A long-running court battle between Australia's record industry and file-swapping giant Kazaa reaches a climax today, when a judge is to rule on whether the peer-to-peer network is no different from a photocopier or is a giant "engine of copyright piracy."
Lawyers for major Australian record labels want Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox to find Kazaa's owners liable for copyright breaches and loss of income.
"We have argued file sharing on Kazaa is a breach of copyright and unfair to all those people who try to make a living by creating and producing music," said Michael Speck, managing director of Australia's Music Industry Piracy Investigations, a division of the Australian Recording Industry Association.
"This is a long-awaited judgment on an issue that's critical to the music industry, artists and consumers worldwide," he said.
Among the 10 defendants are Kazaa's owners, Sharman Networks Ltd, Sharman License Holdings and Sharman's Sydney-based chief executive officer, Nikki Hemming.
Their lawyers argued that the software used by Kazaa is no different from a tape recorder or photocopier -- and that Kazaa could not control copyright infringement by users of the network.
The case is the latest in a long line of courtroom showdowns between so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and copyright holders lsuch as record companies.
In a landmark case earlier this year, the US Supreme Court said Grokster and Streamcast Networks -- developers of leading Internet file-sharing software -- can be sued because they deliberately encouraged customers to download copyrighted files illegally so the companies could build a larger audience and sell more advertising.
If the record industry wins today and Kazaa's owners are declared liable, it could signal the end of Kazaa. Defendants, including Hemming, already have agreed to freeze their assets ahead of the verdict.
If the defendants are ruled liable, Wilcox will hold a fresh round of hearings to determine the level of damages, which could run into the millions of dollars. Whichever side loses today is expected to appeal.
But whatever the outcome, observers say users of P2P services around the world already are leaving Kazaa for services which allow quicker downloads.
Michael Geist, an e-commerce expert at Ottawa University's law faculty, said the file sharing industry has moved on since the Kazaa trial began last November, with the software underpinning Kazaa now holding only 10 percent of the market, although the Kazaa Web site claims that nearly 390 million people have downloaded its software.
``It just isn't as big a player as it once was as BitTorrent and eDonkey are now far more important to file sharers,'' Geist said.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS