Kazaa Outed Over 'Trust Fund' for Red Cross

danwarne writes "In one of the most bizarre twists in the court action against Kazaa yet, documents have been tendered in Australian Federal Court court that showed that Kazaa claimed to have set up a trust fund for donations to the Red Cross (at about the time the tsunami hit), but the Red Cross has confirmed in writing it has never heard from them about it. The music industry alleged in court that it was a tactic by Kazaa parent company Sharman Networks to park money out of the reach of the music industry if it loses the case and is left with a huge damages bill. This in the same week that it came out in court that top Sharman/BDE execs offloaded their multi-million dollar homes. Sounds like Kazaa's lawyers might be telling them to prepare for the worst..."

Comments

Journalism

[kureido]

The Red Cross wouldn't lie. Certainly my-main-man at the Cross, Jean-Jacques, was nothing but totally upfront during our interview. And I've interviewed plenty of spivs. My spivometre didn't move a nanometre while I was talking to him. Jean-Jacques was a straight up bro.

What in the holy name of hell is passing for journalism these days? I might as well be reading my little brother's blog.

p2p not synonymous w/ kazaa

[dirvish]

Those wankers at Kazaa have hurt the p2p cause quite a bit. They knew they were doing shady stuff (adware, etc.) and now they are rightfully paying the price. For every step that people like the EFF make to make government realize it shouldn't over-regulate technology, shysters like Kazaa force things a step back to make a quick buck.

Privatized Court of Public Opinion

[Doc Ruby]

We know that none of these sleazy biz tactics have anything to do with their liability for abuse of their software by some users. I bet these stories are being promoted by the music biz to cover up a Supreme Court decision against Kazaa/Grokster/Morpheus this month, which won't have a legal basis, but is rather just a favor to corporate media which hates P2P. The rest of the corporate media, in the "news" business, will be able to report that the Supremes dealt the "sleazy" P2P corps the justice they deserve, because they run tsunami scams. It will all make sense in the "news", though it won't have any legal merit.

Not so

[Nik13]

You make it sound like they're only attacking networks/means that nobody uses anymore, but they've done quite a lot of damage to BitTorrent and eDonkey/eMule "communities" too. I wouldn't exactly say that nobody uses those anymore. Granted, they haven't shut down those 2 yet, but it's not like they aren't trying or not doing anything about them either. (Mind you I'm quite happy to see this crapzaa plague go away)