Kazaa Shuts Down for Australia

The Kazaa file-sharing application announced as of yesterday evening it wasn't making its services available to Australian users anymore, as a result of a court order issued early last week. The court has ordered Sharman Networks, Kazaa's operators, to release a new version of the software by yesterday evening that includes a non-optional keyword filter, which is based on a database containing about 3.000 entries. If the company wasn't going to comply with these requests it was facing imminent shut down of the file-sharing software.

Last evening, Kazaa users observed a major change in the way the application greeted them, as it displayed a big sign which said "The download of the Kazaa Media Desktop by users in Australia is not permitted."

In September, the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing application was found guilty in the Federal Court of encouraging users to infringe copyright after more than 30 music labels in Australia started to take legal actions against the increasing phenomenon of music piracy.

Kazaa was given the chance to appeal in this case and present new evidence in its favor in order to convince the court to take a different stand in this situation. The appeal will start on February 20.

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