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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.)"
Swell, I guess I better shut off my web server.
--
There is no hatred more pure and true than that expressed by children.
If kazaa network went down, kazaa lite would be as useless as the gnutella network.
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.
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?
Two years from now we will read: In other news US Appealate Court has rescinded the decision of RIAA v. Kazaa stating that the trial court had no jursidiction to hear the case.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
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.
As far as a (ad free) replacement for Kazaa goes, though, check out WinMX.
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 is hardly a surprise, and not simply limited to 1) the US or 2) Internet issues. If any business has significant contacts with a state, that business may be sued in that state. Of course, it might be difficult to get at the assets of that business located in another country, but that's a different issue.
Italy and Australia have both issued recent high profile opinions that allow US businesses on the Internet to be sued in their respective countries. This is hardly a new thing.
Unless of course you're a slashdotter who doesn't know a damn thing about the law.
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
You shut down one, its replaced by more.
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?!
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.
a EULA is a contract, not a law. Illegal terms cannot be rendered legal merely by contract.
EULA's are written *generically* to attempt to claim every term of contract that *might* be legal anywere.
Haven't you ever seen the term on generic legal documents "Void where prohibited"?
Just because it's in the EULA doesn't inherently mean it binds you, although the writers would like to *believe* that it does. Since most people do, it works.
Don't be afraid to dissent or even disregard terms of your EULA where you have the legal right to do so.
KFG
Kazza and all the P2P places should move to Sealand http://www.sealandgov.com/
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
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
It's this little thing called Gnutella, works like a charm
Banaaaana!
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.
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.
Actually, more like:
Judge issues injuction against Kazaa
Injunction issued against Kazaa
Judge declares Kazaa violated the law
Kazaa guilty
Kazaa out of business
Kazaa filing for bankruptcy
Company X buying Kazaa's assests
Company X steps forward, buys Kazaa's assets
Ask Slashdot: Whatever happened to Company X?
Ask Slashdot: Where did Company X go?
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.