worth of someone else's property then tries to buy them off with a 5% share of the 20 cents they make back off advertising - great business model.

Of course it must be said that the MPAA and the RIAA are hardly deserving of sympathy for their predicament. Perhaps if the MPAA had not introduced the DVD zone system so they can charge twice as much for DVDs in Europe as they do in the states I would have some sympathy. I might even have some respect for them ifd they did not insist on peddling their pathetic lie that the Zone system is there to enforce different release dates in different zones - if that is the excuse then why are back-catalogue releases zone encoded.

And don't get me started on the cluelessness of the RIAA and their SDMI scheme. In the DMCA the RIAA effectively stole the returned rights of many recording artists by bribing Congress to declare the recordings 'works for hire' and thus exempt from the returned rights provision. It was only when the whistle was blown that a hasty ammendment was introduced to another bill repeal the section of the previous act. Fortunately the computer industry can afford to buy far more congressmen than the RIAA can by a factor of ten so I don't worry too much about the Hollings proposal.

The KaZaa case is not being heard in a US court so the relevance of the Libertarian party and the NRA mentioned by another poster is not immediately apparent. Incidentally the Netherlands has pretty liberal IP laws compared to the US, we managed to get Karin Spaink and co. off when the $cientologists went after them.

The real issue is the extent to which KaZaa can exercise control over their network and the extent to which they have deliberately placed it beyond control. Funny thing about courts is that they are not too sympathetic when you tell them you cannot do something because you anticipated a legitimate legal action and deliberately acted to make it impossible for you to comply. In the case of KaZaa there are a fistfull of shell companies set up with the sole purpose of frustrating court action.

The offense of 'contempt of court' is not simply failling to obey a court order, it is challenging the authority of the courts. So KaZaa may be considered to have been in contempt by launching their scheme in the first place.

Re:Good

[crucini]

I suspect I am not the only person finding the comparison to the civil rights protests disgusting. There is a big difference between getting arrested for drinking at a colored water fountain and getting arresting for ripping off the latest U2 or Dire Straits tracks.

The ramifications of the emerging "intellectual property" regime extend far beyond pop entertainment. Even within the realm of entertainment, I cannot accept the idea that our common culture is "owned" by whoever capitalized its creation. The popular songs of U2 and Dire Straits are, in fact, in the public domain. They are widely known cultural referents, and many musicians could play them from memory. Unfortunately, the law has not kept up with reality, and denies that these songs are in the public domain.

But how do you even know there were civil rights protests? You know because that information was free to retransmit and archive. The Olympic Committee bans any unauthorized coverage of the games - they consider the games their "intellectual property". Even the athletes are forbidden to keep diaries. What if a city hosting the next WTO summit sells the "media rights" to a corporation? Then it would be illegal to pass on news or images from the protests.

If you watch the development of IP, it's clear that there is a powerful drive to destroy information. Shut down the fan sites, delete the tributes and remixes, take the old books out of print, take the old records off the shelf. Your example of Scientology vs Spaink highlights this destructive, censoring aspect of "intellectual property". And corporations are allergic to history - they'd like consumers and stockholders to live in the eternal now. Ever dig up an old computer magazine and see how quaint the "high-tech" ads appear? Kind of takes the edge off of techno-lust. Now if you were the publisher of that magazine, wouldn't you like to exercise your "intellectual property rights" and magically make the old magazines disappear? Your advertisers would like that.

And besides, by destroying the old material "content providers" create a vacuum into which to sell the new material. Already we are seeing laws (building codes) that are copyrighted by private corporations and illegal to reproduce. How long until your day-to-day activities are governed by secret laws?

If you want to listen to music then pay for the damn stuff.

Why? That's like saying "If you want to breathe air then pay for the damn stuff." Sure, it could support a massive air industry. Sure, the nonexistent air industry is losing billions of dollars a year, but why should I care? Conversely, why are you posting to slashdot for free? Surely you "deserve to be payed" for making insightful comments? Doesn't it bother you that I'm "ripping off" the "comment industry"?

I agree with the second half of your post.

History repeats itself

[Squeezer]

This sort of reminds me when I believe it was Andrew Jackson was president and the Supreme Court made a ruling he didn't like, and he said something to the effect of "The Court has made their ruling, now let them enforce it". Because the Supreme Court only has judicial powers, all they can do is decide the outcome of the case, but they have no enforcement powers, and at the time, Andrew Jackson had the power and popularity to enforce his ideas instead of those of the court.

That sort of reminds me of what Kazaa is doing, to the effect of "The Dutch court made their decision, now lets see them try to enforce shutting us down."

Refusing, but with a reason

[jspey]

The reason they aren't shutting down isn't just because they want to be rebels or something. While KaZaa does state that there's nothing they can do now that their software's out there and being used, they say they're not shutting down in order to comply with a different court order. In a different case with Buma/Stemra (the Dutch licensing body that's also suing them to shut down), KaZaa won an injunction forcing Buma/Stemra to continue to negotiate with them about a streaming-on-demand service. KaZaa says that if their current sevice isn't up and running, they can't negotiate well with Buma/Stemra.

I'm personally of the same opinion as the author of the article. I think that as soon as they get shut down, they go to a much weaker position to negotiate from. Why negotiate with KaZaa to make money fromthe music they're distributing when they aren't distributing music anymore?

Mr. Spey

Let's get things straight

[fm6]

KaZaa isn't really what it claims to be. They're superficially like Napster or Freenet, but that's just pretense. Or if it's not pretense, then the people running it are unbelievably stupid.

A system like this only works if all the users keep their P2P agents running 24/7, so that others can access their shared files. But when the agent is running, you get a stream of annoying popups. So people only run they agent when there's something to download. So they boast a huge database of stuff that's mostly unavailable.

What? Why?

[Pyrosz]

Why is some software targeted when other software is not? Take for example KaZaa, they make a program that allows you to share information and files. Is this not the same as having a web server and a browser? Or something like ICQ or any messanger service that lets you send/recv files? Wouldn't using an Internet browser to download the KaZaa software be illegal if the KaZaa software is deamed illegal? Therefore all Internet browsers are the cause of all piracy on the internet? So many questions, so much bs.

My Defense of Kazaa

[TeleoMan]

Alright, I'm tired of hearing the same old arguement over and over again, so here's the reasons I use Kazaa now instead of buying CDs (I own several hundred CDs btw).

First, I'm into trance, a form of eletronic music, that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE, not even online. Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...

Second, in the electronic music spectrum, there's alot of stuff I don't like. I used to try buying CDs, then find out they were junk. Waste of money. Sure, I'd buy CDs of artists I liked that I could actually get ahold of, but I'm listening to alot of bootlegs and things from Europe that can't be purchased, at least in the USA...

Third, I'm poor. Now more than ever, it's difficult being a college student. I couldn't buy albums at all (maybe a couple a year) if I even wanted to. I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. Most of the people who are pirating on Kazaa (including me) I bet would not buy the album of the person they were pirating anyway, either because they don't like it that much, it's just something novelty they wanted, or they're too poor to go out and actually buy it. You can argue then that the person should not have that recording, but the artist still is not losing money anyways and perhaps smaller ones gain from sharing their music to people who would have never heard it otherwise.

Fourth, everywhere I look, record sales are booming. They're having no problems pushing CDs, even though they're generally $3 - $5 more than 5 - 10 years ago when I was in my teen popular artist CD buying phase.

The only thing I can find in my local record stores are asshole employees, limited selection (plenty of the MTV crap), and high prices. I could buy online, but it's more of the same except the salesperson is taken out and replaced by phony reviews.

I'm glad Kazaa exists, it has opened me up to music I would not have found otherwise and allows me to get my hands on things I wouldn't be able to get my hands on.

Water Under Bridge

[Wintermancer]

I've often said that the RIAA/MPAA/LMNOP are working up a great sweat playing the P2P Whack-A-Mole game. Someone, somewhere, should explain to them what NP means in mathematical terms ;-)

I'll go off on a slight tangent, but bear with me. When you need water, you just go to the tap and turn it on (at least in North America, that is). You get what you what when you need it.

What you don't hear is the Water, Gas and Power company screaming about how their rights are being destroyed by people being able to bottle the water and give it freely to a friend or neighbour. (Or derivative uses thereof, such as cooking, flushing, etcetera).

Why? It's commoditized. It's too damn cheap to bother with repackaging or giving it away. It's there. You get charged by the aggregate volume that you use in a month. You want to give a hectaliter to Joe Farmer down the street? Go right ahead, we'll bill you for your use. But why bother? Joe Farmer can get it for himself.

This is what the music industries need to realize. The cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the lamp and Elvis has left the building. The days of charging $20/cd are gone for good.

This does not have to be a bad thing.

Commoditize the damn thing so that it's too damn cheap to bother with trading music (other than, "Listen to this cool track I downloaded"). Give people high bit-rate, guaranteed quality, do-what-you-want-with it music for pennies on the song, and you'll make more money than you can dream of. And judging by these guys expense accounts, that's a lot of dinero.

Otherwise, die like the dinosaurs did.

Re:Consumer vs Corporate Morality

[jalefkowit]

Your post is what we in the industry call clueless.

And this is why "you in the industry" are in the process of running your insanely profitable businesses into the ground. What you're feeling tightening around your neck is not Napster or Kazaa or Gnutella or whatever -- it's Adam Smith's famous "invisible hand"! Look, it's very simple. When all of your customers feel that you are charging too much for your product, or that your terms of use are too restrictive, or whatever, a black market is going to spring up. Simple as that. It's as true for bread as it is for music -- if every bakery in the US banded together and raised the price universally to $100/loaf, college students would be breaking into grocery stores and selling grey market Wonder Bread out of their dorm rooms. It's the magic of the free market at work.

Now, you say that's dirty pool because people used to think sixteen bucks a CD was a fair price, so they should continue to feel that way. But you've missed the ground shifting underneath your feet. New technologies have devalued your product in the eyes of the public. You need to either reprice it or accept that there's gonna be a certain amount of loss. You can throw out tepid, restrictive alternatives all you want, but why should people buy it? What's your value proposition for the consumer? (That's what businesses are supposed to do, you know -- serve consumers.)

Is grey-market music illegal? Sure. But grey-market bread would be too. Laws that attempt to impose morality on human nature are doomed to failure. Better to figure out how to profit off human nature by providing something useful at a price your audience thinks is fair than to try to ram outdated products and outmoded laws down our throats.

-- Jason Lefkowitz