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Kazaa
Like the old version of Napster, Kazaa users can
exchange copyrighted material without paying royalties to the
owners. While Kazaa claims to be "completely legal," there are
those who disagree: The free-to-download blue files are controlled
by Kazaa users and include copyrighted content. Movie studios and
record
labels have filed several infringement lawsuits not only
against Kazaa, but also against individual Kazaa users.
In 2001, Kazaa was sued by a Dutch music company and was
ordered to stop its users from violating copyrights or face steep
penalties. In response to the decision, Kazaa transferred
ownership to offshore companies, primarily Sharman Networks
Limited on the island of Vanuatu. But in 2002, a Dutch appeals
court overturned the previous judgment, ruling that Kazaa was not
responsible for the actions of its users (see
afterdawn.com - Dutch appeals court: Kazaa is legal). Its
decentralized structure means that Kazaa is not involved in the
actual file sharing -- all searches and downloads take place
between actual user computers. Later that year, Kazaa was sued
again, this time in the United States by the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPAA).
As of February 2005, the decision in that suit is still pending.
Kazaa's argument that its decentralized setup frees it
from liability was given a boost in 2003, when a U.S. District
Court judge ruled that
Grokster and
Morpheus, two other file-sharing services, were not liable for
their users' actions.
That leaves only the users themselves as liable for sharing
copyrighted material. In 2003, the Recording Industry Association
of American (RIAA) began targeting individual users with lawsuits.
The RIAA didn't go after just anyone -- they zeroed in on people
who had made thousands of copyrighted files available to other
users. These repeat file sharers were identified by their IP
address and hit with lawsuits ranging from $750 to $150,000. In
October 2004, the International Federation of the Phonographic
Industry (IFPI) similarly launched lawsuits against several
hundred users of Kazaa and two other file-sharing services.
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program. Copyrights ©2007 Kazaa | Kazaa Downloads. All rights reserved. |
