Slashdot Mirror
Kazaa Fights Back
Cracula writes "CNET is reporting that tonight Kazaa filed a lawsuit against the major record labels and Hollywood studios, asserting that they are attempting to stifle a legitimate and potentially profit-cutting business model. Sharman Networks (owner of Kazaa) says that their model is fundmentally different than Napster because their major goal is to make money off their companion program Altnet that delivers authorized, paid content. While this may sound like a shot in the dark, last year a federal judge actually ruled that the record labels' current efforts to provide online access to their music may run afoul of anti-trust laws. Kazaa may actually have a hope."
I always thought sabotaging a company's network was illegal. But what, a week ago, there was an artical on /. about a company devoted only to doing that. I'm glad Kazaa is standing up for itself, even though I hate them for their spyware.
Where's Kazaa getting all this money to throw around lawsuits? And dont tell me that Ad's fully support clusters of multi-homed high speed machines...
If Kazaa wins, the record industry will probably just get more primed for industry-standard DRM.
If the record industry wins, another 5 Kazaa's will pop up.
It seems to me that this argument basically admits what the music industry is getting at: that Kazaa enables and almost condones the illegal music trade. I'm speaking straightly from a legal perspective. I know better than to try to get into the philosophical debate. :)
But just take a look at the issue. Let's say an auto parts store opens its doors. One department is legit. It buys new parts and sells them to customers. The second department is a kind of swap meet where enthusiasts may come and trade their wares. Some of the enthusiasts in this second department trade stolen car parts.
So some organization sues the auto parts store. Maybe they're an organization of car owners that are sick of their bumpers and headlights getting stolen by car punks. They bring a case to the courts and say, "We're sick of this auto store making an environment conducive to stealing."
Kazaa, and the auto parts store, reply that their major goal is to make money off their legitimate department. They reply that their business model is being impaired by such an atrocious lawsuit.
Is this fair? I'm not sure. I'm not a lawyer. Something seems fishy about it to me though...
Look, I'll be honest. I, like most other people here, have downloaded pirated music from the internet. Its seductively easy, and if you have a nice broadband connection, really quick. The sound quality on the 128k MP3 format may not be "audiophile" quality but for those of us using regular computer speakers, and not $6000 Bose systems, its just fine. Just like with gay sex and open-source software, its easy to think that just because its fun and enjoyable, pirating music is okay, and should be permitted. But thats the wrong answer. Despite all the half-baked rationalizations cooked up by piracy advocates, no one can really refute the truth spoken by the recording industry: Sooner or later, the widespread distribution of near-perfect digital copies will destroy the market for commercial recordings, and make the production of the very product consumers seem so eager to pirate impossible.
Just take a look at the music you download now. Sure, you may occasionally and self-righteously download the occasional legitimate "teaser" track released legally, or some free songs from no-talent "independent" artists who are giving away their wares because no one in their right mind would pay for them. But you know that almost all of what you download was recorded, produced, distributed, and marketed by the very recording companies you claim to despise, and would never have been committed to disc were there not the possibility of profiting from exclusive distribution rights to their product. Every time you download their songs illegally, you are decreasing the probability that such things will be available in the future.
Anybody who cares about the system of intellectual property which has made the american entertainment and information technology industries so dynamic, and enjoys their fine products, from Windows XP to the "Lord of the Rings" movies to your new cell phone with built-in games and internet access, should understand the necessity of crushing Kazaa once and for all. We know that what they are doing is reprehensible, and moreover, as the Napster case and every successive suit against online piracy services has shown, illegal.
But Kazaa is worse than that. They have deliberately created an organizational structure, similar to the front organizations used by organized crime, to continue to operate and profit from their misdeeds in spite of legal sanction from every civilized country in which they have been sued. And like any crime ring, they have gone to great length to extract as much money from their "customers" as possible, using the enticing lure of pirated music to force paid advertising and virus-like spyware on the computers of their users. But in this modern era of international trade agreements such as the WTO, no one is beyond the reach of the law, and I believe that Kazaa can be crushed. They can be submerged beneath a tidal wave of litigation, until one day no internet provider will dare risk allowing them access. Any country which offers them safe haven should be considered a rogue nation and isolated internationally, and considered a sponsor of terrorism. If the world can beat Kazaa, it will send a strong message that theft is wrong, and allow the content producers to lead the way into the beginning of the true information age.
Again: this is makes no sense whatsoever. Anyone who owns a copyright is entitled under copyright law to legally defend that copyright, music (monopoly) / industry included...especially if the distributor doesn't legally have permission (from the copyright owner) to distribute the music...permission would include ownership of the distributed media or rights granted by the owner to distribute the copyrighted material. Neither case exists for Kazaa.
This does make sense in fact. You are not allowed to use intellectual property rights to protect a monopoly (other than the monopoly expressly granted by the ip-right obviously). So for example, IBM was not allowed to use its BIOS copyrights to defend a monoply on PC hardware. Courts can infact void intellectual property rights which are misused in this way.
It sounds like Kazaa is arguing that copyright owners are in fact a monopoly (presumably Kazaa is arguing that the Music industry is trying to maintain a monopoly in the online retail market), and that they are using their ip to defend this monopoly (that is they are suing anyone who tries to compete in the online retail market for copyright infringement), which would in fact be illegal.
An interesting feature of this strategy is that it may force any copyright infringement cases to be put on hold until after the anti-trust case is resolved - which may well take 10 years or more (the IBM case it was not reolved until long after it had ceased to matter).
On one side, we have the Recording Industry Association of America. On the other side, we have Sharman Networks. Lopsided match, to say the least.
Maybe it's the American in me... but I hope the underdog wins.
Somehow, I feel that the future of computing as we know it is going to be decided in large part due to the outcome of this matchup and I for one am tired of waiting for the outcome. I'm tired of the constant rehashing of the legality of file sharing. I'm tired of the false numbers and statistics spun as proof that P2P is the sole culprit for declining music revenue.
Most of all... I'm tired of the threats of a DRM-enabled world.
I'm a music fanatic. I love all kinds of music. I used to buy music, but when Napster was taken away from me, I stopped.
When I pay to see concerts now, at least I take cautious comfort in the idea that the artists see a larger percentage of my twenty dollars. I hope, anyway.