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."

Comments

In answer to the Sony question...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:"I don't get what Sony is doing..."

[theparanoidcynic]

Yes, but it's not legal to circumvent the DRM on the discs to rip them . . . . .

The statistics of being sued...

[dep01]

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*