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