After the death of Napster back in the days of leaving your dialup modem on all night to get a whole album, it fell to a company called Sharman Networks to release their program called Kazaa before P2P file sharing really kicked back off. Pedants will know there were other variants of this application before Kazaa became mainstream (Morpheus etc) but Kazaa was the one people jumped on to fill the gap that Napster left behind.
Today in Australia a "
landmark case ruling" was served against Sharman Networks saying that their software was facilitating the use and distribution of illegal and copyrighted information on the internet. They have two months to ammend their software to not allow copyrighted information to be transmitted or face further heavy legal fines.
Potentially this means that the ruling will be brought to other countries and used as precendent to ensure that the Kazaa network is either shut down or as I expect, will be turned to some Pay to P2P type service.
I bet Apple and iTunes are shitting themselves!
Besides the fact that a whole host of P2P networks and applications come and go in a matter of months I am not sure that the MPAA and RIAA are concentrating their efforts in the right places. Serving a court action against an application provider that takes up less than 10% of the P2P network traffic in Australia does seem to be a little misguided - but for the court to also allow them to "change their business model" also seems a little odd too.
I suggest that they file a lawsuit against Microsoft who allow you to choose if you want to rip CDs using their "Windows Media Player" software either using or not using DRM encryption. Only the foolish numpty PC users would check this option! Surely this also facilitates the swapping of copyrighted information. Or sue the maker of the first mass-market "tape to tape" stereo system - that makes more sense! Maybe the inventor of ADSL should also be banged to rights as he/she also allows the copyrighted information to be sent and received quicker.
As the sticker on the back of my iPod said when i opened the box: "Don't steal music".
"Duh! What the fuck did I buy one for then?"
5 comments:
Wasn't the twin tape taken to court here? IIRC Amstrad was defending it and one of the people they put up in defence was an ornithologist who used one to make copies of birdsong he caught and gave the copies to friend.
The case got thrown out of court because because it had legal uses as well as illegal ones. This of course could be a total urban myth. ;)
Using the Kazaa ruling as a basis means, as you've pointed out, lots of companys can be done for lots of stuff because people 'might' use their products for evil.
You'd think technical people would be the first to wake up and smell the future, but oh no. Let's make something innovative by sharing ideas and then selfishly strangle innovation by copyrighting everything under the sun. (yes I'm looking at you Mr Gates).
Computers have not moved forward one iota in the last 20 years, don't be fooled by the fact they're faster and have more memory - we're driving the equivalent of Allegros.
arrgh!
I like that picture of the stereo. I used the same one on my blog a little while back.
I neve really got into Kazaa, but I wholly support limewire. Also my iPod didn't have that sticker on it.
ahh.. you're ok to "steal away" then.
I have used almost all P2P apps over the years and used Limewire for a little while - before i found out about torrents!
Yeah, that's what happened to me to. Torrents consume me.
Post a Comment