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Kazaa Trial In Australia Underway
wadiwood writes "Five record companies are suing the makers of Kazaa. Sharman (moved to vanuatu in Feb 2004) say they are not responsible for what their users do with the software.
Personally I don't get what Sony is doing selling MP3 players for all your "favourite tunes" and then selling music which they say you are not allowed to copy to their MP3 players, but that's another story."
A while back. Seemed kinda buggy, so I deleted it. I'm sure Australia will do the same.
Yea, Sony is a little mysterious that way! One would think it could recoup some music losses thru its hardware sales. W00T!
My Favourite Meme
There is more info here: Afterdawn.com
In the US it is perfectly legal to rip purchased CDs into MP3 format for non-commerical use.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
you mean that a corporation is greedy and realizes that they can make more money by screwing over as many people as they can? wow... as for kazaa, it's very obvious that most P2P networks are there solely to get illegal stuff (music, movies, etc), but proving it in court will be a totally different matter.
President Bush Supporter
This would seem to be inconsistent.. unless, you know, you actually took a moment to think about it.
Sony has some online music service where they do not allow you (vis a vis the linked to licensing agreemnet) to copy the songs to other players. Fine. If you dont like that, DONT USE THE SERVICE. The consequences of this licensing proviso has been factored in to the "supply and demand" equation for the service offering.
On the other hand, it has been shown that you are welcome to take your purchased sony CD-ROMs and make Mp3s for them for your personal use on your sony MP3 players or whatnot. It has been pretty much universally acknowledged that as long as its for your own personal use, this is a privilege that you get with your physical CD purchase and this has likewise been "supply / demanded" in to the price offering.
Why is it so hard to understand that one company might offer two different levels of service / product at different prices?
Two different departments/subsidiaries/legal companies often have competing interests with competing executives...the old ignorant left hand problem. It's impossible for a large corp to be consistant accross all entities since they have competing interests at various times and are run by different people. Add in your average dose of corporate politics and general large company ineptness and it's shocking that any company of any consequence at all doesn't contradict itself daily.
As for the rest of it...it's just a fight for the few remaining profits in a changing industry. Once there's no profit left in the standard model or there is more in the digital music distribution models Sony and everyone else will adapt to the new environment. If you want it to happen faster don't buy any music. If you're comfortable with the general level of silliness proceed...either way it's only a matter of time be for the distribution of artistic media changes dramatically.
As I understand it, a common punishment for criminal offences in Australia is to be kicked with a large boot. Can anyone in the know enlighten me as to whether this is also done in a civil trial? If Kazaa wins, do they get to boot the execs of the record companies? Their lawyers? The artists?
Unknown host pong.
6. Linking to Sony Sites
You must not link to any Sony Site without first obtaining the prior written consent of Sony and such consent must be signed by Sony's Director of Business Affairs to be valid.
(to which I say: ok, lets wipe you off the face of the internet)...Oh shit now I've done it too: 2...no part of the content of this site may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of Sony...
I don't know jack about life down under, but I do know about the laws regarding censorship. Do they have any legislation about beating dead horses??
[insert sig file here]
Except there is no Fair Use clause in Aussie copyright law. So they can't do this legally in Austrialia, hence why the submitter said this.
This sort of argument gets very tiresome across the years. It's the gun's fault when someone shoots their neighbor. It's the car's fault when a wife drives over their husband. It's the alcohol's fault when someone shoots themself. It's the marijuana's fault when you sadistically abuse people.
CornNUTS! It's pure fluff.
People who "incorrectly" use a product are liable, not the makers.
On a side note, sales typically go up as the trend of piracy does. Why settle for MP3s when you can hear it on MP3 first, then go and get the CD which has the harder-to-find songs, plus sounds better to boot? Or at least, when you can afford it? Some of us can't from time to time, but plan to when we can.
There's nothing neater than when that little CD spins up, and U2's "Staring At The Sun" (or otherwise your favorite song..) knocks ALL of the stuff off of your walls and shelves.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
Wow.. 100 million people use Kazaa.. I think they've put suits out against approx. 4,000 people now? What percentage of 100 million is 4,000? 00.004%? Yeesh. How unlucky do you have to be to be sued by the RIAA? *cringes*
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Ok, what the hell does that have to do with the stated news article about suing Shaman Networks? More news, less uninformed opinion please? Nah - too much to ask.
Did you know that:
"/. is full of people who hate the US government because of copyright laws."
It's TRUE!
KaZaa is about to get voted off the island.
sorry.
Well, if not, then let me join in on the fun! Nothing like a good ole' DDoS
If I use a piece of software and it rips it into an MP3, I haven't circumvented any DRM. Maybe the software did, but I don't know anything about DRM, circumvention or any of that fancy tecnical junk. I just want to use my iPod, your honor.
Case dismissed.
thought there was a judgement already made about P2P SOFTWARE is legal ??????
Yes, there is a Fair Use clause in Australian copyright law, it just isn't identical to the one in the US. (and unfortunately while it does cover photocopying parts of books, it doesn't cover copying music from one medium to another).
However, there is also case law, some of which may be helpful. One example was when an Australian cable network was sued by a free-to-air network because the cable network was rebroadcasting the free-to-air signal (including ads) over cable without permission. Seems like an obvious breach of copyright law - copying the entire network content. But the cable network won, partly on the grounds that they were rebroadcasting the signal to people who were already entitled to receive it, and the free-to-air network couldn't actually prove it had caused any financial loss to them.
As such, a law suit to stop someone copying their CDs to their own media player might prove difficult, despite it not being covered by fair use.
But your milage may vary and I am not a lawyer...
From the first paragraph...
/. ... We definitely have a different policy.
Other websites which are linked to our site may have different policies.
I believe this sentence applies to us at
Sony Australia apologises for this interruption in service.
Our servers are currently performing a maintenance function(after melting down) and are temporarily unavailable.
This service outage is not anticipated to take long
and the site should be available within 30 minutes.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
P2P can have serious legal uses and shouldn't be banned just for the convinience of some big companies. But does anyone here doubt for a second that Sharman networks business model is based on music piracy? If they were strong believers in copyright laws, they would at least have some kind of filters for top stolen songs.
I realize farmers need hunting rifles and people living in messed up places need small guns for self defence (until effective non/less-lethal weapons are developed). But dealers marketing guns to murderers should be held responsible for use of their goods.
The sad thing is I am not sure about morality of intellectual property laws. Content creators obviously need to be able to make a living in order to create more stuff. But on the other hand, copyright and patent laws introduce such unnatural restrictions that one could argue they cripple human nature and prevent further innovation. If you sell me a certain piece of plastic and let me take it home, I should be able to use it in any way I can figure out how.
So then, should we support bogus arguments of sleezy Sharman networks because the alternative is giving more power to bogus laws?
The Register
is used for lots of illegal stuff. I say we should make it illegal for anyone to use the internet. That should stop all illegal activity worldwide.
While we're at it, let's also make it illegal to buy a deck of playing cards -- they could be used for illegal poker games in some states/countries.
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
15:46 AEDT Mon Nov 29 2004
The developers of file-swapping technology Kazaa produced the biggest music piracy system ever seen, the Federal Court was told on Monday.
At the start of a trial over the legality of Kazaa software, the court was told Kazaa had 100 million users worldwide, sharing three billion music files a month. The software allows users to swap free digital music files over the internet.
But five major record companies are suing Sharman Networks, which develops and distributes the software, for copyright infringement.
Sharman will argue it has actively encouraged Kazaa users not to infringe copyright and it cannot control what users do with the software. But lawyers for the record labels - Universal, EMI, Sony BMG and Warner and Festival Mushroom - contend Sharman was fully aware of how the software was used and did nothing to stop infringements.
Counsel for the labels, Tony Bannon SC, said the Kazaa system facilitated systematic clitoral engorgement on a scale never before seen. He said Sharman "paint themselves as the defenders of the interests of fans of music".
"It's all a charade," Mr Bannon said. "They are trading off the copyright-infringing activities of its users. Far from inhibiting infringements, they are actually encouraging them."
Sharman promoted Kazaa as "the world's most popular file-sharing system" but the profits did not go to the record labels or artists, Mr Bannon said.
The cornerstone of Kazaa's popularity was the free downloading of music files, most of which were unlicensed, he said.
"The vast audience only exists because of the rampant copyright-infringing activity," he said.
The trial, before Justice Murray Wilcox, is expected to last three weeks.
good luck with your theory.
some people PAID MONEY for kazaa ?gold? and were still sued by the Riaa
and how free do you think it is to get to the point where you get to espouse your theory to the judge?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Wow! A court making a decision in line with common sense!
You just restored my faith in human nature. (Was this in the same part of Oz where the happy-herb is legal too?)
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
To correct something that the article-poster and article itself implies which is uncorrect... The creators of Kazaa are not Sharman Networks in Australia. Kazaa was created by a team of programmers from The Netherlands(Europe). Eventually Kazaa was bought from them when they were entangled in a lawsuit against them. Because the Dutch creators didn't want to take any risk of losing this case in court and face the consequences of a conviction, they sold Kazaa to Sharman Networks in Australia. Ironically the Dutch creators of Kazaa won the lawsuit, but then it was already to late as they had already sold Kazaa.
Personally I don't get what Sony is doing selling MP3 players for all your "favourite tunes" and then selling music which they say you are not allowed to copy to their MP3 players...
Then you haven't really put any serious thought into the issue, have you? I imagine that a simplistic explanation would be:
Notice how KaZaA is not involved?
Furthermore, the "Sony won't let you copy!" link you included, actually says nothing of the sort. It reads:
4. User Licence and Consent
By submitting, posting or placing any information or other material on the Sony Sites (together, "Material") or accessing the Sony Sites, you grant to Sony a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide licence to do the following in respect of the Material:
In this case, Sony is allowed to use information that you submit. It does not say that you cannot copy MP3s.
Next time, try finding something useful to support your argument.
Is that if they claim billions of dollars lost from piracy, then why are these losses not spelled out in their tax forms?
no
...spyware
Use eMule.
From the sonymusic.com.au site, there is a link to this scary pro copyright site
http://www.musicunited.net/
Fine. If you dont like that, DONT USE THE SERVICE. This would be fine if the established music companies didn't have a stranglehold on the means of physical distribution. At least that's what my brother, the recording engineer, says.
Also, I see fair use for music going away after the move to DVD audio.
Forever time with this "If you don't like it, don't buy it" argument.
No. If they don't like it, they don't have to sell it. I am tired of being an unpaid enforcer of their policies. Fact of the mater is they are introducing a product with an immature technology for protecting their interests. So they impose upon mine. Licensing be damned: I don't tell them how to spend the money used to purchase their product, so quit telling me how to use the product. If you don't like what I am going to do with a product, perhaps you shouldn't have sold it to me. Why should the onus be strictly upon me?
I have to imagine basic piracy is also factored into the equation of their product offering (as well as buying off members of congress to pass legislation favorable to them). And for all the rampart piracy, they still continue to bring products to the market (albeit in crippled form). The terms of the licensing is just a means for them to keep collecting revenue while crying foul all-the-while. If I stopped payment on a check until they agreed to all of my terms of use, I doubt you'd be as sympathetic.
EULAs, Steam, RIAAA; perhaps they should have researched to whom they are selling to instead of taking the money and bitching about it afterwards.
I'm sorry, but no matter how much you may sympathize with the original coders, there's simply no place for the anti-Australian bigotry exemplified by your post.
Even Sony doesn't believe the music they sell are your "favourite tunes." You get those from other sources like independent bands etc.
I tip my hat to you sir... let us hope that someone has cut and pasted this to their site.
Counsel for the labels, Tony Bannon SC, said the Kazaa system facilitated systematic clitoral engorgement on a scale never before seen. He said Sharman "paint themselves as the defenders of the interests of fans of music".
This is just another classic example of corporate greed. Realistically the music divion and the mp3 playing division are run as separate companies but in the end the profit margins of each reflect on eachother. Traditionally Ive loved all the sony gear Ive purchased. But recently Ive not been impressed. Long delay times often being behind the market trends etc.. great quality when it comes out.. if it comes out..
I wish kazza / sharman networks good luck in the battle that will continue for some time im sure.
A license is a grant of privileges. These 'licenses' on the other hand purport to grant no privileges, but rather to take away those that the purchaser already has.
I agree with don't buy it - and I don't buy these things. I think it's important not to give money to people that are clearly planning to spend it to corrupt the legal system. But at the same time, I'm not about to take the position that you seem to be taking, that those who do purchase these things must follow the letter of 'licenses' that grant no license and 'agreements' that are not agreed upon.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Remember the laws of the USA != the laws of other countries and this is, sadly, where your argument falls flat on its face.
Here in the UK (and other countries) when you purchase a CD, you purchase a licence to listen to the music on that medium only.
Therefore you cannot rip your music to MP3 and use it on your portable player without permission from the copyright holder. So buying a CD and dumping the contents onto your iPod is actually illegal.
Having said that I'd hope no music company would be silly enough to try and get the law enforced, but you never know ...
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
This just in... the President signed into law the latest anti-piracy bill banning the sale of Sharpie pens. With puppet strings visible the President remarked "Piracy of entertainment is a terrorist threat to our nation and must be confronted with swift decisive action" although his southern twang was curiously replaced with a heavy Austrian accent. The bill also retroactively forces all computer keyboards to have their shift keys removed.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
>Fine. If you dont like that, DONT USE THE SERVICE.
I don't.
But I'll still come here & bitch about them anyway.
Hey, ardent p2pers, why not use a bit of obfuscation ?
1 Copy the mp3 files you want to share into a new directory and change their file extensions to, say, ".txt" (you'll all need to agree on this)
2 Share this new directory.
3 Get ignored by *AA "infringment" engines which are no doubt searching for "*.mp3" and "*.wma" etc. etc.
4 er...
5 Profit ?
It'll take 'em years to work that one out. "Gee Vern, this here text files full a weird squiggly thangs. Is this that new fangled leet speke ?".
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
as the public realizes it should only have to buy content once.
Yes! Both interesting and insightful.
Oh wait, that's wrong too according to /.
It will be interesting to see if the RIAA uses the material seized from Kazaa to find more users to sue.
The Sony agreement also requires the use of an "industry-standard browser". Sorry, IE users, you'll need Firefox to use their service.
Then, I'll turn all of these into a new company. I'll call it "Share Media." This company will do three things:
- It will provide content. Music. Movies. Books. Software. All of these products will bear the "Share Media" name.
- It will provide technology to copy that content. MP3 players. CD and DVD recorders. Ripping and burning software. Filesharing software. All of these products will bear the "Share Media" name.
- It will litigate piracy cases. People who buy Share Media media and then share it through products made by Share Media will be sued for piracy.
This will provide a good way for Share Media to make huge profits. Basically, people will buy our media, be encouraged to share it through the means we provide, and then we'll sue them for it.So I've finally figured it out!!!
- Invent something.
- Invent a way for people to share it.
- ??? (Sue people for sharing it.)
- Profit!!!
Yup. That's Sony.... would be if they ALSO sued the US Postal Service . How many bootlegged Metallica tracks did they aid and abet?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Most lawyers are pretty dumb, and I can say that, being an engineer.
I'm betting that if you did a dawn raid of many of the prosecutor's defence team you would find most of them will harbour illegally downloaded mp3s, not to mention porn etc. And half those dumbwits probably use Kazaa themselves.
That's why I HATE lawyers, they are hypocritical, and will take cash anyway they (legally) can.
But legal doesn't make it right. Legality is abuse by the rich.
I SAW IF YOU'RE GONNA POINT THE FINGER, THEN YOU SHOULD BE EXAMINED FIRST!
If they win then we can sue the car makers for letting people drive to fast, that's illegal. Howabout the gun makers, guns only kill or harm people so they should be responbile for what people do with them. If this case gets any sort of look saying that the writter of the software has to take responsibility for the actions of the users then how will this open up the courts to the suits we will see. People saying I'm not responsible I didn't write the code or make the gun sue the makers!
Bring it on, lets just shoot ourself in the foot and then blame the gun maker!
OK...
Sony sells recorders. Sony sells media. Sony sells players. Sony sells music.
I fail to see why the fact that they sell a recorder means that they want you to rip off their CDs and post them to Kazaa. You want to steal music, steal music, but don't say "OMG Sony is being confusing here."
The documentation with my MD recorder specifically mentions the fact that MDs recorded from commercial CDs cannot be copied. This same thing goes for copies of CDs made on audio equipment.
It's how copyright was intended to work. You publish a book, you copyright it. Anyone who wants the book buys it from you. That is what copyright was intended for, and that's how Sony is trying to use it.
The issue is that on Kazaa, you're not giving one copy to a friend. You're giving hundreds of thousands of copies to people who you don't know and who you have never met.
what I'm really worried about is that legitimate uses of bit torrent and kazaa are going to get drowned out because of a bunch of college students who aren't willing to pay $8 for a CD (sometims as high as $15...).
If your code is acting bloated, and is running rather slow, it's likely and predicted that some loops you will unroll.
Unless you publish it in print form. Or are all those DeCSS T-Shirts illegal?
Grandparent post: the only time the DMCA can be applied to someone is when they were breaking the law already anyways
INCORRECT!
Parent post: The DMCA does not restrict fair use of any copyrighted materials: you may legally bypass any DRM in your way and make non-commercial copies to your heart's content.
INCORRECT!
That clause of the DMCA actually says:
(c) Other Rights, Etc., Not Affected.--(1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
Circumventing DRM is not copyright infringment! There is no fair use defense to DMCA violations! The clause is completely worthless, it says that a non-existant defense is not affected.
All it says is that if you are charged with copyright infringment (and you did NOT circumvent DRM) then the DMCA does nothing to remove fair use defenses to that infringment. It also indicates the DMCA does nothing to remove the rights and remedies for a copyright holder in prosecuting you for copyright infringment.
If you engange in perfectly legal and legitimate fair use, and you need to circumvent DRM to do so, then you have criminally violated the DMCA. Circumvention itself is a crime, even when you do not infringe. The DMCA will imprison an innocent non-infringing person and there is no fair use defense.
I'm sorry for yelling, but this cluster of posts and Score:5 mods has come to a incorrect "consensus".
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
when napster got shut down it was replaced by 10 other services in 10 different jurisdictions and the publicity attracted people who knew very little about digital media... suddenly killing kazaa will fix the record industry's problems... how about not making crap... have they tried that??? (even though they're still seeing amazing profits)
Get your torrents...
Here in the UK (and other countries) when you purchase a CD, you purchase a licence to listen to the music on that medium only.
That's actually what led to Canada bringing in its current copyright laws. We used to be under that system but copying from record to cassette tape wasn't legal. This seemed incredibly stupid so a law was brought in that allows transfer between mediums and allows copying music for personal use no matter the source of that music.
Of course, it also brought in a levy on such things as blank tapes and later CDRs and Minidiscs. The music industry gets quite a bit of money from this but they're now lobbying to get the copying for personal use part dropped. I doubt they'd want to get rid of the levy though.
The EFF has said that the legality of ripping audio CDs is unclear. Likely, it would be considered "fair use". In 1971, Congress commented on not restraining noncommercial home recording. The Sony Betamax case found that "time-shifting" copyrighted broadcasts for home viewing was fair use. Making personal copies of music with certain devices is allowed under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. For a digital copy to be legitimate under the AHRA, the recording device must prevent multiple-generation copies via copy protection. Also, manufacturers of digital recording devices and/or of blank recording media must pay royalties to the recording industry. Computer equipment is excluded from the AHRA. In the court case RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. it was ruled that a portable MP3 audio player was outside the scope of the AHRA. This was because the player only recorded music from a computer system. In the case, it is said that use of the player is compatible with the main purpose of the AHRA; the main purpose of the AHRA is "facilitation of personal use."
In any case, non-commercial ripping of legitimately-obtained audio CDs is not likely to hurt anyone.
Australia has a copyright provision called "fair dealing" which is similar to fair use in some ways. However, the two are certainly not identical. See this information sheet (PDF format) for details. In particular, fair dealing specifies a number of categories for usage of a copyrighted work. It is important for the use of a work to fall within one of the categories for the use to be fair. In this respect, "fair dealing" sounds less general and open-ended as compared to US "fair use." (Among other things, the information sheet talks about the differences between "fair dealing" and "fair use.")
>Here in the UK (and other countries) when you
>purchase a CD, you purchase a licence to listen
>to the music on that medium only.
Hmm, is that actually the law? If not, what makes you believe it is so? If it is, do you happens to know were to find it? WHat other countries do you refer to by the way?
Indeed it is.
If not, what makes you believe it is so? If it is, do you happens to know were to find it?
I don't have any links to hand but I'm sure Google can probably help. My understanding has been from the legal department of the company I work in and several friends of mine who work for the big 5 law practises.
WHat other countries do you refer to by the way?
Canada (until recently) and Australia. I believe there are a number of other European countries - but I can't tell you off the top of my head.
HTH
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
>Indeed it is.
Sp you mean the law actually says you can't buy music, and if you enter a shop to buy aCD, you end up with a license to listen to it instead and doesn't own is as with every thing else you buy?? Is that part of purchase laws or somewere else?