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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."
Even if the corp shut down, we'd all still be able to use the clients, right?
did they also ignore the court order to remove the spyware? What? There was no such order... well.. there damn well should've been... I want to use KaZaa!
Yes, this is a joke, I know they need to make money somehow.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
I say ignore all unjust laws.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Sounds like they made a bad choice in having the technology to shut down the prior versions of the software... they could have been the first test of truely "uncontrolled" software vs a court order.
Personally, I hope Freenet or one if it's same minded ilk (redundent caching with encrypted content) builds the technology to scale out as large as these kinds of systems have.
Sig under construction since 1998.
It seems to me this isn't the brightest of moves. They're trying to use it as negotiating power, yet ticking off a judge is a really bad idea- keep in mind the judge (at least in the US) gets the final approval on any deal that's worked out during a case.
Also, what do they think this will gain them? While I don't like the DMCAA et al, I think we can all agree there are flat out illegal pirates out there amongst the legal users. Because of this, they're an accomplist to theft/copyright infringement/whatever you want to call it. Plus whatever other legal teeth those provide for sinking into the owners of KaZaa.
Sigh. If the music industry would just quit fighting, start providing MP3 format cds with a couple of extra songs/what have you, I bet they'd find that their piracy issues would go down more than they expect. I won't even try to argue financial benefit, since it's no one really seems to know (RIAA: OH, we lost MONEY! Stores: NO, you sold more! People: Hey, we're getting f*cked!)
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
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."
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
There may be more to this than just the usual recording-industry-heavy-handedness. After all, KaZaA (or however it's capitalized) isn't nearly as big as Napster was - Napster was the one choice, most mp3-swapping was centralized around it. Now with WinMX, AudioGalaxy etc., not to mention the OpenNap servers, the fragmentation means no one service will dominate. That makes the pursuit of KaZaA suspicious to me. It seems the technology behind KaZaA, which also runs MusicCity, Morpheus etc. is what's under attack.
Bear in mind that Napster has targeted March as their return date, complete with pay-as-you-go music and under the boot of RIAA et al. Why would you go pay on Napster if you could jump on other networks and get it for free?
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
Cover your butt. Bernard is watching.
As you can tell by reading the article, and as you certainly wouldn't be led to believe by reading CmdrTaco's summary, they are refusing to shut down in order to comply with a previous court order. This is more a case of conflicting orders in the judicial system than anything else.
Is your company running tools written by ma
They're not really ignoring the order, as presented in the news post.
More like they're trying to squirm out of the deal by either claiming they can't shut it down (being de-centralized and all that), or that doing so would violate previous court orders. They're not ignoring by any means, they're attempting to squirm.
Redundant, probably, but it's posted with the intent of staving off some of the "woohoo stick it to the man!" posts.
Crap, pure crap! We have people in the US who openly admit to breaking the DMCA rules on national TV (Patrick Norton on TechTV), and nothing happens, yet they try and make an example of a foreign based company that is simply running a p2p network server, it's not their fault everyone uses it to pirate... Hell, I'm amazed they don't try and shutdown ISPs and the entire Internet, afterall the p2p networks use the net don't they? sheesh...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
the judge has ordered BUMA/STEMRA (dutch equivalent to RIAA) to resume the talks that were broken off because of the RIAA lawsuit. Looks like they'll get a licence for streaming only at the moment, but while talks are ongoing, Kazaa does not have to close.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Do you really need to ignore all of them? It seems silly to go to jail over, say, an "unjust" parking fine.
"We developed this great piece of P2P software, but now that we're being sued, fuck that and lets stream some music!"
Of course, I haven't been to sleep in a good while, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
-- Dan
from This dutch article In conclude the bumra-stemra and kazaa are still talking. This based there there is no effectuation of the fines
I think the important point to remember here is that the record companies are not playing fair. They do not want to licence their products for sale on the internet. Although it may not be illegal, or rather someone has not caught them out according to the law yet, they are basically trying to control the market.
It's up to us to put pressure on them to licence their music. A good way to do that is to swap MP3s. You might call it theft, but many of these companies are not exactly saints and in any David vs Goliath battles, dirty tricks are to go. in there arrogance, record companies forget that they only exist becuase of us, the consumers. By acting together we remind them of that fact.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
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.
It is, that's correct. However, this case is in Holland, and the DMCA is a US law, so your comment isn't as relevant as you think.
sulli
RTFJ.
No, the client has to connect to a central server to login to the network..
So next up are they going to order Washington University to shut down for making wu-ftpd available? That's software that lets people download music files too.
- icemind
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.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
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.
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
P2P is easier for newbies, it's more familiar. But not to worry, even newbies will do whatever is needed to get what they want. MP3's are everywhere and their's nothing that can stop it.
Once the toothpaste is out, it's hard to get it back in.
KaZaa "We can not shut down because our product because people cannect to each other, not a server."
Reporter "You have shut down earlier clients..."
KaZaa "But in the newest client, it is impossible to do so..."
Reporter "If it is run by clients connecting to clients, why do you need to be around."
KaZaa "Because the software won't work otherwise."
Reporter "For some reason, this seems like what Microsoft would do..."
OK, for once and for all: The fair use law says that I can make copies of a Metallica CD I buy for my own personal use. An example being I copy onto a tape because I only have a tape player in my car. This is legal. Along the same lines, do you think it's wrong for me to download that same Metallica CD that I have purchased, using Kazaa to my MP3 player so I can take it to class? It's true that if I were technically savy, I could convert all of the CD myself to MP3's, but logically is this not a legal use of Kazaa, so that 100,000 people don't have to waste time and effort doing this conversion when it's already been done?
- I like pudding.
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
Hmm. They are suing KaZaa because they make software that allows file sharing over the internet.
Are RIAA/MPAA et al going to sue Microsoft, too? After all, Microsoft makes software that allows file sharing over the internet with no content control.
Shoot, even WITHOUT all the unintended security holes, it's pretty easy to set up a web server with all your mp3's and get a search engine to list them all.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
First of all I'd like to point out that Amsterdam is just a bloody city in the Netherlands, not a jurisdiction on its own. On the point of laws that are not enforced in the Netherlands, there is a distinction between public and private law in the so called civil law countries. Public law governs the relations between government and the citizens, private law governs the relations between citizens. Going after a citizen who has violated a regulation that is part of public law, for example the penal law on substances of abuse, is a typical governmental task. Here a peculiar principle kicks in. Penal laws that give the government the right to prosecute someone tend not to oblige the government to do so. Hence the government can decide to dedicate scarce law enforcement resources to prosecuting criminals they deem more harming to society, e.g. people mugging old ladies, than some pothead peacefully smoking his gear. Since copyright law is mostly private law, principles such as this do not apply at all. Basically copyright holders trying to get a court order in order to prevent their intellectual property from being infringed is an entirely different kettle of fish.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
Yes, usenet is that unusable to most of us, at least for music downloading. A lot (probably most, by now) of the large ISPs do not carry the alt.binaries.* groups. If you want access to those groups you have to either pay for access to a commercial nntp server (something your average mp3 swapper isn't about to do) or live on campus at a large university. (even more expensive than commercial usenet service, and the food sucks, too).
So the secret isn't out yet, you haven't told us where to find a broadband provider with free, unfiltered newsfeeds.
0 1 - just my two bits
However. There are alternatives and one of the less known ones is Grokster. This is also an official client to the fasttrack network and it does also include spyware but you can disable it. Actually it's disabled by default! I've been using it and when I've checked with AdAware it's green. So go get it!
Meanwhile. What happened to giFT/OpenFT?? I'm still waiting.. :)
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
I just took a look at a recent freenet .4 snapshot this morning, and between the software actually working and the web of freesites that's growing, it looks like it's approaching usability.
That was always my gripe with freenet, that it's been too damn hard to use... Keep up the improvements, guys, for everyone's sake.
Why don't the record companies just sue everyone in a kind of reverse class action suit? If thousands of smokers can sue 1 company, Why can't 1 company sue thousands of copyright infrengers? That way everone can owe the record labels millions in damages. Then everyone can go bankrupt together. Afther that the CEO's of the record lables can jump ship enron style before the music industry goes out of buisness for lack of demand as all the consumers are without money.
First of all, it's a "clause" in the Copyright Law, not a law in itself. The DMCA removed much of the rights you have to fair use, which is why academics don't like the DMCA either.
It seems to me that Kazaa, Napster, mp3.com et al have taken relatively orthodox approaches to their legal defense.
Bearing in mind that IANAL, how can one of these companies adopt a legal defense strategy that is the worst nightmare of the RIAA/MPAA and/or the government(s)?
What if Kazaa were to form five more corporations and cross-license its technology with them, then declare bankrupcy in an effort to keep the technology alive?
How could Kazaa involve the largest number of jurisdictions in an effort to dramatically increase the difficulty of prosecution?
What about involving Sealand?
These companies are going to continue to fall to the grim reaper until one of them does with the legal system what the technology has done with the distribution channel.
The next company should insure that it will cost over $1 billion to successfully shut them down.
You really don't want them to do that test in a court. If a court finds that people are producing things that are invulnerable to court orders, you can bet that within days legislation will be passed preventing any such software from being produced again. Mandatory government-accessible backdoors might well become a legal requirement, and writing or using software without them might become a criminal offence with ludicrous penalties. Remember, governments are quite capable of passing such draconian legislation: RIP in the UK, DMCA in the US, etc.
The thing is, you couldn't really blame the government for introducing such measures, at least not with any justification, because those who object would have brought it upon themselves. With freedom comes responsibility. If you abuse freedoms -- and the likes of Napster, Kazaa and co have allowed people to abuse freedom on a massive scale -- then you're going to be held responsible, and those freedoms are going to be compromised.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
First of all, for all of you asking "why Kazaa?", in case its not obvious yes, Kazaa is Dutch, not American. So logically it would be a court in the Netherlands that has to go after it. Napster, as most know, is as American as long stick bombing and apple pie. So it was pursued in an American court.
What is interesting in all of this is the international ramifications. What's to stop a file-swapping service from setting up in a small, easily-influenced island nation with lax laws on such things? Antigua and Barbuda, in the Caribbean, comes to mind (mostly because im in it at the moment) - low/non-existant taxes, a dedicated free trade zone, a FAT pipe back to the US and Europe, (the much-loved Casino-On-Net is here, for example), and a judicial system that is, well, not particularly likely to push through complex technology-based cases anytime soon. With enough other "legitimate" US-linked technology companies here (such as the casinos), any threat to simply unplug the island would be met with serious lobbying and financial pressure... And thus such companies as Kazaa would be in a more solid position to "sell out" - as is the logical outcome for these services: get big, get threatened, then sell out to a record company (Napster, MP3.com, et al).
As an interesting note, Antigua is building a call center that will house 800+ employees, with the express purpose of delivering outgoing telemarketing to the US and Canada. It's billed here as a wonderful project to provide "high tech" employment (really), with no thought given to how telemarketing is seen by Americans/Canadians. It will be very interesting to see how US telemarketing laws are applied to incoming international calls.
Are these file sharing services just going to hopscotch around the globe, then?
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
Well maybe if Holland comes over for a visit and demonstrates currently illegal activity at a hackers convention, then we'll arrest it...
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
From all of my research on this subject the reason why RIAA is determined to go after P2P networks is that it makes downloading of copyrighted material "too easy".
In other words, any dolt with a computer can figure out how to download via KaZaa,Napster, etc... but if they were required to not only find a server and connect via FTP that it would be deemed too difficult for the masses and is therefore not a threat.
The same goes for IRC, etc... Transferring files via most applications is too intellectually challenging and what KaZaa and Napster are being nailed for is being innovative enough to make file transfer via the Internet "easy".
Of course, my personal take on it is also that these companies have little cash with which to fight back. Microsoft's peer to peer has been available for many years and is just easy to use - but it doesn't offer automated searching of hosts. You need to actually understand how to find a host and connect. Same with browsers.
The companies behind these technologies have lots of cache and lawyers. Napster and KaZaa don't.
This is the real issue the RIAA has with P2P and their current implementation. It's too easy.
I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
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.
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.
The very moment that Microsoft gets on the side of the consumer, I will be their loyal customer.
Microsoft could do any or all of these things to cause me to immediately rethink my (currently very dismissive) attitude towards them:
Microsoft management has not yet become bored with greed. I would like to see what happens when they do.
Sure, some changes might have to be made to the way ISP's operate, and in some instances, court orders would need to be issued for the ISP's to release that information, but it could be done...that is, if the RIAA/MPAA were TRULY interested in punishing the guilty.
The fact of the matter is, they have no interest in doing so. Why? Because "the guilty" == "the customers." Start going after the customers, and you start alienating customers. Alienated customers are no longer customers...or, more specifically, no longer a source of revenue.
I honestly don't know what the RIAA and MPAA hope to accomplish with all this silliness. They should realize that they can't stop piracy, and they're obviously not willing to go after the pirates. It seems to me like a half-assed "show of force"...and the only purposes it's serving at this point is to alienate customers, and put honest, hard-working people out of work...all for nothing. It's truly sad.
If a court orders Maytag refrigerators illegal, (Anthrax storage enablers) does that give Maytag the right to go into your house and smash them? Or to punch the self-destruct button they have hidden in their office? Is software a good that is bought, or a service that can be discontinued?
*Sigh*
The mp3newswire.net story is complete bollocks... they probably thought: 'hey, more than two weeks pasts, KaZaA hasn't shut down, they're probably ignoring the verdict...'. The quotes in the article are even based on things said weeks ago!
What's the _real_ story?
Is was already posted a week ago on a Dutch site
The most (and only) interesting part of the article: (translated)
A spokesman from KaZaA's main office in Sweden explains they don't need to [shut down] yet. "Since we're negociating with Buma/Stemra right now, we are not forced to shut down"
Tsssk... if only more people could read Dutch :-p
The FastTrack network (Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster) is an authoritarian network. With version 1.3.3, network control was centralized by requiring authentication by company servers - all power in the network was concentrated in the hands of a few. Thus, since it is an authoritarian system, a more powerful authoritarian system, US entertainment corporations, can make the MPAA make the Dutch courts shut down the FastTrack network.
The Gnutella network on the other hand, is a more anarchic network. All power on the network is distributed equally among the users of the network. Thus, although it has been around longer than FastTrack, there is no central authority the MPAA can force to submit, so it is not as easy for the MPAA to shut it down as Napster and FastTrack are.
Beyond Gnutella there are publishing networks like Freenet and Mojonation. These networks would be even more difficult for some authority to attack than Gnutella. Publishing is free, and content is split up and distributed. Add to this encryption and reverse proxying, and it becomes difficult for people to know what data they store, and where data they request comes from. This type of network is even more resistant to authority's attempts to shut it down. The design of publishing networks is more complex and less utilitarian than that of Gnutella however. Thus design and usage of publishing networks is not up to the level of that of the Gnutella network yet.
As long as the company is based outside of that court's jurisdiction (like in another country) they can legally laugh it off. And rightfully they should.
Just like Yahoo should have done to France.
If the courts are given the power to shut down a piece of software that allows the exchange of software, then where are the limits? Kazaa is one example, how about mIRC? Do they start to target all forms of the IRC client? Do they make it illegal to even use the protocol because it allows for file sharing? How about ICQ? The latest windows ICQ client i have used allows for file sharing, so we would have to do away with the ICQ protocol. Let's see, what else? FTP...the very nature of that protocol's name is for file transfers, so whoever came up with that must be sued as well. And our operating systems allows us to run these programs, so the makers of those need to be sued, as well as our internet providers for giving us the medium to transfer upon. There is no end to it, the only real answer to end it all is to make it illegal to use the internet at all, and be not allowed to speak to anyone who may have software they could "lend" you.
tourettes
It's open source (GPL) so you can build yourself a version without that stuff. In addition there's options to not install the spyware when you install limewire and finally there's a java only installer that doesn't have the spyware at all.
Plenty of options to use an excellent, free product without being nagged and spied upon. Bearshare is nice too, but from where I'm standing, most of the innovative features come from the limewire people. That's why I use limewire.
Jilles
If they don't mind 3rd party clients loging into the network, they can change it back so that even if they shutdown the Kazar apps on all our PCs will still work.
Look at Xolox, they shutdown, but just by loading a patch so the app doesn't have to logon on to the Xolox site to check for an update 1st (a requirement of the original app) the Xolox P2P apps still work.
Just go to to zeropiad.con, they have the Xolox no-update patch.
They made it so FT clients/transparent servers had to logon 1st, to block out 3rd party clients, but if they want they could change the FT service back to the no logon 1st setup (so it will still work even if the FT companies shutdown) anytime they choose to.
Maybe Kazar's just taken this course.