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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.)"
before the California media moguls will be shipped to Iran to face beheadings for making movies and music that does not conform to the laws of Islam?
Just don't respond to the lawsuit. Ignore it. They'll lose by default, of course, but it's a civil suit. The court awards RIAA millions of dollars in damages.
But then who enforces that decision?
Feh, I'm soon to be a lawyer, but in this case, Kazaa shouldn't subject itself to the costs of defending itself in this sort of suit if they don't have the resources to make it a good fight. This is terrible legal advice, but it's good practical advice. If RIAA can't enforce a verdict, any victory they have will merely be symbolic. And it won't matter a hill of beans as far as precedent is concerned because a) there's plenty of precedent that what Kazaa is doing is wrong and b) the precedent would only have true practical effect for a Kazaa-like company based in the United States.
Now, if this were a criminal case, it would be a completely different matter, because then there would be a rigorous enforcement system in place.
But Kazaa could reasonably just ignore this suit, take the loss, and stick up their collective middle finger at it.
The Good: I downloaded well over 2000 mp3's and 10 movies with KazaaLite
The Bad: Kazaa is going down.
The Ugly: Kazaa is spyware.
All things taken into account, hopefully the next p2p network won't have the spyware built in.
ANYWAY...I thought Kazaa was a self-supporting network, i.e. people act as super-nodes who hold a list of files for others to search, and there's no centralized server. What control does Sharman have over whether or not the Kazaa network is still around, sure, they can stop the downloads of the client, but if the client can also act as a server...meh, it's unstoppable!
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
This decision by your judges has now made it possible for anyone in your country that does not like my instructions (which should be protected as Free Speech, something which your country is supposedly so proud of) to sue me. Not that I'd be responding or something but it's just stupid. I urge you all to actively do something about this aggresive act of world-domination which should even be illegal under in your constitution. You guys aren't making any friends this way.
0x or or snor perron?!
Actually, this presents a fascinating question. Why the hell doesn't the RIAA "report" Kazaa to the California Attorney General with evidence of criminal wrongdoing? Why all this fiddling around in civil courts when the practical effects of a civil verdict (an injunction that will likely be ignored or avoided, a money damages award that would probably go unpaid) are so much less than criminal sanctions?
I can't decide what the RIAA and MPAA are up to. Are they just looking for exposure? Are they trying to generate some cash? Are they trying to establish civil precedents that will allow them to sue OTHER CONTENT PROVIDERS that have nothing to do with MP3 distribution and which could provide them with a much larger payoff? Are they trying to establish a chain of civil verdicts that will allow them to go to Congresscritters and "encourage" them to pass laws specifically targetting p2p?
Or are they just stupid? (In the un-troll sense. I literally mean, do they honestly think they're going to win anything substantive?)
If they wanted to get rid of Kazaa, they'd sic the criminal prosecutors on them... or are RIAA and MPAA afraid that what Kazaa is doing isn't wrong enough to be considered "criminal"?
Uhm, uhm. Americans have proven before they can act very strange and explicit of it comes down to things they believe are a threat to their country or society. Like:
' Ah, you don't want to help us smoke the criminals out of their holes? '
' Fine, we have reasons to believe you hide terrorists en produces nuclear weapons! '
and:
' No sir, you can't do that, I'm an American citizen. ' in foreign countries
OK, I know not all Americans are narrow minded chauvinistic egoists.
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson said a lawsuit against Sharman Networks (the makers of Kazaa) could proceed.
(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.)"
Wow... Why isn't this a surprise. The Americans decide that people outside their own country are bound by their laws.
If the RIAA wants to take on Kazaa, take them on in Australia. Oh wait, no that wouldn't work, because the Australian justice system wouldn't waste their time on this.
Someone need to go let the states know that they don't own the world, yet, and until they do, companies from other countries do not lie under their jurisdiction.
Your disgust is founded in ignorance.
Anyone in a common law system (USA, Australia, UK, etc.) can sue anyone else. There are only two considerations: a) whether it can be heard in a particular court and b) whether there is anything practical to be gained by it.
Question B is not so much a question of law as a question of strategy. A court which would issue a decision can enforce its will only so far as the person losing is present within their jurisdiction (either they live there, or have assets there). People have sued the government of Iran in US federal court, and have won, and have collected their judgments out of funds belonging to Iran which are present in US banks. But if you were to sue North Korea and win (probably because nobody showed up to represent North Korea), there'd be little you could do to collect your judgment, because there wouldn't be any assets of North Korea within the jurisdiction of the court.
So, setting aside question A for a moment, the RIAA can sue Kazaa in federal court in California. The question is whether they have anything to gain by winning. As a previous poster pointed out, Kazaa could just ignore the whole thing and take a loss, if they don't have anything *in* the US that a judgment could seize. (The RIAA probably wants an injunction of some kind, but even still it's questionable how useful it would be for the US to order Kazaa not to do business here anymore.)
Question A has a lot more to do with the law, and jurisdictional questions are quite complicated. The basic idea is that you can only bring suit against someone in a place if that someone has had something substantial to do with the place. (Lives there, does business there, has assets located there, committed an act there, etc.)
The decision referred to in the headline is that the judge decided that the fact that many people had downloaded Kazaa software in California was a sufficient contact with California that Kazaa could be sued there. He reached this decision after examining the law of California. If Kazaa appeals, the court of appeals will either confirm that this is the law, or will overturn the judge and not permit him to hear the case.
In light of the above, your rant is more than a little silly. Every nation is willing to submit every person to their own laws - the only question is whether it will do the plaintiff any good, and whether the courts of that nation will let such a lawsuit go forwards. The US is no different from anyone else in this respect. "Companies from other countries" do lie under US jurisdiction, insofar as they have ever had anything to do with the United States.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.