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Australian Court Rules Kazaa Users Break Copyright Laws Is this going to be the end of Kazaa as we know it?	By Alina Plesu, Technology and Science Editor 5th of September 2005, 08:35 GMT Adjust text size:


Not so long ago, we were telling you about the entertainment industry's victory over the illegal file sharing phenomena, validated through the Supreme Court's ruling in the "MGM vs. Grokster" case. And the question back then was if the ruling would put a stop to the copyright infringement phenomena. Then we assumed it wouldn't and we were not far from the true. The legal actions never seize to stop, but the file-swapping systems phenomena is growing larger each passing day. An Australian court ruled on Monday that users of Kazaa, a popular Internet music file-swapping system, breached music copyright and ordered its owners to modify the software. Australia's major record companies sued Kazaa's Australian owners and developers, Sharman Networks, claiming Kazaa had cost them millions of dollars in lost sales. Sharman, the owner of the software and record labels such as Universal Music and Sony, have been involved in litigation since March last year. The parties have been arguing over the peer-to-peer application since the labels initiated court action in the US in 2002. Kazaa was the most popular file-sharing software on the Internet at the time. The record labels alleged millions of copyright infringements occurred each day on the network. Sharman Networks defended the use of the Internet to download music tracks, but said it could not control the actions of estimated 100 million world-wide users. Judgment in the long-running legal battle between the music industry and Sharman Networks over alleged copyright breaches involving the Kazaa file-sharing software will be handed down in the Federal Court in Sydney this afternoon. Judge Murray Wilcox is scheduled to deliver his judgment at 4pm. My guess is it will be another victory for the record companies, but why should that change anything this time? I strongly believe they are suing the wrong people here...

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