Australian Court Rules Against Kazaa in Copyright Case

Kazaa, the peer-to-peer computer service, just lost a case in Australia where Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox ruled that the users of Kazaa were breaching copyright laws. The ruling said that the developer, Sharman Networks, hadn’t violated copyright, but the Judge also said that the software it had developed aided others in the violation of copyright. An appeal is on its way.

In the end, though, this is an antipodean presentation of the Passion of the Napster. Peer-to-peer exchanging of data is not inherently illegal. The spread of the Linux operating system and all of the open source software in the world is based on the premise that the data is in the public domain. P2P sharing cannot violate copyright here, because there is no copyright to violate.

However, the judge ruled that Kazaa didn’t do enough to prevent the illegal use of its know-how. For example, key word filters to prevent copyright infringement were not in place because that harmed Kazaa’s bottom-line. It further harmed its case by its “Join the Revolution” campaign. “It seems that Kazaa users are predominately young people, the effect of this web page would be to encourage visitors to think it ‘cool’ to defy the record companies by ignoring constraints," wrote Judge Wilcox.

As gratifying as it is to read a legal opinion offering a definition of “cool,” Kazaa did skate on pretty thin ice after Napster went down in a legal assault a while back. Rival Mashboxx, in contrast, is trying to get a P2P system in place that doesn’t violate copyright. Apple's iTunes, Napster, and RealNetworks' Rhapsody have been created to offer users a legal way to access their music by computer. Somewhere in between there is a solution that Kazaa didn’t seem to want to help find.

However, the decision only inconveniences Kazaa users. They can download a rival’s software and start P2P copyright violation anew. And the recording industry is going to have to go after each and everyone of them in a multitude of jurisdictions to shut down all the piracy. In the end, the real solution will be a technical one that makes it unprofitable to pirate data in any form.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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