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Judge Rules that Kazaa can be Sued
scubacuda writes "According to this News.com article, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson said a lawsuit against Sharman Networks (the makers of Kazaa) could proceed, since Kazaa software had been downloaded and used by millions of Californians. (The Australia-/Vanuatu-based company had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it was not bound by U.S. laws since it did not have substantial contacts with California.)"
Judge issues injuction against Kazaa
Judge declares Kazaa violated the law
Kazaa out of business
Company X buying Kazaa's assests
Ask Slashdot: Whatever happened to Company X?
Wow, first one maybe?
Seriously, they are not a U.S. company...the ego of this country thinking it can impose its laws on non-citizens!
Swell, I guess I better shut off my web server.
--
There is no hatred more pure and true than that expressed by children.
Actaully, suing an australian company in a US-based court seems pretty reasonable, after the recent libel suit in australian courts against a US-based company...
The question of whether kazaa is, in fact, violating the law should be settled in court somewhere, and somehow it doesn't seem like vanatu is the venue.
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
I expect kazza will just ignore this. Since they are not Californian they are not subject to the rulings of the court. Californians are mind you so I guess the court needs to throw California users of Kazza into jail.
Perhaps the judge will rule that the kazza servers be firewalled in California. Who knows.
The reaction of Kazza to this ruling will be really intereting. But again - I think there is a high probability that the ruling will just be ignored.
Two years from now we will read: In other news US Appealate Court has rescinded the decision of RIAA v. Kazaa stating that the trial court had no jursidiction to hear the case. RIAA will appeal to the supreme court...
$G
-- $G
As long as there are files to be shared, people will find ways to share them. Napster is down, Scour is down, now Kazaa will probably go down. I guess it's back to using IRC until someone figures out how to make a free, open source P2P network that costs nothing, isn't incorporated, and doesn't rely on a central server so that the courts can't sue any single person. Hopefully it will last longer.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
As far as a (ad free) replacement for Kazaa goes, though, check out WinMX.
It seems to me that what happens to Kazaa the client doesn't matter so much as long as the FastTrack network, which Kazaa connects to, remains running. Since FastTrack is administered by a Dutch organization, and not by the makers of the Kazaa Media Desktop software, it seems like this suit is unlikely to affect anybody's ability to get files of the larger network.
It's not. He just wanted to say it is to avoid looking as though he was violating a precedent.
Even if the case came to court and the judge ruled in favour of the media companies, would Sharman Networks have to pay?
There is a precedent for cases like this. Yahoo! did not have to comply with the French order because Yahoo! has their servers in the US and they are a US company.
How is this any different?
So what if millions of Californians use Kazaa? There are many times that number of Kazaa users who are not Californians. Millions of French people could access the US yahoo.com site - the ruling says:
What laws are the MPAA and RIAA using to sue Sharman Networks? Are they applicable in Australia or Vanuatu
I also note that the US seems to think its justice system applies to the rest of the world. We hear a lot of stories about US judges handing down judgements on foriegners who may not even be present.
The whole attitude seems reflected in US fiction such as Star Trek, StarGate. The US ideas of justice are taken as entirely good, and applicable to even alien races. Notice that the intergalactic federations in these programs are centered around the Earth, and even perhaps around America, and uphold entirely America's ideals.
America not only seems to overstep the mark, but seems to do it acting entirely in its own selfish interests. Acceptance of American software patents would cripple foriegn software industries as America grabs what it terms "intellectual property rights" over our ideas - without a chance for us to compete as we don't yet have the ability to create such patents for ourselves. It would be like invading a foreign country and claiming ownership of all of its land for American exploitation.
I wonder if Microsoft would be treated so leniently if they were not an American company. I wonder, in this case, if the country that they were based in would come under similar political pressures as Iraq.
- Richard
The difference is that Texas is a state in the United States and was considered to have stronger claim of jurisdiction on the case than California did(Texas or the other state which I no longer remember where the man initially put up the web site), but kazaa is based in another country and who has jurisdiction in the matter is bit trickier.
You shut down one, its replaced by more.
Is get the judge to issue an order pulling kazaa.com's domain registration as well as ordering Global Crossing to block their traffic.
I suppose one could only call this fair play if one thought that US laws should be applied everywhere in the entire world.
Kazaa may have been downloaded to the US, but the company, its programmers, and its owners have never had a presence here. That means, guess what, you can't sue it here. The supreme court of california has already ruled on this and even if the little judge of the case says "These cases aren't the same like that" If and when Kazaa gets an appeal, it'll go straight to the Cal Supreme Court who will knock it down again on jurisdictional issues.
If KaZaa had an office in California, it'd be different, but they don't. When the US steps on little countries' soverignty to regulate their buisnesses themselves all it does is get those countries pissed off at us.
Win or lose, until any of those buisnessmen from that company get on a jet and come here, the MPAA will gain nothing but at most a hollow and ineffective paper victory.
The problem I had with Kazaa is that they took out ads on Yahoo bragging on how you could download the latest Britney Spears and Eminem for free. That's not exactly the way to keep the powers that be off of your back. They're obviously centralized enough as an entity to organize an ad campaign and anyone stupid enough to advertise illegal activity deserves whatever happens to them.
Most of those patches are being distributed illegally as well. I'm pretty sure if you read the licensing agreement, you have to download it from their site or from an authorized mirror. And if you don't like it, that's just too damn bad -- that's the license agreement.
Porn, as well, is freely available in some places without Kazaa, and most of the Kazaa porn is pirated as well. (I'm sure all those ripped porno DVDs were public domain, right?)
HTML is just a language. You can use English to say something illegally too.
Firstly, FTP has greater accountability. You can't open a Warez FTP site to the public and not get caught. And secondly, FTP was created to transfer files, not to transfer files *AND* mask identities *AND* advertise to pirates.
Kazaa knows that a ton of people are using their network to illegally traffic things, and so they can get money by advertising to them. They know that illegal activity is rampant on their network, and they don't monitor it or report it, which is basically aiding and abetting. So I guess if you wanted to get really technical, we could make a federal case out of this...?
But, going strictly on intent, they are knowingly aiding pirates, which means less money is making it into the hands of the people that are supposed to be getting paid for their work, which means civil suit, and a completely justified one in my opinion.
evil adrian
I can point out at least one example of how I've legitimately used p2p. I was trying to get SP1 for Windows XP, but the windows update software prompted me to update my windows update software to continue (or something along those lines). anyway, i'd do the update then come back and it'd tell me I needed to update again. So I went on kazaa and downloaded the service pack there, no problem. Technically yes this is illegal but I don't think Microsoft really wants to prevent me from obtaining its patches. Aside from that, p2p is a great way to distribute a program while taking the load off of your servers and keeping bandwith costs down (look at how kazaa distributes their own software).
When will the lawyers and courts in this country realize that the USA isn't the ONLY country on earth? First they pulled this crap with Elcomsoft, now Kazaa! HEY (pinhead) JUDGE...they aren't from America! Is our country so arrogant that we honestly believe our laws and rules apply to everyone in the world? Kazaa was founded in The Netherlands, and now originates from Vanatu. Last time I checked, neither of these places were U.S. states or possessions. Unlike Elcomsoft, Kazaa never sold anything in the USA nor is their software hosted by them on US servers.
This is just California power-grabbing. In the last couple years, CA judges have, for the most part, being taking every opportunity to try to expand their jurisdiction, whether it's legal, logical, or even feasible. As has been pointed out, even IF Kazaa was successfully sued, it's absolutely unenforcible. All of its business offices are located out of country, and the servers are pretty much decentralized. So, let's say the trial proceeds, and Kazaa is fined millions of dollars in a court order. Kazaa says 'Neener neener, we're in Austrailia' and ignores it. Since ignoring a court order is a felony, Federal charges would be filed. Kazaa ignores those as well. At which point the US government might try to tell Austrailia to send them to us, and Austrailia would tell us to piss off. At which point the matter is ended. If the people who made Kazaa never step foot in the US, nothing else happens. (and given what happened to Skylarov, I highly doubt they planned to EVER come to the US) End of story.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
I wonder whether that judge thinks it's ok for Voice of America to be sued in China or Iraq or wherever else the local laws don't approve of it, since people are listening to it there. The whole point of VOA is to get information to people that their governments don't want them to have. Well, Kazaa is now trying to get software to us that our government doesn't want us to have. It's ironic to see what happens when the shoe is on the other foot.
That's how my friends and I use to hack it old school in the early 80's. If "everybody knows" about an exploit or resource, it's fucked. Act casual and walk away. It's still good advice.
I can think of lots of neato resources on the net that really, really shouldn't be there, and as soon as the fucking New York Times runs an above-the-fold article about any of them, they'll go away too.
BTW, you know blue boxing is teh bustx0r now, right?
IANAL, as is obvious from my profile...
:-)
But I do appreciate your response which clarified a few points which I wasn't aware of.
Personally, I find it disgusting the way the american justice system forces their laws on other nations haphazardly (Look at Dmitri for example). But I do understand what you are saying, and that your "Question A" has a lot of merit.
Naturally though, you should be able to understand my frustration (as a non-American) with the way the Americans do things. Sometimes it is aggravating.
I do appreciate you taking the time to explain the finer details of the judicial system to me, though, and although I agree that the Americans can sue KaZaa (by what you said), I believe that they have no right to since KaZaa is not an American company and doesn't have substantial contacts in California. (It's only on the internet.)
I hope now, you understand where my initial rant came from.
I don't think that the Kazaa downloads are sufficient contacts to frame the basis for jurisdiction in California either, and I suspect that Kazaa could prevail on appeal.
Note again that you've said "I find it disgusting the way the american justice system forces their laws on other nations haphazardly". The process isn't very haphazard - the court attempts to determine whether contacts exist through relatively straightforward reasoning. And it's not "America" which is trying to force anything on any other nation. The RIAA is trying to get the United States to enforce its laws on Kazaa's activities or property in the United States.
And all the judge here has decided is that the law permits him to consider the RIAA's request.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Ok here is what is going to happen. Judge finds Kazza guilty. Judge can only dictate on terms for California. Kazza adds clause that only non-Californian's can use this service.
If a judge finds them guilty, then changing the license agreement isn't going to do anything - they have already broken the law.
In the days that gun manufacturers can be sued for what gun owners do, this is not a surprise.
Personal responsibility is out the window, and I don't see it ever coming back.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Kazaa (ISPs) knows that a ton of people are using their network (Internet) to illegally traffic things, and so they can get money by advertising (selling bandwidth) to them. They know that illegal activity is rampant on their network, and they don't monitor it or report it, which is basically aiding and abetting. So I guess if you wanted to get really technical, we could make a federal case out of this...?
P2P might have more illegal stuff than Internet in general, but I'm pretty sure those mp3s/divxs add up to quite a bit of the total Internet traffic too. You want to ban "Internet" too, reducing it to "approved services"? Or have your ISP monitor everything you do?
Your blurb about how FTPs are more "accountable" doesn't make any sense to me. Do you know how many "public" (ie. you don't know who the other person is in real life) FTP sites (or for that matter, HTTP sites) you can find with warez, of which about 0.000000001% ever get caught?
As the recent action in Denmark shows, where lots of people were fined for illegally downloading stuff from KaZaA, it can be done. It's just that there are litterally millions of people blatantly breaking the law. And the legal system was never made to be able to deal with "everybody" breaking the law. Kinda like minor speeding. At least here, you could pull everybody off the road and fine them for driving 3MPH over the limit. They don't though, they take the drunk drivers and the road bullies. Same goes for copyright infringement, the police won't give a rats ass about small stuff. The RIAA might try to create a few examples, but it won't really work.
The only thing that could happen is that a real distributed P2P network would take over, like gnutella or similar. No central server, no software company "in control" of the program, just users. At which point I'm sure they'll try to ban it altogether, like that South-American country that wanted to ban VoIP (by banning UDP).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
P2P networks serve no legitimate purpose.
Just so I understand exactly what you're trying to say (in this and other posts on the same topic), I'm going to rephrase your argument:
Things which serve no legitimate purpose should not be allowed to exist.
P2P networks serve no legitimate purpose.
Therefore, P2P networks should not be allowed to exist.
This conclusion follows logically from your premises; however, the argument is not valid because, aside from the spurious notion that things which serve no legitimate purpose should not be allowed to exist (a premise which, while not explicitly stated, is a necessary part of your argument), you assume P2P Networks serve no legitimate purpose. If even one legitimate purpose for a P2P network can be shown to exist, then your entire argument, while logically sound, is false.
If I write a story under an open copyright license (http://www.creativecommons.org), then make my story freely available via a P2P network, have I not utilized that network for a legitimate purpose? The fact that something (anything) can be used, even primarily, for illegal or illegitimate purposes, does not necessarily mean it should be outlawed, dismantled, prohibited, or otherwise removed from existence.
You should be more careful making such generalized statements. It's fairly obvious you feel very strongly about the prohibition of P2P networks, and presumably any other means by which copyright may be violated, but your ideological stance would be better served with more sound reasoning and fewer inflammatory and untrue generalized statments.
From the article:
:-) does not have jurisdiction over the world. Not that they'd have any trouble getting an Australian court to bend over for the US.
Sharman Networks...should be held accountable by U.S. laws.
Bzzzt! Wrong! They should be held accountable by Autralian and Vanuatan laws. The United States (Je naait 't steeds
If I owned a company and got a summons from a US court I would RSVP that I am declining the invitation (and contact a lawyer to prepare for any possible extradition hearing).
I don't think my government would send me over there unless the US told them I'd killed someone or something like that.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
There is nothing that gives FTP accountability. First, you can't open a warez P2P collection to the public and not get caught either - the instant you start downloading it, you can pull an IP address - exactly as much information as FTP provides. But the analogy is flawed - FTP as a protocol is designed to efficiently transfer files. P2P's design is more of a high-availabilty, low capacity system - hence the massively parallel searching, and consequent slow downloads. P2P's ability to transfer files is an add-on - just like HTTP's ability to send cookies is really an add-on. And finally, the advertising is entirely a separate entity. There is no practical reason P2P clients need advertising, there simply hasn't been a popular non-advertising client yet. Advertising provides a source of income for the development of easy-to-use P2P clients - it's no more a part of the network than the ads you see on TV are a part of the show you're watching.
And the people who make guns are aiding and abetting murdurers and the people who make CD burners are aiding and abetting pirates (never mind me who uses it to make off-computer backups of important data). This is an old argument. A while ago, I read a news report about a carjacker who had the bad idea of stealing a car from a group of judo students on their way to a tournament. A bad choice for him... the police, though, were very careful to note that they recommended people NOT attempt to stop carjackers - it's the police's job, they have the training and responsibility to stop carjackings, and everyone else doesn't. This is a similar situation - there is no law demanding that Kazaa take responsibility to police it's own network. Now, they could voluntarily, but it's not their responsibility - nor is it within their capabilities. The difference from Napster? Napster decided to attempt to filter their network, and essentially took responsibility - then failed to succeed. Admittedly Kazaa is being actively hostile to the idea of policing their network - but it's not their job. It's the job of the government - and probably some as-yet-uncreated federal agency. (I wouldn't be happy about such an agency, but I think it's inevitable.)
Conceeded. Deliberately avoiding a resolution to the problem is exactly in keeping with a civil suit. But only a civil suit - this line couldn't go to a criminal case (perhaps that is why the lawyers are making it a civil case?). AND the court has to have the jurisdiction over BOTH parties to institute a resolution to the problem. My opinion is that I doubt the ruling will stand on appeal, but even if it does, the rest of the posters in this thread are exactly correct - the California judge can't do a thing to the company. It's not like there are assets to freeze, a company charter from the state to revoke, or any such matters - the judge's abilities will be restricted to banning future business dealings and throwing around contempt warrents, and will be completely ineffective at actually stopping abuses.
I may be rare among the Slashdot crowd for agreeing (for the most part) with copyright law (my qualms are about overpricing only - which means I actually DO buy much of the stuff I've downloaded in the past. Which amounted to about one movie and a dozen songs). But I really hate how the MPAA/RIAA goes for a publicity-stunt, slap-on-the-wrist lawsuit instead of doing something constructive.
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
At the bottom of my sig, you'll see the mag I donate my webmastering skills too. We're a local zine for the silicon valley music scene.
.5 owner of the zine. When we went to the different bay area wherehouse music stores today, we found out some alarming news.
Before ppl ask "SV has a music scene?" remember, bands like green day come out of here. Our music scene is totally different than that of L.A.'s a.k.a. Hollywood. I can't describe it, because I see everything as data, but I can tell you what the musicians are fearing.
So yesterday, i'm riding around delivering the latest issue of Zero with one of our big bosses. Boss delivering zines you ask? It's hard times, everyone is pulling double effort.
Anyways, this cat is a musician, and
All Wherehouse music stores around our area are shutting down... We have noticed a trend too, less people in other music stores.
So who's to blame? Napster? The economy? Pirates?
Well, my partner started asking questions about the technology. He's what I would call a reforming luddite (yeah strong words but he'd agree with me) "Isn't there some way they could make a CD so it's uncopyable?" he asked. I explained to him as long as there was some sort of digital, to a speaker coil coversion, the RIAA will never be able to stamp out piracy.
"Well who the fuck would want to download a shitty copy of a song then!" he chirped.
"The same fucks that would bring a camera into AOTC's, compress it to mpeg and share it over kazaa" I replied.
Stumped, he went back to his first question. After repeating that there had to be some way of doing it 3 times I answered..
"Yeah, if they could convince everyone to replace their ears with DRM enabled digital implants, then yeah the RIAA has a chance"
Well, he got the point after that. So he moved onto "How do you stamp out P2P?"
I put it into another analogy for him. Napster with it's central peer topology is much like a football team with 1 quarterback. You sack the quarterback.. You sack the network.
"So the RIAA can just sack kazaa right?"
"No, Kazaa would be the equivelent of every player on the team being both QB and reciever"
See, our zine stays alive by record lables having the money to buy adspace from us. If the record lables are losing money from P2P it affects us because they've yet to evolve to the net.
"What should they do?"
Personally, I think the record lables should ditch CD production altogether now. They should make songs freely downloadable. Fuck it, cut their losses.
But rather than look at it like a loss, the record industry should take a Las Vegas approach to it. Just use the music as a "comp" to milk money out of people in other ways.
For instance, that $50 dollar green day ticket, fuck it, if people won't buy the albums anymore, double it. I think people wouldn't care if they had to pay more for live performances. I'm biased because I do get in for free, and don't have any money to pay for tickets anyways. I'm 30 years old in feburary and am perfectly content to staying at home.
The market is really for 14-25 year olds. Those are the people with expendable cash. They live at home, don't have a mortgage, and can afford $100 bucks to see a live performance. With the rate of inflation over the last 10 years, $100 doesn't really seem like a lot to me to see a big headliner band if I had no financial obligations.
I'm the oldest of 6, my youngest siblings are more at home in the computer enviroment than I ever was at their age. The RIAA doesn't realize this yet, but their biggest age group has a huge understanding of internet distribution, and they will never be able to beat it. That's just an unfortunate fact about it.
So to recap the RIAA should...
Cut back CD production,
Raise the price of live performances
Focus on promotion more than CD distribution.
The British could shut down sealand in an afternoon if they so desired and got tired of it. If not by British special forces landing helicopters on the pad there and dismantling the dish on top then by cutting the pipe where it _must_ come ashore on the island.
Most likely both. Don't think that they wouldn't do it either if Sealand ever became a nuisance.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"