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Kazaa Sues Record Labels
dannyp writes "CNN is reporting that Kazaa is suing the record companies, claiming that they used an illegal client to log in to the P2P network - an interesting twist." The lawsuit also claims "...efforts to combat piracy on Kazaa violated terms for using the network."
... that Kazaa started fighting back. I knew those tactics that the RIAA was using (clients that messed up the network, clients that introducted viruses, etc) were on the border of legality - I had almost forgotten that Kazaa (unlike gnutella) is a privately owned network... or protocol... or something. Kudos to Kazaa... now if they only got rid of their spyware...
The lawsuit also claims "...efforts to combat piracy on Kazaa violated terms for using the network."
This is kinda like claiming improper search and seizure for drug cases. I wonder if there is precedent in electronic law.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
...AOL sued *you* for accessing their network with Gaim.
i wonder if previous settlements can be overturned if it's proven that RIAA used illegal means to track offenders. after all, incriminating evidence is regularly thrown out of the criminal courts if it was obtained by unlawful search and seizure, through illegal wire taps, botched confessions, etc.
I don't think it's even about winning, necessarily.
When one side goes around suing, completely unopposed, there's a mindset in the public that their claims might be valid. After all, nobody's opposing them. People curling up into a ball and taking it doesn't help.
However, when two camps sue each other, it's more often seen as squabbling, and the kind of thing that tends to end rather unceremonially.
The idea, I would think, is to tarnish the public view of the RIAA's efforts and perhaps get people to see that the RIAA is NOT operating on fair and solid ground here. Hopefully consumers won't just continue to take it up the ass like 12-year-old girls (oooops...)
yeah.. well.. i kinda thought that the riaa would have had the sense to not use pirated/cracked/illeagal bytes to hunt for pirated/cracked/illeagal bytes on the internet. it's like bsa using software illeagally from some software company they busted last week.
heck, if they can do it surely it is okay for me(to gain access to pirated material)...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...Service if you are a copyright holder of infringing works traded with our Product or Service, if you are a law enforcement officer active in a jurisdiction which recognizes this copyright, or if your use of our Product or Service will otherwise lead to charges of infringement against any of our Users.
If you do not agree to these terms then you must immediately terminate use of our Service and must destroy all copies of our Product or face prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.
Do you agree to these terms? Yes[ ] No [ ]
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
Why would they debate these issues? The population that cares is so small that even if 100% of it voted by it alone, it wouldn't be a fraction of a percent worth considering. Democracy is ruled by the majority - if you're in the minority (in this case people who understand or care about computers), you don't matter. If 51% of a the US (or substantially less, if there are at least 3 major candidates for political offices) wants to enslave the other 49%, they can. That's what's wrong with democracy on this scale - you have ~290 million people in the country, and 144 million wouldn't matter if they all voted (assuming the majority all voted as well). If there were 5 major parties (or just 5 real candidates) for every office, you could easily have a quarter of the population subjugate the rest, so long as the population was consistant in its ideological breakdown.
Democracy only works in small units with free movement between - small areas make rules, and if you don't like them you go somewhere more in line with your views.
The US is big and bloated - corporations control because there are political parties, which exist because so many offices and positions have to work together to get anything done. Like it or not, democracy is doomed to fail when it gets too large (not that other systems are better - anything on such a scale will die the same). The more people you please, the more you anger- evidence of this has been piling up as far back as you can look in human history.
If you want a country where computers are the top priority, the entire poluation has to be content with every larger issue, or else their crusade to fix computers will result in the minority overthrowing them on major issues.
GL
OK, suppose this: The RIAA does a search and comes up that JoeBob1900 has some particular song on his computer, obtains a subpoena, and sends it along the legal pipeline. Supposing this person challenges this subpoena and eventually winds up in court, does the RIAA have any substantial evidence to support that he actually *does* have that song? It sounds to me like if they don't physically have a computer to show to the court, they've got nothing on him. For all they know, he could have simply had a file by whatever name they were looking for. Unless they've got an MD5SUM or something based on the actual contents of what they're looking for, do they really have much of a case? Just my .02
I think alot more people get interested when they start reporting about a 12 yr old in public housing being sued.
I was standing outside my local Wal-Mart talking with some friends about this whole ordeal and a crowd of strangers started joining in talking about their fears and how they were offended by being threatened with these lawsuits because of how much music they purchased legally.
As for your knock on democracy, actually 51% of the country could vote for a candidate and still lose. My god man, where were you last election? That's the whole point of the electoral college, to allow more people to matter. That and to keep California from electing the President.
EULA's, although not always, are based on laws. They can defend most of what is in a EULA by referencing it to a law. Why else was the DMCA created? Without the DMCA, there probably was little a company could do to prevent reverse engineering. Thus, the DMCA (very bad move) was created.
" The EULA is the weaker law."
You obviously don't know what your talking about. A EULA is not a law. It is an agreement between the user and provider and is protected (not always) by law.
"If you wrote a virus that destroyed computers you couldn't sue someone under the DMCA for reverse engineering it to see what it does in order to track down who wrote it and to keep it off of systems."
Well, since one would be letting his or her program run out in the wild and forcing (basically) it onto someone without any consent or attached notices, then the copyright/DMCA laws don't apply.
"And it's no secret that illegal MP3's and everything else are being traded on P2P."
State the obvious why? Illegal? An mp3 can not be illegal. It is the act of distributing the copyrighted work that is illegal. For a person that is hard on keeping strong copyright laws, you sure need to learn what laws are and their purpose. You also need to learn about the entire subject period.
"A EULA will never hold up in a case where it's being used to hide a crime."
I'm glad your trying to do your part for society, but until you learn about what your talking about, your doing little to actually help. Technicalities aside, there is more important reasons for everything. A law is not moral, good for the economy, or good for society, just because it is a law. When a law that appears good can also be used to do something one would consider evil, then it isn't a good law is it?
Question everything.
Looks interesting. When the RIAA used the program, they agreed to some things. Some of these are privacy based: not to "Monitor traffic or make search requests in order to accumulate information about individual users," or " Collect or store personal data about other users."
Plus, if one person downloaded once and installed it on multiple computers in order to do their big search, he's breaking the license just as I would be if I bought a copy of Windows and installed it on all 50 computers in a company: "This Licence does not permit you to install the Software on more than one computer at a time"
And the one that wraps it up: "It is you responsibility to comply with the terms of this Licence...Your rights under this Licence will terminate immediately and without prior notice if : you violate any term of this License..."
So they did one of the things in the first two paragraphs, they violate the terms of the license and are no longer legal to run Kazaa -- they might as well be caught with a pirate copy of Windows. And KazaaLite, if they were using it, says absolutely no commercial use allowed.