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Sydney (pte034/29.11.2004/15:10) - The firm behind the world's leading file-swapping service KaZaA is in court in Australia due to a copyright lawsuit. As the IT portal Cnet http://www.news.com reports, the major record labels and 25 other North American, European and Australian record company "applicants" are suing Sharman Networks http://www.sharmannetworks.com and nine other firms to try and stop illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. They also want to recover billions of dollars worth of compensation for past illicit downloads. Also targeted in the lawsuit are the companies LEF Interactive, Altnet and Brilliant Digital Entertainment.
The labels behind the case are EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and Universal, along with a number of Australian record companies. In court, they dubbed KaZaA "an engine of copyright piracy to a degree of magnitude never before seen". Sharman Networks, based in Australia but registered in the Pacific island of Vanuatu says it has no control over what users do with the files they swap. According to the labels' lawyer, Tony Bannon, 100 million users swapped 3 billion files a month, and Sharman was both making it easy for them to find illicit music and profiting from it by selling adverts on its website.
Sharman is not the first file-sharing software provider to be involved in a legal dispute. Grokster and Streamcast have both been sued in the United States but were cleared of being liable for file-sharing. As that case is still ongoing, any evidence in the Australian trial that proves KaZaA to be a centralised peer-to-peer network could affect Sharman's liability in the U.S federal court.
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