Kazaa Sues Record Labels 528
dannyp writes "CNN is reporting that Kazaa is suing the record companies, claiming that they used an illegal client to log in to the P2P network - an interesting twist." The lawsuit also claims "...efforts to combat piracy on Kazaa violated terms for using the network."
Hmmmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA != Gov (Score:5, Insightful)
But the RIAA have no such powers... Oh except the ones where they can buy really expensive lawyers and win the case anyway. Yeah, those are handy.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
A Solution from the Dark Side (Score:5, Insightful)
This would not protect network users if law enforcement were to request valid subpoenas for the job, but it would stop non-law enforcement bodies like the RIAA from doing what they are doing now.
This is using our enemies methods against them, which makes it sweet.
Money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does KaZaA really have the financial resources to launch a successful legal attack on the RIAA? I mean, the media conglomerates are rolling in dough. I've never really understood KaZaA's business model and find it hard to believe that they stand a chance. Regardless of merit, the RIAA have got to have some killer lawyers.
Much as I'd like to see KaZaA fight back, I just don't see this being a fair fight. I suspect KaZaA will withdraw their legal challenge pretty soon.
GMD
RIAA didn't expect this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again, its kinda like those "stupid news" stories about the burgler sueing the owners of the house he broke into, because the stairs weren't up to code, causing him to trip and break an arm.
Illegal client? (Score:4, Insightful)
Self Service? (Score:5, Insightful)
I must have missunderstood the purpose of copyright, if it isn't self-serving, what is it for?
KazaaLite License Agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot dualmindedness again (Score:5, Insightful)
I swear to God it's like 1984-esque Newspeak. Think one thing. OK, now think the other.
Kazaa sues Google because of Kazaa Lite! Kazaa [slashdot.org] evil!
Kazaa sues recording industry because they improperly accessed the network! Kazaa good!
Somebody please give me a chart or visual reference for when Kazaa is bad and when the RIAA is bad.
(Alternatively, it's fun to see two evil corporations duking it out, because either way a badguy's going to lose. But that's just my inner optimist.)
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Money? (Score:2, Insightful)
What happens if they loose?...The courts will have held that IP is not an absolute. Victories like that are NOT what the $$AA's want.
Re:Slashdot dualmindedness again (Score:1, Insightful)
I hope they both rot in hell (Score:2, Insightful)
No RIAA means no more BS from the record industry.
No Kazaa means my network will be FREE OF CRAP (well except for Windows worms and stuff).
Here's hopin'.
unfortunately ... yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
This finding is still being appealed by Verizon, and Congress is discussing whether this should be allowed to continue. Where the RIAA should get in trouble is with the recent subponea issued for the wrong person [boston.com]. They essentially deprived this person of their right to privacy by wrongfully requesting that the person's ISP reveal their identity. This was in clear violation of their rights
Re:Slashdot dualmindedness again (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot dualmindedness again (Score:5, Insightful)
Its very difficult to try to pin down a group and say 'Everything they do or have ever done is evil'. There's always going to be a counter argument because of something they did that was at least benign.
And the comparison you're trying to draw is to doublethink, NOT newspeak. Orwellian doublethink on the other hand is something entirely different. It is the act of holding two mutually exclusive ideas in your head at the same time, or to discard facts if they impede a required belief. Like believing that freedom and slavery are the same thing.
Newspeak is just a kind of communication, like 'Oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc'.
Re:Pyrrhic Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
What about those being sued? (Score:3, Insightful)
KaZaA should be our dark overlord not RIAA. (Score:0, Insightful)
Yes, KaZaA with all its spyware and crap should be the great dark queen that rules the internet. Great dark queens are soooo much better than great dark lords. Once upon a time Bill Gates was the Smeagle like creature living on the bank of a great river. His friend Digital Research dove into the river and found a shiny ring...but it was Smeagle's birthday...
After seizing the ring of power. The world rooted the pc geeks against the mainframers.
Quite frankly, I see companies like KaZaA sliming in the rivers of the legal system for power are as disgusting as anything the music industry pipes out. Is is good to see a new generation cheering on one of the sleaziest companies to hit the market in its drive to become a new dark lord.
Re:Suddenly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about those being sued? (Score:3, Insightful)
Live by the DMCA... (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's about time!
Yeah, right... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You were wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Warez sites with such a "license" don't exempt themselves from prosecution. It's just some idiotic ploy someone thought up long ago.
There's a big difference between government authorities prosecuting someone who is breaking the law, and a private organization violating one law to see if someone else is breaking another.
If I flagrantly violate the Windows EULA by decompiling, reverse engineering, benchmarking, and doing who-knows-what else to it, could I then absolve myself of this by telling them, "I just did it to see if you guys were up to anything illegal"?
This case is interesting because it pits one private organizations's pseudo-law-enforcement powers against another's ability to make up whatever terms of service they feel like. Whether the RIAA or EULAs get taken down a notch by this, the public stand to win.
Even if Kazaa loses, this could be good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's about time... (Score:3, Insightful)
In short, Kazaa is a popular source for mp3s and video. The Television is the ONLY source of news (biased as it may be) for the majority of the population.
Great analogy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:unfortunately ... yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
IANAL and certainly not someone who claims to understand the way U.S. litigation works but surely this is an opportunity for
I would expect some enterprising and enthusiastic young lawyer to persuade this person to pursue the matter in order to elevate their profile in a case that would doubtless attract global headlines.
With enough grass-roots support and perhaps even some corporate support solicited from ISP's, privacy bodies and human rights groups for example then it could even have far reaching and popular effects.
Re:That argument didn't work for warez sites (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, I know what is parent post: YHBT. YHL. HAND. But it is still a good excuse for some ranting. I just feel ashamed that somebody actualy put the "Interesting tag on it". But hey, this is /. Everybody is allowed to be and a**hole. And now, to my rant:
Kazaa should just shut the hell up and count it's blessings.
So should you. Let me explain why:
Suing the record labels for not letting people get away with illegal activities involving the RIAA's property is just idiotic.
Wrong. This is suing the people who are violating the terms of the service and using the client that is shameless hack, and copyright violation. They don't own the data on the network, but they sure have the copyright on the clinet. Using Kazaa Lite is copyright violation. I would say that this is simply noticing that nobody is aove the law. If RIAA wants to go after the users, so it can, but not using illegal means to do so. Not even the government agencies can afford such things.
What the RIAA is doing with their specialized client is nothing that can't be done with the "official" client.
It is not RIAAs client, it is hacked official client with removed UL/DL limitations and demolished ad-ware parts that actually provide income to the Kazaa owners. This client is the product of the exact kind of the pirates that the RIAA alleges to hunt, and Sharman networks is trying to stop. You can't just take the copyrighted code and hack away things that you don't like and distribute the application to other users. If you don't like the application, write another one, R.E. the protocol, but don't trample on the copyright law. RIAA is doing exactly the same thing as the "pirates" are doing. It is only fair to be challenged for this behaviour.
The RIAA just has it easier with their custom software.
Again: it's not their. It is a product of the people that want to download as much as they can, without actualy contributing anything back to the network. In P2P world, this is almost equal to the "true" pirate that RIAA wants to eliminate. Sheesh. Talk about double standards.
And we all know about Kazaa Lite and I don't see them bitching about that.
Yes. We all know that Kazaa Lite is copyright violation. We all know what Sharman Networks did about that. We all know what is their position on it. I don't think RIAA has any clue about how deep it went by opting to use this particular hack of the Kazaa application, as IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT SHARMAN NETWORKS WANTS KAZAA LITE DEAD FOR SOME TIME NOW. Yeah, really smart move to use vandalized version of original Kazaa client. mlDonkey et All implement the protocol that is not patented or copyrighted, but they are not hacked versions of copyrighted work.
With MSN and AIM et all, using a third party client is stealing resources from MS and/or AOL et al
It is completely up to the respective companies to decide whether they will act and in what manner they will act. If Microsoft or AOL decided not to act, that doesnt mean that Sharman can't act. It simply means that each company decides what it wants by itself. BTW: I don't know of any hacked versions of AIM or MSN Messenger clients that would be in wide distribution. GAIM, Trillian et al are standalone mplementations that are using the protocol, but they are not using pieces of Microsoft or AOL code, do they?
Using a third party client with Kazaa doesn't affect them in the least.
What third party client? You must be living on the moon, or be really one clueless clod. Last time I checked toying with debuggers and hex editors wasn't producing independent applications.
But then, what else would you expect from a team who's only claim to skill is putting ad and spyware on a gnutella client?
A, ha! Got you troll. If you don't know the difference between Kazaa/FastTrack & Morpheus/Grokster/Gnutella combos, then please shut up and don't spread your misconceptions around. The differe
Doubt (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah yeah, I know, File sharing networks have legitimate uses, too. But 90% of them aren't being used "ligitimately".
Thanks,
Leabre
Re:Interesting (Score:1, Insightful)
Intellectual property is a fiction. It's a potentially useful fiction, as it can be used to provide incentive for creators but it is now being taken to ridiculous lengths. If you don't want someone reading or listening to your stuff, DON'T PUBLISH IT. The public has no obligation to reward creators; if it doesn't, no one creates, so it generally elects to. This process, however, has become inherently corrupt and self-propagating. It now needs to be allowed to die for the benefit of all. The internet is going to do that.
How to handle copyright infringement is another argument. We've already got laws dealing with theft and they're not problematic.
Re:It's about time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's about time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hooray for proprietary proto.... hey... put the pitchforks down.
Re:grant them amnesty (Score:4, Insightful)
When will the Drama End? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait...EULA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Suddenly (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Suddenly (Score:3, Insightful)
When has force of arms ever led to the respect of minority rights legislatively in the United States?
Crazy stories (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Suddenly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Self Service? (Score:4, Insightful)
"I must have missunderstood the purpose of copyright, if it isn't self-serving, what is it for?"
The purpose of copyright is to stimulate creative people to publish works of art in order to ultimately benefit society as those works enter the public domain. The incentive for them to do so is supposed to be provided by offering a period of time where the creator has exclusive rights to his creation. Some people seem to have the idea that the main purpose of copyright is the period of exclusive rights, but the spirit of the concept has historically been more on the lines of creating and preserving a public domain. The monopoly granted to the creator is a compromise made by the people to ensure a steady supply of works to the public domain.
The whole notion of copyright has been completely turned on its head in the last fifty years, and the current generation is the first one to really notice the difference. Unfortunately they do not see the change as being worthy of major action, even though some people talk big.
You already have to go back to the 1920's or so to find any truly public domain works. It hasn't always been this way, and it was never meant to be this way. Some things that I consider classical, are still covered by copyright! Other things that should NOT be covered under copyright, according to either the letter or the spirit of the law, carry copyright notice and under the DMCA might even be encumbered in such a way as to to violate your rights to view a work that is truly within the public domain. I recently watched a Marx Brothers film that has long been free of any copyright... and yet, the media clearly stated that the contents were under copyright. That sort of thing just makes me angry.
If arts and entertainment were as important to us as sports and sex, we'd have abolished the government already for the DMCA.
Re:That argument didn't work for warez sites (Score:1, Insightful)
They planned things well, KaZaA did. They're incorporated in Vanutu for a reason. Now, if the RIAA can just figure out WHO and WHERE to send the subpoenas and such to, KaZaA just _might_ have a problem...
"Suing the record labels for not letting people get away with illegal activities involving the RIAA's property is just idiotic."
They're not suing them because they're not letting people get away with illegal activity, they're suing them for abuse of the network by using a known illegal client. The client that RIAA is using is illegal. The RIAA knows this, as it says so when you install it (it's just KaZaA Lite) and everyone else knows it too. The RIAA can break laws but KaZaA can't? In fact, what law does KaZaA break, anyway? The courts ruled that KaZaA has a valid legal purpose, iirc...
"What the RIAA is doing with their specialized client is nothing that can't be done with the "official" client. The RIAA just has it easier with their custom software. And we all know about Kazaa Lite and I don't see them bitching about that."
Whoops, that's EXACTLY what KaZaA is bitching about here: KaZaA Lite. They've taken legal action against KLite's hosting sites and Google for listing them, and now the RIAA turns around and not only uses it, but uses it to hunt down people that (legally or not) add value to the KaZaA network? I sure wouldn't put up with it!
"With MSN and AIM et all, using a third party client is stealing resources from MS and/or AOL et al. Using a third party client with Kazaa doesn't affect them in the least."
It's up to MSN and AOL to sue people who use those networks. If they choose to take no action, so be it, but they still have the option. You also have the option to stop using AIM when Time-Warner tells you that they don't want your copy of Trillian on the network... KaZaA has been much harsher on KLite than MSN/Yahoo!/AOL have ever been on their own clone-clients...
"But then, what else would you expect from a team who's only claim to skill is putting ad and spyware on a gnutella client?"
They also run a bunch of core network servers that assist their client in connecting better with others. You pay (in terms of ads and spying) for that extra boost in connectivity. RIAA is using KaZaA's network with a known illegal client for purposes to remove KaZaA's customers...
Go connect GAIM, use it to tell customers to stop using MSN Messenger and switch to another client... do this on a mass scale, betcha Microsoft sues ya.
"Maybe Gnutella should sue Kazaa off their network. Kazaa is only hurting P2P with this kind of idiocy."
Again, KaZaA (Sharman Networks) runs a few centralized "help me hook up" servers that add-on to the public Gnutella system and do so in a way that doesn't break the existing spec. I'd be willing to bet that KaZaA does quite well in getting more people on P2P networks than you think... which, incidentally, adds value to Gnutella/LimeWire/etc...
How long before Microsoft introduces a P2P client, ya think, that breaks the existing P2P protocols? Any bets?
Re:Suddenly (Score:4, Insightful)
In the U.S.A., at least, it hasn't happened with marijuana yet.
The difference between file sharing and home taping is largely one of scale and centralization. Home taping is by nature a small scale, decentralized activity. I borrow an LP from my brother, tape it, that's the end of it. If someone tried to open a "home taping center" where any and all could come browse thousands of record collections and make cassette dupes, leaving behind a paper trail of their activities, you would quickly find out just how "decriminalized" home taping was.