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Kazaa Owners Risk Jail

Posted by Zonk on from the kazoops dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There's been a twist in the Sharman Networks vs record labels case in Australia. Lawyers for the music industry now claim that Sharman's attempt to block Australian IP addresses from accessing the Kazaa website doesn't comply with a court order. As such, they want Kazaa masterminds Nikki Hemming and Kevin Bermeister to go to jail term. The saga began in Feb 2004 and ZDNet Australia has a complete timeline."

3 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's their own fault by mumblestheclown · · Score: 0, Troll
    Do you want thieves on the street, too?

    If you want to sue infringers, you basically have two choices:

    1. Sue them for the cost of the item stolen. In other words, pirate a $10 CD, pay $10.
    2. Sue them for much more than this, for its deterrent / punitive value. Pirate a $10 CD, pay $1000.

    The problem, of course, that #1 amounts to no deterrent at all (what would be the point of paying for the something if the maximum penalty for stealing it is just paying anyway) and #2 makes you seem like the bad guy and all the slashdot idiots are screaming and hollering bloody murder as to how you're going after grannies.

    So here we see a case where they're *gasp* going after the actual source of much of the infringement and *surprise surprise* some idiot on slashdot tries to find yet another way to justify them. This time, it's by basically trying some sort of perverted comparison to murderers and rapists and then making the economically dubious statement that such activity "doesn't hurt anybody."

    Note to idiot: Kazaa basically engaged in making "digital copies for profit." It's basically ALL they did, plus or minus some pseudophilosophical smokescreen.

  2. Re:What? by drinkypoo · · Score: 0, Troll

    Actually, when was the last time you believed any statement by the record industry? I think there's a word for what you are, but "gullible" doesn't begin to cover it. Perhaps you're just a "corporate shill" or "...apologist".

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Re:It's their own fault by mumblestheclown · · Score: 0, Troll
    Sigh. Your tired argument has been dismantled so many times at so many levels of court cases it's not even funny. Stop it already. It doesn't work It's not true. It doesn't hold water. GIVE UP YOUR OLD AND BUSTED MYTH ALREADY. It's BULLSHIAT.

    Repeat after me:

    SIGNIFICANT, LEGITIMATE NON-INFRINGING USES.

    To anybody with a brain, it's obvious that the Kazaa business rests entirely on getting large numbers of people into the product, and the only way they get large numbers of people into the product is by being a gateway to illegal items. All those other theoretical uses for kazaa exist at the margins.