Kazaa Owners May Go to Jail

The brilliant people that launched the Kazaa file-sharing system are facing charges that could send them to jail, after the record industry initiated contempt of court proceedings, claiming an earlier ruling wasn't followed as it should have been. An Australian court had given Kazaa until December 5 to either filter copyrighted music from its system or shut down, music industry officials said on Thursday. The ruling of this deadline followed a ruling in September by the judge in Sydney that Kazaa users were breaching copyright and that the network's owners had to modify the software.

In order to remain active Kazaa was supposed to put in place a keyword filter system within the first 10 days after the ruling. The non-optional keyword filter was supposed to include a database containing about 3,000 keywords.

Kazaa didn't forfeit and as of December 5th Australian users of the site were greeted with the message: "The download of the Kazaa Media Desktop by users in Australia is not permitted." However, music labels allege that Sharman Networks, the owner of Kazaa, didn't comply with a Federal Court order to modify the software to ensure 3,000 keywords would be filtered. Kazaa, of course, says it fully complied with the court's ruling, since it managed to block Australian users from downloading their software by identifying their Internet Protocol address.

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