Hearing set Monday for Kazaa

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December 2nd, 2002, 04:46 AM
Tedob1

Hearing set Monday for Kazaa

Hearing set Monday in Kazaa suit
Reuters, 12.01.02, 6:23 PM ET

http://www.forbes.com/work/newswire/...rtr810085.html

LOS ANGELES, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Lawyers for the music and movie industries gathered on Sunday ahead of a hearing in a copyright infringement case against popular file-sharing services, Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus MusicCity, now named Streamcast, industry trade group officials said.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles will hear summary judgment oral arguments in the case brought by the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Music Publishers' Association against the music services. The suit was first filed in October 2001.

The hearing would come about a week after another proceeding was called to determine whether foreign-based Sharman Networks, the parent company of Kazaa, should also be named in the suit. The judge has yet to decide on that matter.

In court documents, the film and music groups have argued that the defendants' conduct is no different than Napster, the granddaddy of file-sharing services, except they have made more money.

On Friday, a bankruptcy court approved the sale of the assets of Napster to CD-burning software maker Roxio Inc. (nasdaq: ROXI - news - people). Napster was shut down in July 2001 as a result of a similar lawsuit.

Lawyers for Kazaa and Morpheus have maintained that they are different from Napster namely because of their inability to monitor user activity.

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What kind of chance do these P2P networks have against an organization that can get sailors busted for music in a time of war.
December 2nd, 2002, 05:47 AM
phishphreek

Their chances aren't very good... thats why we keep seeing the go up and down.

After Kazaa gets shutdown, another will pop up and so the circle goes.

I was reading a while back about a P2P network that was "annonymous" and spoofed your ip and etc. for privacy purposes. They were claiming that this is for 1st ammendment free speach.
They built the network so not even them could shut it down and there is no way to find out how many users they currently have becasue of the design.

I think it is Freenet.
Here is a summary.
More about freenet.

Forgive me... KissCool alread posted it.

I can't find the original article I had read... :(
December 2nd, 2002, 05:47 AM
bluebeard96

Re: Hearing set Monday for Kazaa

Quote:

What kind of chance do these P2P networks have against an organization that can get sailors busted for music in a time of war.

Are you suggesting that the sailors were doing nothing wrong? Or are you suggesting that we should turn our backs in times of war?

I applaud the military's efforts to stop illegal actions such as those that the sailors took. And, while I'm sure the sailors' terminals weren't tied into highly classified machines, military personnel shouldn't even be allowed to install file sharing programs such as Kaza that can potentially expose the entire network. The military teaches discipline. If a few soldiers don't even have the discipline enough not to steal, I don't want them on the front line where the real discipline is needed... when fellow soldiers' lives are on the line.

I applaud the military as a whole and seeing soldiers held accountable in cases like this reaffirms my belief and trust in the military. I would never let a few rotten apples spoil the whole bunch... and apparently the military higher-ups feel the same way.
December 2nd, 2002, 05:51 AM
dap

Chances of winning? Slim... yet if the lawyers for Kazaa and them are good they have a fighting chance.
If Kazaa were to make the court and everyone beleive that they are a p2p file sharer and anything that people want shared can be, then they win. They could use the fact that they are a group who want to get home videos out etc. Although the music companies think they are at a loss(and have the sales to prove it from CDs). Imagine the increase in revenue for concerts. A person doesnt want to goto a concert that they have never heard the band before. SO why not let us download the MP3s and that way we will think 'wow this dude pwnz' or whatever.
That is a point that is maybe plausible if they get the right information.
THere are a few other things they could possible do. One would be to get unsigned bands who want to get their names out there to say that they thank Kazaa for getting the names out there. Kazaa is a medium for people to transfer information.. And jsut because people misuse the stuff doesnt mean they should ban it. Or maybe they are using Kazaa as a simpler method then FTP, giving people the access to transfer videos from family to family or some other such stuff..

By having the music industry ban our toys and stuff sucks. Let us keep these things and just get kazaa to put a note saying ' Please dont use this for ... blah blah' Because all that will happen is someone will code another version then another.. and lawsuits will be coming out of the courts ears.. tying up the tax money to pay for the judge, and the jury.. making the music industry spend even more money then they lost from Napster etc.

so much to say.. i am ranting .. sorry .. defense lawyers are the only good ones..
December 2nd, 2002, 08:56 AM
er0k

well if i were going to be writing and distributing a p2p file sharer, id put in my *terms of agreement* that this program was written for educational purposes, and in no way should be used to share files of any sort. or something to that extent. that way whenever the copyright lawsuits come up, i would say that i didnt want people using it for sharing, and that i wrote it simply for me to gain experience in the field of p2p programming. They couldnt argue against it since i told people not to use it as a file sharer, and just to look at it, basically. that it was free, no one could file anything against me personally. We need one programmer like that to do such that way the programmer him/herself cannot be shutdown and file sharing can go on the way it was. if that certain program that the programmer wrote was banned of use, that programmer could simply re-name it, and distribute again. programs are free to distribute, as long as the user that downloads and/or installs it knows what it is. thats why virii are illegal, because generally the user doesnt know what he/she is installing completely. if the program i was speaking of was virii free, how could they shut it down? this brings me a question to you all, do you think it is fair for the makers of the music that their music is bought by one person, and then freely distributed to all? Which also leads to another questiion, if they put it out for market, shouldnt they believe that its going to be pirated eventually? I am impartial to either. I just think that judicious operation is unecessary. But however, are t-shirts on the internet free from companies generally? no. they are not. The internet is not entirely free, and that is the argument these people are bringing up. However, as long as music exists and is readable by a computer from some object by some form or fashion, their will be pirates, you cannot stop them all, and you wont win judiciously completely.
December 2nd, 2002, 05:18 PM
problemchild

All they have to do is make the VCR argument. The movie industry tried to block marketing of the VCR in the early 1980s, citing many of the same arguments that we hear today about P2P. The Supreme Court ruled that the fact that it *could* potentially be used for copyright infringement was not enough to block it as long as there were other legitimate uses like time-shifting of programs. That was a landmark case in copyright law and set the standard for the P2P cases we are seeing now.

Napster tried to make that argument, but since they marketed themselves as a song-swapping service an their sharing was limited to MP3s, they were unable to convince the court. But because Kazaa, Morpheus, WinMX, etc. are general P2P networks that share files of any type, not just MP3s, I think they will have a much easier time making that argument stick.

From a very good analysis at http://www.houstoninternetlaw.com/di...llennium.html:

Quote:

However the Napster Trial Court distinguished the Sony decision by stating the Supreme Court in Sony had found that VCR’s were frequently used to record free television programming for later viewing by individuals. This non-commercial use would not be in violation of copyright law. Also the Trial Court stated the Supreme Court in Sony had found that Sony was not encouraging unauthorized copying of copyrighted work. The Napster Trial Court then made the factual determination that there was only an insufficiently limited legitimate use of the Napster software and the Napster Internet site. Essentially, the Court found Napster’s action not to be like the manufacture of VCR’s, but rather akin to a distributor of free VCRs and directories to free videotape libraries from which copyrighted material could be copied. Such an arrangement could not be defined as “fair use” of copyrighted work.

Napster also argued it was merely a passive conduct of information. As such it would be eligible for protection given to ISP’s under the DMCA safe harbors discussed above. This argument appears to have substantial merit, but the Trial Court seems to have pushed the safe harbor provisions aside. The Court found that, as a technical mater, the copyrighted information, i.e., recorded music did not flow through Napster’s server. Although that would seem to further remove Napster from copyright infringement, the Court used this fact to distinguish Napster from a protected passive ISP conduit since Napster was not, technically a conduit of information. (The information did not flow through Napster.) Further, the Trial Court found that Napster’s postings on its website were not passive activity. These postings included links to sites where copyrighted material could be downloaded. The Trial Court further determined that Napster had sufficient knowledge of the unauthorized copying of copyrighted material by its users to be a contributory infringer.

On appeal, the separate Federal 9th Circuit determined that Napster’s software, like Sony’s VCR’s, could have sufficient non-infringing use. In addition the Appellate Court held that without specific showing of knowledge by Napster of copyright infringement by its users, Napster would not be a liable for contributory infringement. (Note VCR instructions contain detailed information to enable users to link multiple VCR’s to allow duplication of tapes, presumably including copyrighted movie videotapes.)

The actual text of the Sony decision is at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metasch...ases/sony.html