Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Recording Industry Isn't Happy Even After Kazaa Stops Downloads Down Under
Last week, we wrote about the pointless and technologically-brain dead order from a court in Australia that Sharman Networks implement keyword filters in their product and then trick users of the current, perfectly working Kazaa, into believing that they absolutely need to download the new, crippled version. This was silly enough, but the judge also gave them until December 5th to comply. Apparently unable to put in place the keyword filter that quickly, the company decided to do the next best thing: they completely shut off the ability to download Kazaa in Australia. You might think that this would make the recording industry happy, but that's not the case at all. Instead, the head of ARIA (the Australian equivalent of the RIAA) has stated: "Sharman has thumbed its nose at the court. They were given a chance to do the right thing and they've ruined it. They cannot be trusted to even take the simplest steps towards complying with the court's orders and again have shown they intend to do nothing about the illegal activities occurring on a massive scale on their system." It sort of sounds like he wrote that statement before realizing they had shut off downloads. It is true that people with existing versions of Kazaa can keep on using it freely, but that is completely out of Sharman's control. It's also true that those outside Australia can keep downloading, but last time we checked, Australian courts only have jurisdiction over Australia (though, the Australian courts don't always believe this is so). The only other explanation for the statement is that the recording industry really believes it's that easy to write the software filter, change the software, test it and have it ready to go in such a short period of time. Perhaps they should have volunteered their own special copy protection experts, who have the magical touch that all those other techies apparently lack.
