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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?
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.
Two years from now we will read: In other news US Appealate Court has rescinded the decision of RIAA v. Kazaa stating that the trial court had no jursidiction to hear the case.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 far as a (ad free) replacement for Kazaa goes, though, check out WinMX.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.