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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..."
"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."
Real men don't scam citizens for stash-money! They zip it up, call it goat porn and upload it to Kazaa! Oh wait...
--
The last digit of pi is four.
The RIAA is about to shut down another service that no one uses anymore! Way to go!
Glad to see them wasting their money by pissing it away like this. The people that download music/movies will always be about 10 steps ahead of them.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
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.
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.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Maybe if the RIAA wins they'll think they've actually stopped something and forget about Soulseek.
Maybe it was a bad 'fish translation. What? It was written in English from the get-go? You couldn't prove that by me!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Don't know about the law in Autralia or even in the US, but in certain countries actions similar to some of the described above could have as consequence people doing some time in jail...
At least here where I am, before performing this kind of actions better one should really better consult with criminal lawyers and be very carefull with it; One should be more worried with the penal consequences than with financial assets....
Considering this company makes money off of bootlegging and piracy it makes sense.
But before you fly off the handle, look at it this way: They took software for trading files and turned it and it's abilities into a profit machine, stooping so far as to load users with spyware to further that profit (remember: Kazaa Lite has no connection to Sharman). All the time we all knew that Kazaa was used 99% of the time for retrieving copyrighted works people had no rights to. This isn't Bittorrent where many files are free.
After they had cashflow they had one of two responsiblities: Either filter owned works or pay up for those works. They made information trade their business and they didn't own the information they were "brokering".
I don't know how people can be suprised or offended when Kazaa or Napster gets sued. I don't work for the **AA, and am not Dr. Dre, just not suprised at this. I'm not suprised if they get there asses handed to them. (I'm not counting on them getting off on any technicalities, I'm just saying they have it coming.)
Napster and Kazaa with websites is tantamount to a drug dealer on the corner with a sign and them turning a profit is as disgusting as it gets. I've bootleged and pirated quite a few things but I nor anyone else should be making money off of that.
That is the point isn't it?
Get your Unix fortune now!
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.
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make install -not war
Normally it's legal to sell your house to your brother for ten dollars. However if you do it to get your property out of the reach of your creditors then Bad Things will happen to you.
At least that's the way it works in US law.
The music industry is making grave accusations here.
Well, I didn't say anything about kids but, Ok!
My point is that you could sell drugs - I'm fine with that. But the system has already made it hard for you being illegal and all. People who want drugs have to know you or someone you know to get them.
It makes breaking the law harder if we don't accept those who do it...
Get your Unix fortune now!
Pl33z3, sH00t m3 n0w!
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)
///<sig
Why is South East Asia investing billions in a sophisticated tsunami early warning system? Wouldn't it be much cheaper just watching the con-artists scene: as soon as you see the rats prepare to set up phony trust funds, you have 2 days to run for the hills!
(Hint: look at the dates...)
Hey, this reminds me about the 911 stock market rumors. At least those were vaguely plausible (terrorist could have been dumping the stocks). However, in the Kazaa case, I don't really think that Sharman had the resources to set up an underwater undetectable nuke...
So, if I got this right, Dispatch phoned the Red Cross two days before the catastrophe occurred for which the alleged trust fund was set up? What the hell. I smell a rat here.
Yeah, I see what you mean there brother! Now all the pieces fall together: Sharman Networks is behind the Christmas Tsunami disaster! The bastards!
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
Skype is bundled with the latest version of Kazaa, and Skype's CEO was a co-creator of Kazaa who jumped ship after the lawsuits first started. Since Skype is the most popular internet call provider, and there have been some attempts to hamper the progress of VOIP, will Kazaa's bad reputation affect VOIP in general?
will Kazaa's bad reputation affect VOIP in general?
No, because VOIP is more than Skype. Even if VOIP would equal Skype, I still don't think Kazaa could hurt Skype's reputation. Most people see Kazaa and Skype as different things, and in fact, they are different things. And they don't see Kazaa as a Bad Thing(TM).
Do you think that John Doe cares that Kazaa comes with spyware? Of course not, he hardly knows what spyware is. All he knows that he wants to download some pr0n and that his daughter wants to download the new CD of Britney Spears.
Also, John Doe wants to make cheap calls. As cheap as possible. Thus, Skype. He takes the spyware for granted. Only people like you and me (and all the other Slashdot readers) do care about it, but we are not really your average computer user, unfortunately.
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
It couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of charlatans^W people. Why people are so supportive of Kazaa, an ad/spyware peddler, I don't know. It's also obvious their business is built on copyright infringement.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I was on the phone with a Kazaa-exec a few years back (actually, listening in), and couldn't help commenting on the rampant spyware issues. He was not actually at Kazaa, rather at a company that managed their ad-services if I remember correctly, and took a great deal of offense at my comments! He got really upset when I mentioned how Kazaa-Lite was so much better (hehehe).
He sounded fairly unscrupulous at the time, so I guess he knew what was going on fairly well and was OK with it. This seems like a continuation of past policy. Obviously the higher-ups don't care about users, just about making as much money as they can, any way they can.
I thought it would completely die years ago (I stopped using it a long time back). Maybe it will soon with all these recent "issues."
Sounds like Kazaa's lawyers might be telling them to prepare for the worst..
"You know, it's not that painful if you really bend over as much as you can, and spread your knees apart... Oh, and be sure to use lots of lube too !"
Thomas-
"You know, it's not that painful if you really bend over as much as you can, and spread your knees apart... Oh, and be sure to use lots of lube too !"
Fitting, as that's what Kazas's essentially been saying to the copyright holders for years.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
For ninemsn read MSNBC in the USA. The Nine network is one of the three major commercial TV networks in Australia.
They presumably have an MSN franchise as a part of their task of promoting the Lowest Common Denominator to the Australian masses.
Australian Personal Computer magazine is probably part of the NineMSN stable.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Not shure if I should offer sympathy or applause.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
I know Kevin Bermeister personally, and he is the worst snake in the grass you could ever meet. He'd sell his mother for a dollar.
GO on, ask around. Anyone who has been in contact with him rarely comes out untouched by his filth.
Yep, I'm staying anonimous. He knows people, you know.
Kazaa needs to go down just so he does, good enough reason for me.
Dear Sir,
I am an extremely wealthy Australian businessman who needs to quickly move money out of the country.
If you let me use your bank account, I will pay you 10%.
Of course, I do already know your bank account details, given the amount of spyware I loaded onto your computer...
Sincerely,
N. Hemming
Sharman Networks
As far as I know, it's PBL and Microsoft which are allied to produce NineMSN, and NineMSN draws together all the websites for the ACP magazines and Nine Network TV shows (and then derives online advertising revenues from them).
If lawyers actually had scruples, and refused to lie in the courtroom, we would not have all the frivolous lawsuits (like the lady who spilled coffee, or the idiots who jump off ladders and sue the ladder company....or the guy who just now won millions from Ford because he rolled an SUV when speeding while drunk in it).
How can he be a thief when no theft is involved at all? Copyright infringement does not meet the definition of theft, and pointing out such facts as the distinctions between entirely different crimes is not an attempt to justify copyright infringement or say it is OK.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Bad form, Kazaa! Bad form!
It does kinda suck. Personally I look at the posters history when I attempt to mod them, try and see if they are being just funny (peoples humour is unique) instead of selecting the negative mod options. I also hate how you can quickly lose karma over a single comment but yet it takes forever to get it back up. It is even worse when you have been unfairly modded because the mods don't put any care into what they are doing. A low user ID also plays a part in my decisions.
Jonathanjk.com
"Donation" list Lokitorrent- Check Kazaa- Check Whos next to set up a fund scam?
People mod things as over/underrated, rather than using the normal mods, because all other moderations can be meta-moderated. This way you can never lose mod privileges for bad mods, while costing people karma at the same time! Yay!
This line of thinking is EXACTLY what organizations like the SPA and RIAA would *love* you to think.
But let's stop and think about this one for a minute, shall we?
Way back when Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS was still the most popular spreadsheet around (pre-1996) - accusations were flying left and right about "there being an illegal copy in use for every single legal one". Similar claims were made about WordPerfect and the early versions of MS Word too.
Of course, there's never any way to really *prove* any of these alleged numbers - but that's still true today, making that a moot point.
So I ask you, why was a claimed infringenent rate of 50% of these works not enough to justify legal penalties up until 1996, but it's suddenly different after that?
It's just the latest excuse to point the finger at the Internet and act like it's the source of all of our copyright woes. But before MP3s or even digital CDs of music, people were buying predominantly dual-deck cassette recorders for their home stereos too. (You think that was because most consumers were just making their "one legal backup copy" of their Styx and Doors tapes?) The technology for copying/distributing things is always going to be improving, like all technologies. But the motivating force behind copying a work of I.P. never changes. Therefore, I'd say that the relative number of infringements of a given work haven't really changed that much either. It might take "pirate A" less time to obtain the latest software than it did 10 years ago -- but either way, he/she was gonna do it if it meant saving the $495 retail store price or whatever.
If they claim it was a trust fund for the Red Cross, then there is an easy solution, give ALL of the money to the Red Cross.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Remind me to steal your stuff.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
actually a prestigious Australian law firm put out an article on the case saying that the law was essentially on Kazaa's side
eat shiat and bark at the moon
...do not mod SoulSeek comments above +1!
/.?
Don't you think they read
Yep, the entertainment lobbyists are paying off the media to "manufacture" consent for a crooked kangaroo court to rape the p2p services.
If they pay to have enough lying, crooked twisted articles in the media, when they fuck them over in court, the public outcry will be muted.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Kazza Most Downloaded Program
Don't know how viable to source is but I did find this on a Google search right on the first page.
Not shure if I should offer sympathy or applause.
;-)
I'd say a little of both.
Of, course, I'm not sure which of the 50%s would get which
People not respecting Copyright is the source of all our Copyright woes.
That's it.
The fact that it takes pirates a lot less time to pirate than it did 10 years ago doesn't change the reason people pirate, but it certainly does affect the frequency.
They never cared about the reason before, and they don't care about it now... they (rightly) care about the impact on what Copyright actually is, the exclusive _RIGHT_ to _COPY_, which was granted to the author. Everyone else who wants to copy the work has to get permission first (personal and fair use notwithstanding, whose bounds are clear enough to easily determine if they've been crossed on a case-by-case basis). On account of an unprecedented rise in frequency, Copyright infringement today has a bigger impact than it did 10 years ago, which is why they've started pressing charges now.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yo, you need be watch more Ali G on whatever channel I think it is HBO in the US it will give you more inside dope into how you is writing an article for readers that is hip hop TV generation and knowing the net not for old lamers what don't know nothing.
Peace, out...
APC Mag is owned by Federal Publications IRRC which is owned by the Kerry Packer group of companies which also owns/controls Channel Nine. Channel Nine attempted to 'corner the internet' in Australia in the early 90's (about 1994-5) from memory in conjunction with Microsoft. This links to the ninemsn domain as they tied themselve together pretty tightly back then. That date first registered is a furphy. This failed miserably as Australians can quite often ignore what their govenment thinks and be considered quite normal.
Once more...
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the sole purpose of Kazaa was to help people trade copyrighted works and to make money off of that trend. Why are people against seeing this?
Kazaa did nothing to help Indie artists, did nothing to stop piracy (required to or not, a gesture of goodwill would have been a start) and let's mention again Kazaa isn't just a piece of software
"Kazaa" is a service, a profit model. I'm not running Kazaa on my machine, they are operating indexing servers out of Denmark... if I fire up the software or not "Kazaa" lives.
I understand that people are afraid that their rights are under attack, but they aren't. I assume that is why you try to attack my points with semantics - but you don't need to.
Once you admit that Kazaa was nothing more than a bunch of fucktards who wanted to get rich off of the explosion in illegal activity on the Internet by the normal user you can realize they are out for no one but themselves. If Kazaa cared about your "rights" they'd be responsible. They wouldn't install Spyware on machines and so forth.
Now, Apache and IIS weren't written to trade media files between millions of users
Of course they were.
No, they weren't. What are you smoking? Apache and IIS can only have a one-to-many relationship with users. What we are talking about is a many-to-many relationship which causes millions of illegal transactions per second. Again though, there was no reason for Apache or IIS to be brought into the conversation. Everyone's far reaching metaphores make the argument a wash...
BTW, Sharman stole millions from people hiding behind a Red Cross scam... that is what started this topic. If this were a trial I'd use that fact as a character witness.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Yep, figures. Sometimes it doesn't pay to be right.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
The copyright laws are the source of all copyright woes get rid of the laws and you get rid of the crime/infringement. Or at the very least return it to the original 7 years, after all each extension was nothing more than extreme (they stole from everybody) criminal theft from the public domain with no recompence ever having being made to the general public for that continually repeated crime. The only reason there was an increase in penalties is as a result of excessive corporate involvement in the political process and greed.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen