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Kazaa Offices Raided
rj writes "ZDNet Australia is reporting the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) this morning raided the offices of Kazaa owners, Sharman Networks, along with P2P company Brilliant Digital Entertainment, and the homes of key executives. Background on prosecution of copyright music in Australia over P2P is also available."
Third of Nine
Well, um, yes.
-John
You forgot:
- BitTorrent
- Shareaza (gnutella2)
- eDonkey2000
- FTP - with IPs traded amongst friends/etc. (a crude P2P, in a sense)
- as well as a slew of others I'm not aware of, I'm sure.
All this knowledge simply from being online for a couple years. Imagine what a hardcore file trader is aware of.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Full details can be found here.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't the Kazaa network designed so that it doesn't rely on a central server? In that case, even if the company disappears, the network should still be around as long as people are wanting to use it to trade music.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
The ARIA press release is available here if anyone wants evidence that FUD isn't confined to Microsoft and SCO.
So in essence the MIPI is an organisation set up by the music industry to investigate alleged music piracy. I would have thought that carrying out the raid would have been the responsibility of the police or other government agency, rather than an industry association, but apparently jackboots are more freely available here than I thought (Godwin's Law notwithstanding).
In Anton Piller K.G. v. Manufacturing Processes Ltd., [1976] 1 All E.R. 779 at 782 Lord Denning stated:
"Let me say at once that no court in this land has any power to issue a search warrant to enter a man's house so as to see if there are papers or documents there which are of an incriminating nature, whether libels or infringements of copyright or anything else of the kind. No constable or bailiff can knock at the door and demand entry so as to inspect papers or documents. The householder can shut the door in his face and say, 'Get out.' That was established in the leading case of Entick v. Carrington (1765), 19 State Tr. 1029. None of us would wish to whittle down that principle in the slightest. But the order sought in this case is not a search warrant. It does not authorize the plaintiff's solicitors or anyone else to enter the defendants' premises against their will. Id does not authorize the breading down of any doors, nor the slipping in by a back door, nor getting in by an open door or window. It only authorizes entry and inspection by the permission of the defendants. The plaintiff's must get the defendants' permission. But it does do this: it brings pressure on the defendants to give permission. It does more. It actually orders them to give permission - with, I suppose, the result that if they do not give permission they are guilty of contempt of court."
As you can see, you can if you so chose deny access, but you had better have a pretty good reason.
I wish I could think of a witty Sig. Sigh!
Australian law allows a warrant to be issued providing that a Justice of the Peace has been convinced that there is reasonable grounds for suspecting that there is evidence of a crime on the premises.
I don't know how this compares with the US justice system and whether this was only granted by the patriot act (I doubt it). This has been the case for many years.
This is an invetigation of kazaa and it is reasonable that police be able to investigate suspected crimes wherever the evidence may be, otherwise criminals could conceal evidence in their homes and be totally immune to investigation.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
This morning I was standing waiting for my bus outside the building that houses the main Kazaa/Sharman/LEF-interactive office and a couple of guys with cameras and microphones went rushing in. :)
/james
I followed them a bit of the way into the building but couldn't see anything.
Internationally news-worthy stuff doesn't normally happen near my house
Well,
This has happened before in the USA and other countries, too. For example Cult of Scientology used to be famous for its raids to the critics' homes (Zenon's case,other cases
The situation is also getting worse in Europe, because the upcoming IPR enforcement directive will greatly strenghen Anton Pillar orders in all member states (unless we will manage to mount enough public pressure to stop the process, which is unlikely but not totally impossible - contact your MEPS today!)
V.
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't the Kazaa network designed so that it doesn't rely on a central server? In that case, even if the company disappears, the network should still be around as long as people are wanting to use it to trade music.
You are correct, but your conclusion is not (and it's not your fault, either -- it's good ol' politics and business obscuring good clean engineering).
Kazaa operates in a fairly decentralized manner. At one point, the FastTrack network (what Kazaa uses internally) was open. However, the protocol was reverse engineered (by the GiFT project members and others), and third party clients started popping up. The FastTrack folks sold licenses to use their network -- plus, the use of an open protocol was detrimental to the client vendors, like Kazaa, as it meant that users could choose a (nicer) spyware-free client. The protocol was modified to contain an authentication system that *is* centralized. If Kazaa (the company) won't authorize you, you can't use the network.
The addition of the authentication system was a huge step back from an engineering standpoint, but a huge jump forward from a business one -- it make Kazaa very lucrative.
May we never see th
You are wrong. Unless the company explicitly releases its copyright on the content and puts it in the public domain, the copyright stands even if the company doesn't (that's one of the big beefs with people that don't like current copyright laws - even after ridiculous amounts of time, liquidations, bankruptcy, death, etc. - it's STILL nigh impossible to have a copyright released). In Loki's case, I'm pretty sure they also transferred their copyrights back to the original game owners, but I could be wrong. At any rate, the mere fact that Loki is gone doesn't give you the right to download a copy of the title you didn't make yourself. That's the other catch: downloading a coyp from a pal is illegal - it has to be a copy YOU MADE from your OWN original.
And this is why I have exactly NO respect for most copyright laws and don't care one bit about the people "stealing" some music, movies, and software (but, hey - let's face it.. if someone's downloading a warez version of HL2 ten minutes after it hits store shelves... well, they're just a dirty theif).
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
That's not correct. The reason you see so many of the same pictures attributed to different sites is because the sites are just the distributors. They buy licenses to the different sets from actual pornographers and then label them with their own brand.
Pirates of the Net
p2p networks have lots of other uses besides music and movie sharing. p2p networks good for sharing any very popular files. A good example where p2p networks might work very well for sharing debian packages.
IMHO some of the reasons why sharing movies online is so popular are
1) movies are released 6 months after they are in the US. So if I want to see a recent movie I must get it "illegally"!!
2) movies are simply too expensive to see in the movie theaters. Last year I saw 2 movies. I simply can not afford the "price" of movies, sorry I am not rich!!
3) renting movies alwasy struck me as dumb idea. I find watching a movie twice to be a rather unpleasent experience.
a) After I watching the movie once, it is worthless.
b) The movies I rent always have scratches.
So IMHO I should be able to buy a movie for around half the price of a movie ticket, because I don't have a big screen at home. And a movie that'a an old release should cost half as much again.
I currently buy most of the movies I watch for a little under $2.00 US per CD. And at that price p2p sharing is not worth the bother.
It is worth noting that you cannot blame the Aussies for the law, it is something they took from the UK and have retained, though both countries could drop it.
It is very, very rare -its a kind of pre-emptive seizure which can only be justified by the 'recipients will destroy the evidence' claim.
Note also that in the UK there are essentially no limits on what the state security organisations can do in the country. Unlike the US, where the CIA and NSA are allowed to break US and local laws abroad. I guess only the FBI can break laws on the US mainland?
Whatever, the key point is that one democratic countries legal system cannot and should not act as a replica for another. Britain has silly laws (anton pillar, Prevention of Terrorism (emergency powers) act 1974 + successors, RIP (the encryption one), and politicians (esp that david blunkett) are always trying to copy the worst bits of other countries. And that is where we all need to keep an eye on all 'harmonisation' programs, be they copyright, privacy, terrorism: they always go to the most repressive, not the least.
A lot of porn companies apparently put samples on the file sharing networks as ads. Some apparently even include popups of their sites embedded in wmv's.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
why the big quote from the U.S. Constitution? . . . Can't you quote someting Australian? :-)
... (xviii.) Copyrights, patents of inventions and designs, and trade marks." This is a great deal simpler than the version found in the U.S. Constitution: "Article I. Section 8. The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". The actual Australian Copyright Law of 1968 makes for pretty dense reading.
.
No, sorry. Can't quote anything Australian on the issue of freedom of speech or the press. Australia has no constitutional clause or bill of rights on this topic. These issues seem to be decided by Australia's High Court, which since 1992 has said that there is an implied right in the Australian constitution to freedom of expression of public political topics, but not on much else.
What the Australian constitution does say is, "Chapter I. Sec. 51.The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
IANA Australian (in fact, IAA American), but it seems that Australia lacks a rallying cry to match that part of the U.S. constitution that the *IAA keeps trying to monopolize for themselves: Amendment I. Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . .
None of this should be taken as a disparagement of Australia, of course. For instance, the U.S. copyright laws are at least as dense and a good deal more restrictive besides. It just seems that prohibiting the ownership and use of presses (e.g. CD burners) in the U.S. would involve slightly more hypocrisy than doing so in Australia. It is an equally bad idea in both places.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)