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Kazaa And Exportation of U.S. Copyright Laws
Mr. Vidster writes "Interesting article in the NYTimes about the potential issues the U.S. justice system must face when dealing with Sharman Networks and KaZaA. Apparently Sharman and KaZaA have servers in Denmark, source code in Estonia, and the developers live in the Netherlands. How far does the long arm of US copyright law reach?"
P.S.: if you don't like the country's political climate, then try changing it yourself, take action, use your own vote and political self-worth. Stop sitting around crying about it. Otherwise, why don't you just move to China or Russia - they would love to have ya.
No... don't think so... I live here.. I have an American name... unlike you...btw.... with a name like "mao che minh" Why don't you go home..
China is one country where the US's influence is iffy at best. Being too cozy with US demands, especially when they're so obviously coming from corporate interests, is political suicide in China. You know for all the talk about the great firewall and all this hype about oppression in China it's intersting to note that China is currently the biggest market for backbone switching equipment. So let the US clamp down on information exchange full bore. Hell, I'm sure we'll be seeing executions of children caught sharing toys on the playgrounds soon. That will shape up those little fuckers and show the rest of the world how to run a free country.
Remember kids, scientific studies have shown that the death penalty is the only way to prevent file sharing and other forms of terrorism.
Well, lets look at Kazaa.
It's website is in English. It's software is in English, and it does not have a Norwegian version of the software and probably never will. Take a look at their Languages page. It doesn't even have plans to open a Norweigan version of their software, but yet they want to release it in Spanish, French and German? Spanish is basically the second most spoken language in the United States, not Norway. Now, if we take a look at the most common languages in Norway, we can see here and here that hardly anyone speaks English in Norway. Most speak, um, Norwegian (most common dialect is Bokmål).
So, as we can plainly see, Kazaa is targeting the US demographic, not Norway/Denmark/Estonia. Yet their servers and establishments are in Denmark? Why? It's to gain marketshare and profit from the American people, yet not contribute the US. In fact, they're taking money away from the American government. There are no US taxes on the products, so your basically throwing your money away. (Yes, Money, there is now "Kazaa Plus" which costs $$$). Kazaa's advertisments target US customers, it's product is made for US customers and it's only intrest is in the US customer base.
Kazaa is obviously not interested in P2P technology or it's future. It stole Gntuella's technology spec and re-wrote it. Kazaa also has Network Supernodes (dedicated nodes, always on) and other centralized components. So if you took those away, expect drastic changes in performance. The RIAA has pretty much presumed Kazaa was built just like that for a while. Kazaa is all about money. Take away the money, watch the developers flee. The "developers" of Kazaa have already started up similar companies. They know Kazaa will be shut down eventually, and of course they need to keep making their un-deserved millions.
Kazaa will eventually be shut down, even if it means Jennifer Gardner running out of an exploding building in the Netherlands.
If you sell the product to people in the US, then yes. Without knowing UK law, if you're in one part of the UK, and you ship a product to another part of the UK, is a dissatisfied consumer able to sue in their own jurisdiction, or do they go to yours? Anyway, if you don't want to sell to the US, don't sell to the US.
Or does the fact that I have an Internet presence automatically mean I just want to sell to the US?
Only if your Internet website fulfills orders from the US. Otherwise, blow us off.
The precedent followed by this law would imply further things - like, for example, many other countries suing US gun manufacture firms because the guns they make are being exported to countries where they're illegal.
If the manufacturers are the ones directly responsible for shipping the guns, then heck yeah, fry them. They're trying to do business in a jurisdiction where their product is as illegal as crack cocaine. I've got no problem with the good ol' fashioned corporate death penalty here.
If Americans don't know about their own DMCA and don't know that they can't legally download or use Kazaa, why should Dutch people be punished for giving them the option, when doing so isn't locally illegal for them?
Because they make no effort to limit jurisdiction. They don't even say, "Hey guys, if you're in the US, promise not to get this!" They fail to specify what jurisdictions their products is intended for, and they make it available in every country in the world. Therefore, they have to be prepared to deal with all of those countries' laws. Not just US, but all of them.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."