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Kazaa's Australian Assets Frozen
sandstorming writes "Wired is reporting that Sharman Networks (the creators of Kazaa) and Altnet (which licenses technology to Kazaa) have had their assets frozen in the country of Australia. The verdict comes almost four months after the start of the trial prompted by five record company suits. The Australian federal court will convene on March 22nd for final oral submissions, and the verdict is expected several weeks later. Is this the beginning of the end for Kazaa?"
you should always keep your money in Swiss banks...
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
I'd say this is the end of the beginning of the end.
I mean even if they did win. They'd have to install alot of spyware to pay for all the court costs.
I might be a cynic but this could be a bad idea because of the influx that all 3 Kazaa users will generate when they switch over to other networks, I mean do you really want longer queue lines? I know I don't.
"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"
--Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Don't balme to tools.
Karma: Bad. Calmer, good.
Is this the beginning of the end for Kazaa?
The beginning of the end for Kazaa came when Cohen released the first Bit Torrent client. The program has gone dangerously downhill since then, with ever-increasing corrupted or misnamed files being uploaded by corporations, a smaller user base with a smaller variety of files, and increased fear by the public of getting sued for downloading illegal MP3s - not to mention slower download speeds and an adware-riddled client.
Hopefully this is closer to the end of the end for Kazaa.
Long live the new age of governance! Our wonderful Wild West internet is just becoming another government approved entity. Sharman sucks balls, but the idea that all the governments of the world are going to be able to reach out and touch the assets of any non-approved internet entities, means the age of innovation and information dissemination is over. Regulation of any behavior that threatens the status quo of any government on this planet will end what makes the internet great.
Where can a person live to escape the influence of corporate america and its legal influence of politicians world wide... I move to australia and this crap happens with the free trade agreement, and now here in the UK on the front of the times there is a threat of prosecution for 'copyright infringement'. I am starting to understand the desire to see the end of my home country in some ways. Yes, I said it. I do not believe in the death of innocent people, but those innocent people have voted to perpetuate the lifestyles they cling to and that involves in many ways (oil, patents, etc) the erosion of other cultures value systems. No longer does morality play a role in the US (has it for some time?), but more it is what can we get and how can we get it. Make my shares climb and I do not care how you do it. Greed is a virus. UGH!!! For those who wish to vilify me for this sentiment, have at it.
Since most of the music from the RIAA is imported from america why would the australian government try to stop people getting the music for free? and possibly increase the amount of money leaving the country to america to pay for music? even though we all know most people will just get it for free elsewhere or simply not bother getting it. Why are people so chronically against themselves these days? "support the industry" "support the economy" "give them your money they need it" they think walmart is a damn charity.
The creators of Kazaa? I think not. They are the current owners of Kazaa maybe, but it seems that a Swedish guy together with two Estonians created the application, while the P2P protocol came from Amsterdam. It was sold to Sharman Networks later on. The Australian software company then messed it up big time - but that is history (it seems).
Source: various articles on Google found by searching for "creators of kazaa".
Every single music/dvd buy i did last year was first a download off P2P. Some of them is stuff i'd never given a chance otherwise.
You're right though. You won't see quality performers sales declining because of downloads - but what's the incentive to buy a Ashlee Simpson CD if you know you'll get tired of it in two weeks?
down there.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Its not 'corporate *america*' that is the problem.
Its corporations in general, *world wide*, who now have more power then small countries.
This of course doesnt mean governments are also an issue, but today it looks like the corporations are a much larger threat in general.
Dont blame the USA for a systemic world problem.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"...assets frozen in the country of Australia"
Australia is a country now?
I thought Australia was a penal colony of the British Empire. This is very disturbing news indeed.
I fear what will happen if this news spreads to other parts of the Empire. What if the barbarians of the American colonies want to govern themselves?
The mere thought almost makes me feel nauseous enough to skip high tea.
for the same reason car dealers don't leave keys in the cars on the lot.
Oh yeahhh shudder, because someone might come and make a COPY of a car...
It ain't the same thing. Before, people used to tape songs off the radio. Now you can download them off the internet. They used to moan about it then. Now they are prosecuting - why? Because those downloads can be traced. That's the only reason. Their arguments are the same: copyright infringement is costing them money. Still I haven't seen many of their manufactured "stars" in the poorhouse.
If you steal a car you are stealing the money that the dealer invested in the stock and the dealer is also no longer able to get that money back - he doesn't have a car to sell. Plus, he lost his profit (which is the least of his worries at this point).
If you download a song, what exactly are you costing the record company? Lost POTENTIAL profit? As far as I know, potential profit is not the same as potential difference or voltage. It doesn't exist. It's an accounting construct based on "projections" and "estimates". But until you MAKE that profit, it's not yours. In just about every country in the world when you sue someone you have to PROVE that you have been DAMAGED. Only in this business does a court accept that because Joe Pirate downloaded a song, the company lost the POTENTIAL PROFIT from selling the song and has been damaged. There are two mistakes here. First, it has not COST the company anything - their balance sheet is not any different than it was the moment before the "theft". The second is the assumption that the "thief" was actually going to pay for the song in the first place. This assumption is generally incorrect - if you download something it's probably because you won't buy it (for various reasons: price, convenience, etc). So if he wasn't going to buy it - they haven't even lost a sale.
I wish people would stop comparing copyright infringement to stealing because they are not the same at all. To steal is to take something, to pirate is to COPY something.
If you visit other parts of the world you will find salesmen and even whole stores devoted to selling fake CD's - albums they downloaded and printed labels for. They try to sell you these CD's either passing them off as originals in some cases, or at a discount. This is REAL piracy. It is completely wrong - why should someone else make a living off your work, and pass off a product that is (usually) an inferior quality to your original product? THIS is what copyright law was originally designed to prevent. Not litigating against some grandmother who downloads a song for free and listens to it in her own home.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'd say the EFF didn't expect our elected representatives to make punishment for file sharing harsher than many rape, fraud, manslaughter etc. sentences.
I just took a walk outside, here in Canada, and my assets are frozen too!
I don't thik it would be possible to freeze my assets in Australia.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I heard that someone stole some software from M$. If they've lost it I'm sure I got a copy of Windows lying around somewhere that I can give them. They can just pay me for the blank CD. They should make more backup copies for themselves.
Lift out of order. Bubble sort in progress.
To my knowledge (and I did a bit of research into this when a friend recommended the program, because I really don't want spyware on my system), Skype was created by the *original* developers of Kazaa, and is NOT IN ANY WAY associated with Sharman Networks, who bought Kazaa from the original developers early in its life. I've had Skype on my system for quite a while and have noticed no spyware, nor has Ad-Aware picked up any from it.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
- Sell DRM-free files direct from the record companies, cheaply because of minimal individual production costs (bandwidth instead of stamping and transporting a CD).
-
Sue everyone still stealing files.
The problem with Bittorrent at the moment, now that eXeem has fixed the centralisation problem (no torrent websites, because they can be shut down), is that it isn't anonymous. You need to know the IP address of other people in the torrent in order to connect to them, so even if the IP address is sent encrypted, the peer it is sent to could be a representative of the copyright-holder (e.g. the MPAA, the RIAA). A solution would be to route communications through an anonymous relay, but this causes a bandwidth problem. What is needed is for everyone (not just on that specific torrent, or indeed on any torrent) to act as anonymous relays. It would slow everything down by half, but would solve the anonymity problem. And bandwidth isn't a problem, or won't be. If someone did develop an anonymous P2P torrent system, then the RIAA and the MPAA wouldn't be able to sue anyone (as in Point 2). But they'd still have to do Point 1 in order to compete. (I wouldn't buy from them if there was no way I could be sued. But some people would.) In the same way, Encyclopædia Brittanica have had to release their content for free on their website and be advertising-supported. If they charge even a penny for it, people simply go to other web-based encyclopedias. Brittanica have to use their brand to get used. And it isn't much on the web compared to Wikipedia. They only get bought as a book by mad librarians who haven't caught up yet, and like to waste paper as libraries. Unfortunately, the represents a whole new phase of the "Tragedy of the Commons", where resources are not scarce (i.e. files can be copied infinitely), and the price mechanism ceases to operate as a throttle. Ultimately, if no one buys from record companies as soon as a track is available on the internet, anonymously and for free, the record companies won't have enough money to produce albums of the high standard we expect. I've been using PeerGuardian2 recently. It's alarming how often I get queried by companies keeping track of P2P users. 30 queries an hour, on various ports (P2P) that I don't use. Use it if you don't want to get sued.