Judge Rules that Kazaa can be Sued 467
scubacuda writes "According to this News.com article, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson said a lawsuit against Sharman Networks (the makers of Kazaa) could proceed, since Kazaa software had been downloaded and used by millions of Californians. (The Australia-/Vanuatu-based company had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it was not bound by U.S. laws since it did not have substantial contacts with California.)"
Future headlines (Score:4, Insightful)
Judge declares Kazaa violated the law
Kazaa out of business
Company X buying Kazaa's assests
Ask Slashdot: Whatever happened to Company X?
Re:Future headlines (Score:5, Funny)
Judge issues injuction against Kazaa
Injunction issued against Kazaa
Judge declares Kazaa violated the law
Kazaa guilty
Kazaa out of business
Kazaa filing for bankruptcy
Company X buying Kazaa's assests
Company X steps forward, buys Kazaa's assets
Ask Slashdot: Whatever happened to Company X?
Ask Slashdot: Where did Company X go?
Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, they are not a U.S. company...the ego of this country thinking it can impose its laws on non-citizens!
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
This is how it has always been, for all countries. If you help citizens of country X violate country X's laws, you can expect to get sued or tried in country X under country X's laws.
What happens next depends on how you respond. There are three things you can do.
1. Go to country X, concede jurisdiction, and abide by the court's decision.
2. Go to country X and argue that country X's laws should not apply.
3. Ignore country X. You'll lose by default in country X. What then happens depends on your country.
The winner will come to your country to try to enforce the judgement. Your countries laws will then decide if the country X had jurisdiction. If your country decides that X did have jurisdiction, your country enforces the judgement.
The only complication that the internet introduces is that it makes it hard to tell where people you are dealing with are located. Before the internet, generally transactions that might be illegal involved mailing or shipping something, and it was reasonably easy to simply refuse to mail or ship to people in countries where your product might be illegal.
Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Swell, I guess I better shut off my web server.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
California doesn't rule Australia. There's no reason an Australian has any need whatsoever to listen to what a Californian judge says. He says you should turn up? Fine. Ignore him.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Great... (Score:5, Interesting)
Uhm, uhm. Americans have proven before they can act very strange and explicit of it comes down to things they believe are a threat to their country or society. Like:
' Ah, you don't want to help us smoke the criminals out of their holes? '
' Fine, we have reasons to believe you hide terrorists en produces nuclear weapons! '
and:
' No sir, you can't do that, I'm an American citizen. ' in foreign countries
OK, I know not all Americans are narrow minded chauvinistic egoists.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Informative)
If the Hague treaty [gnu.org] becomes ratified, the UK would be required to enforce a Uzbekistan court rule against you.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's charmingly naive, and maybe it was true once. But these days, as recent events [bbc.co.uk] illustrated, countries don't bother to protect their citizens very much at all from foreign governments. I fully expect that if another country wanted you extradited, the British police will fall over themselves to help. And if you're over there when you are arrested, they won't lift a finger to help you.
Fair enough, but what will happen? (Score:4, Interesting)
Judge finds Kazza guilty. Judge can only dictate on terms for California.
Kazza adds clause that only non-Californian's can use this service.
Result? Whoever runs Kazza is legal because the law is only applies to Californians. Therefore anybody from Kazza can show up in California for whatever reason they want.
Would you do it? Not likely...
Re:Fair enough, but what will happen? (Score:3, Insightful)
If a judge finds them guilty, then changing the license agreement isn't going to do anything - they have already broken the law.
we're now bound by every law in the world (Score:3, Interesting)
There are many examples of this:
The US demanding the extradiction of Columbian & Burmese drug lords for acts committed while they were outside of US juristiction & thus under no compulsion to comply with US laws.
Israel prosecuting a German with Latin American citizenship for war crimes that happened in Europe against people that weren't even Israelis & weren't even nationals of that bit of the planet that ended up becoming Israel [crwflags.com].
Belgium prosecuting a Israeli for contravening Belium warcrimes laws in Lebanon
Spain prosecuting Pinochet for acts commited against Spainards outside of Spain. The simple fact is once one becomes an expat one no longer has the protection of their country of citizenship & one must instead accept the protection of their host nation. If a expat doesn't like that they should go home. If Spain doesn't like the fact that Spainish expats in Chile were killed by the Pinochet regime then Spain should use diplomatic avenues, such as a trade embargo, to persuade Chile to prosecute Pinochete. No matter how distastefull it is, the killing of Spainards outside of Spain's juristiction is no concern of the Spainish law courts. If worse comes to the worst & the Chilian justice system refuses to do its duty, the Spanish secret service anti-ETA death squad could be resurrected to target the token Chilian bigwig & a message sent suggesting that the offsprings of Chilan bigwigs could come next.
About 5 years ago or something a freighter from some Arab country smuggled a ship load of hashish to just off Oz's 200 mile economic line where the hashish was loaded onto some waiting Oz yachts & brought ashore. Well the Feds were waiting & cought the Yachties hashed up to the nines. After the freighter unloaded its cargo it headed to New Caledonia, where Oz feds were waiting with extradition warrents. I assume the New Caledonians played along because it's dependent on Oz in many ways, plus the French habitually enforce their laws extra-territorily anyway. So the Arab seamen ended up in a Australian court where the judge promptly threw out the case. He stated that even though they were definitly smuggling hash to Oz, as they never entered Oz juristiction while they were smuggling the hash to Oz, the seamen were under no obligation to comply with Oz laws. IMAO that's a top judge.
Well recently, as in the last year or so, Australia succesfully applied for the extradition of a Yemani people smuggler from Indonesia, who they have prosecuted for breaking Australian people smuggling laws (smuggling Afghans 'n Kurds here) even though he has never been within Oz juristiction & thus IMAO has never been under any obligation to comply with Oz laws.
Now the reason I don't like these concepts is because it sets precedents that's directly responsable for China arresting tourists & business travellers from overseas & throwing them in jail, simply for Besmirching the Reputation of China in foreign publications. You see public attacks on China's reputation are illegal in China. Also under Chinese laws all Chinese are considered within Chinese juristiction no matter where they are on the planet. Ontop of which China does not recognise the right of Chinese to renounce their citizenship. Meaning if say a Chinese person becomes an American & decides he doesn't want to be a dual citizen, & renounces his Chinese citizenship, China won't recognise it & as far as they are concerned he's still Chinese (albit maybe also American too) & still must comply with Chinese laws while in the US (or anywhere else for that matter). This even goes further, if someone has Chinese ancestry (no matter how distant), China reserves the right to consider that person Chinese & thus as far as they're concerned, obliged to comply with Chinese laws, even if that person has never been to China.
This has led to many citizens of the West being arrested while in China on Businees or on holidays, for previously criticising China in western publications & particularly of late, on the web. IMAO the only way the world could stop such incidents is by an international treaty strictly regulating the limits of territorial juristiction. & no matter how much lawyers hate it, this treaty must be so clear & unambiguous that nothing is open to interpritation, no matter how inflexible it is & what the costs are in that regard. If it means people are free to kill each other on unregisted vessels in international waters, then so be it.
The only thing I'd consider is extra-territorial enviromental laws, for example where nations have the right to enforce their enviromental laws on whatever international waters are closer to them than other countries, as long as they don't descriminate in favour of their own nationals in those waters tat are outside of their 12 mile territorial or 200 mile economic zone. The world's oceans are being fished out 7 times faster than they can be replenished, this has to stop. We don't want our oceans to end up as sterile as the North Atlantic cod fisheries.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and manufacturers of CD-R's, harddrives and MP3 players should be dragged in court too.
It's the people who use Kazaa to share copyrighted stuff that break the law. Not the people who provide Kazaa. We don't put Ford into jail because people violate laws using cars. We don't put states into jail because people violate laws on the road.
What are the costs of an illegal copy? A few cents. Let's double that, so we get a 50% cost, 50% gain balance. And now explain to me why a CD in a shop costs about $20? (in the Netherlands)
The media industry and the public have to change their minds and accept we do have internet, and we can copy ourselves for very low prices and that is not something one can sell or someone is willing to pay for anymore...
Re:Great...yup p2p is killing the cd star (Score:4, Insightful)
Before ppl ask "SV has a music scene?" remember, bands like green day come out of here. Our music scene is totally different than that of L.A.'s a.k.a. Hollywood. I can't describe it, because I see everything as data, but I can tell you what the musicians are fearing.
So yesterday, i'm riding around delivering the latest issue of Zero with one of our big bosses. Boss delivering zines you ask? It's hard times, everyone is pulling double effort.
Anyways, this cat is a musician, and
All Wherehouse music stores around our area are shutting down... We have noticed a trend too, less people in other music stores.
So who's to blame? Napster? The economy? Pirates?
Well, my partner started asking questions about the technology. He's what I would call a reforming luddite (yeah strong words but he'd agree with me) "Isn't there some way they could make a CD so it's uncopyable?" he asked. I explained to him as long as there was some sort of digital, to a speaker coil coversion, the RIAA will never be able to stamp out piracy.
"Well who the fuck would want to download a shitty copy of a song then!" he chirped.
"The same fucks that would bring a camera into AOTC's, compress it to mpeg and share it over kazaa" I replied.
Stumped, he went back to his first question. After repeating that there had to be some way of doing it 3 times I answered..
"Yeah, if they could convince everyone to replace their ears with DRM enabled digital implants, then yeah the RIAA has a chance"
Well, he got the point after that. So he moved onto "How do you stamp out P2P?"
I put it into another analogy for him. Napster with it's central peer topology is much like a football team with 1 quarterback. You sack the quarterback.. You sack the network.
"So the RIAA can just sack kazaa right?"
"No, Kazaa would be the equivelent of every player on the team being both QB and reciever"
See, our zine stays alive by record lables having the money to buy adspace from us. If the record lables are losing money from P2P it affects us because they've yet to evolve to the net.
"What should they do?"
Personally, I think the record lables should ditch CD production altogether now. They should make songs freely downloadable. Fuck it, cut their losses.
But rather than look at it like a loss, the record industry should take a Las Vegas approach to it. Just use the music as a "comp" to milk money out of people in other ways.
For instance, that $50 dollar green day ticket, fuck it, if people won't buy the albums anymore, double it. I think people wouldn't care if they had to pay more for live performances. I'm biased because I do get in for free, and don't have any money to pay for tickets anyways. I'm 30 years old in feburary and am perfectly content to staying at home.
The market is really for 14-25 year olds. Those are the people with expendable cash. They live at home, don't have a mortgage, and can afford $100 bucks to see a live performance. With the rate of inflation over the last 10 years, $100 doesn't really seem like a lot to me to see a big headliner band if I had no financial obligations.
I'm the oldest of 6, my youngest siblings are more at home in the computer enviroment than I ever was at their age. The RIAA doesn't realize this yet, but their biggest age group has a huge understanding of internet distribution, and they will never be able to beat it. That's just an unfortunate fact about it.
So to recap the RIAA should...
Cut back CD production,
Raise the price of live performances
Focus on promotion more than CD distribution.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because you're paying an amount for the content and those who produced it as well.
This may come as a shock to you but you never just pay production costs for anything. A 20oz soda costs about a penny to produce but you pay $1.00. Why? Because it's been proven you will. The only issue with CD's is that no one can sell less than the RIAA says.
It's not an issue of price. If you don't want to pay $20 for a new CD, get a used copy.
Ben
we're now bound by every law in the world (Score:4, Interesting)
There are many examples of this:
The US demanding the extradiction of Columbian & Burmese drug lords for acts committed while they were outside of US juristiction & thus under no compulsion to comply with US laws.
Israel prosecuting a German with Latin American citizenship for war crimes that happened in Europe against people that weren't even Israelis & weren't even nationals of that bit of the planet that ended up becoming Israel [crwflags.com].
Belgium prosecuting a Israeli for contravening Belium warcrimes laws in Lebanon
Spain prosecuting Pinochet for acts commited against Spainards outside of Spain. The simple fact is once one becomes an expat one no longer has the protection of their country of citizenship & one must instead accept the protection of their host nation. If a expat doesn't like that they should go home. If Spain doesn't like the fact that Spainish expats in Chile were killed by the Pinochet regime then Spain should use diplomatic avenues, such as a trade embargo, to persuade Chile to prosecute Pinochete. No matter how distastefull it is, the killing of Spainards outside of Spain's juristiction is no concern of the Spainish law courts. If worse comes to the worst & the Chilian justice system refuses to do its duty, the Spanish secret service anti-ETA death squad could be resurrected to target the token Chilian bigwig & a message sent suggesting that the offsprings of Chilan bigwigs could come next.
About 5 years ago or something a freighter from some Arab country smuggled a ship load of hashish to just off Oz's 200 mile economic line where the hashish was loaded onto some waiting Oz yachts & brought ashore. Well the Feds were waiting & cought the Yachties hashed up to the nines. After the freighter unloaded its cargo it headed to New Caledonia, where Oz feds were waiting with extradition warrents. I assume the New Caledonians played along because it's dependent on Oz in many ways, plus the French habitually enforce their laws extra-territorily anyway. So the Arab seamen ended up in a Australian court where the judge promptly threw out the case. He stated that even though they were definitly smuggling hash to Oz, as they never entered Oz juristiction while they were smuggling the hash to Oz, the seamen were under no obligation to comply with Oz laws. IMAO that's a top judge.
Well recently, as in the last year or so, Australia succesfully applied for the extradition of a Yemani people smuggler from Indonesia, who they have prosecuted for breaking Australian people smuggling laws (smuggling Afghans 'n Kurds here) even though he has never been within Oz juristiction & thus IMAO has never been under any obligation to comply with Oz laws.
Now the reason I don't like these concepts is because it sets precedents that's directly responsable for China arresting tourists & business travellers from overseas & throwing them in jail, simply for Besmirching the Reputation of China in foreign publications. You see public attacks on China's reputation are illegal in China. Also under Chinese laws all Chinese are considered within Chinese juristiction no matter where they are on the planet. Ontop of which China does not recognise the right of Chinese to renounce their citizenship. Meaning if say a Chinese person becomes an American & decides he doesn't want to be a dual citizen, & renounces his Chinese citizenship, China won't recognise it & as far as they are concerned he's still Chinese (albit maybe also American too) & still must comply with Chinese laws while in the US (or anywhere else for that matter). This even goes further, if someone has Chinese ancestry (no matter how distant), China reserves the right to consider that person Chinese & thus as far as they're concerned, obliged to comply with Chinese laws, even if that person has never been to China.
This has led to many citizens of the West being arrested while in China on Businees or on holidays, for previously criticising China in western publications & particularly of late, on the web. IMAO the only way the world could stop such incidents is by an international treaty strictly regulating the limits of territorial juristiction. & no matter how much lawyers hate it, this treaty must be so clear & unambiguous that nothing is open to interpritation, no matter how inflexible it is & what the costs are in that regard. If it means people are free to kill each other on unregisted vessels in international waters, then so be it.
The only thing I'd consider is extra-territorial enviromental laws, for example where nations have the right to enforce their enviromental laws on whatever international waters are closer to them than other countries, as long as they don't descriminate in favour of their own nationals in those waters tat are outside of their 12 mile territorial or 200 mile economic zone. The world's oceans are being fished out 7 times faster than they can be replenished, this has to stop. We don't want our oceans to end up as sterile as the North Atlantic cod fisheries.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
But tell me. If my actions online have to satisfy the laws of every country in the world, then do you suppose I perhaps should lose some sleep. Those chinese firing squads for people who offend there government sure scare me!
And seriously dude. You talk blogs. I've been the target of legal threats before (defamation - I didn't defame however) and dude. Not nice. Verry un-nice infact.
Think!
Re:Great... (Score:4, Interesting)
No
I'm sure you realize that if we all had to follow all the laws of every country on the internet whenever we used the internet, easily half the folks that post here on slashdot would be behind bars.
The fact that injustices are rare is irrellevant - what is, and should be, the issue is that such injustices happen AT ALL. One does not have to work very hard to think up a completely realistic situation where a person has been law abiding in their own region and ends up unexpectedly being held accountable for the laws in another.
Re:Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
Kazaa is not being sued by end users but by third parties (i.e. music industry). Thus the EULA is irrelevant here.
Not only that, but. . . (Score:5, Informative)
EULA's are written *generically* to attempt to claim every term of contract that *might* be legal anywere.
Haven't you ever seen the term on generic legal documents "Void where prohibited"?
Just because it's in the EULA doesn't inherently mean it binds you, although the writers would like to *believe* that it does. Since most people do, it works.
Don't be afraid to dissent or even disregard terms of your EULA where you have the legal right to do so.
KFG
And so it begins once again..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And so it begins once again..... (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as a (ad free) replacement for Kazaa goes, though, check out WinMX [winmx.com].
Re:And so it begins once again..... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can point out at least one example of how I've legitimately used p2p. I was trying to get SP1 for Windows XP, but the windows update software prompted me to update my windows update software to continue (or something along those lines). anyway, i'd do the update then come back and it'd tell me I needed to update again. So I went on kazaa and downloaded the service pack there, no problem. Technically yes this is illegal but I don't think Microsoft really wants to prevent me from obtaining its patches. Aside from that, p2p is a great way to distribute a program while taking the load off of your servers and keeping bandwith costs down (look at how kazaa distributes their own software).
Re:And so it begins once again..... (Score:2)
a) you can obtain Service Pack 1 for Windows XP without using Windows Update
b) order a CD with Service Pack 1 for a nominal fee
Microsoft wants you to obtain it from them for good reason. Getting it over P2P is illegal. Just because *you* think it was a good idea doesn't justify your action.
Kazaa is the only company distributing their software via P2P. Every other company is interested in file integrity, something that cannot be guaranteed over a P2P network.
P2P is a horrible way to distribute programs if you actually care about getting your file from point A to point B in one piece, unmolested. So, obviously, no legitimate company would use it to distribute software.
I'm not too worried (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah but..... (Score:2)
The MPAA still can get money from they if they attach the funds that Kazaa has in the USA or anywhere else that a judge would find the USA judgment valid.
Re: Vanatu (Score:5, Interesting)
I had several friends who worked for the phone fraud department at MCI, and Vanatu was a running joke in their office. A great majority of the complaints received about "mysterious 900 number charges" (often $25 or more each) showing up on customer bills originated from operations in Vanatu.
In fact, it wasn't uncommon to automatically shut off MCI service to customers who had abnormally high LD charges for the month, if Vanatu was involved at all.
YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD! (Score:2, Funny)
[NO CARRIER]
Re: Vanatu (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, it's simply appalling that someone would do something in a place where it's legal rather than seeking out the most represive regime they can. The next time someone criticises Saddam Hussein I'll expect them to go to Iraq to do it, not do it from some sinkhole of iniquity where that sort of behavious is allowed.
Re: Vanatu (Score:3, Funny)
Give it a month or two. *sigh*
Re: Vanatu (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Vanatu (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose that means that if someone gets drunk and kills someone else on the highway, he's no more guilty than the construction company that connected his neighborhood to that highway?
Guilt by association (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess we better be afraid up here in Canada, as pretty soon we'll all be labelled a haven for treasonous draft-dodgers and, hell, a place where illegally freed slaves can live their own lives.
Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right.
And equally so, just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's wrong.
In a startling turn of events (Score:5, Funny)
noooooo (Score:3, Funny)
Seems like fair play to me (Score:5, Insightful)
The question of whether kazaa is, in fact, violating the law should be settled in court somewhere, and somehow it doesn't seem like vanatu is the venue.
doesn't seem like vanatu is the venue. (Score:2, Funny)
My brother in law tried to sue someone in a Vanatue small claims court and wound up in a caldron of boiling water with a bunch of chopped carrots and onions.
Fair play, yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kazaa may have been downloaded to the US, but the company, its programmers, and its owners have never had a presence here. That means, guess what, you can't sue it here. The supreme court of california has already ruled on this and even if the little judge of the case says "These cases aren't the same like that" If and when Kazaa gets an appeal, it'll go straight to the Cal Supreme Court who will knock it down again on jurisdictional issues.
If KaZaa had an office in California, it'd be different, but they don't. When the US steps on little countries' soverignty to regulate their buisnesses themselves all it does is get those countries pissed off at us.
Win or lose, until any of those buisnessmen from that company get on a jet and come here, the MPAA will gain nothing but at most a hollow and ineffective paper victory.
Re:Fair play, yeah, right. (Score:2)
Tell me about it. With North Korea making nukes and Iraq hiding nukes, the last thing the US needs is the vast military prowess of Vanatu to threaten war. Then again, maybe the White House switchboard will get bombed with collect calls from Vanatu that mysteriously get automatically accepted.
Re:Fair play, yeah, right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fair play, yeah, right. (Score:3, Informative)
This is incorrect. The Kazaa case is being heard in Federal District Court in Los Angeles. The first appeal would be to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
This court is generally considered to be liberal, but in fact there are a large number of conservative justices on the 9th Circuit. Decisions in the 9th Circuit often depend on exactly which 3 judges (out of 25 or so) get chosen to hear the appeal.
After the 9th Circuit makes its ruling, the losing party is allowed to petition the US Supreme Court (not the California Supreme Court) to take the case. The US Supreme Court does not have to take the appeal from the 9th Circuit if they do not want to. It takes a vote of 4 justices (out of 9) to "grant cert", which means that the case is taken by the US Supreme Court.
Of course, this part of the case will never get that far. You may not like the law, but it's pretty clear that Kazaa does have "substantial contacts" with California. Judge Wilson applied the facts correctly on this issue.
The real question is whether Kazaa will win or lose on the merits of the case, not just this jurisdictional issue. It's not open and shut. Judge Wilson has a good reputation as being a fair judge. He won't automatically rule for the bad guys.
Re:Seems like fair play to me (Score:5, Insightful)
That can only be settled on a per-country basis. We already know that they're not breaking the law in the Netherland (at least not by operating a file sharing service, they might be parking illegally or assassinating rivals for all I know).
Only the Vanatu courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in Vanatu. Only the Autralian courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in Autralia, onlythe US courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in the USA and only the Iraqi courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in Iraq. Of course, deciding that they are doing somethign illegal in any particular country doesn't automatically give that country the power to do anything about it.
There's no one universal answer that can be "settled in court somewhere".
I wonder how long it will be ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I wonder how long it will be ... (Score:2)
That would be a nice twist, given that some of the terrorist whackos use Windows, Word & IE.
Nice comment BTW, portnux. I agree with the AC. It's the best ever.
My Future's So Bright... (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm afraid.
We all have ideas about what the future is going to be like. But almost without fail, I am corrected in one direction; Jennifer Government [amazon.co.uk] , sprawl and caste.
*sigh
So - ignore the judge (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps the judge will rule that the kazza servers be firewalled in California. Who knows.
The reaction of Kazza to this ruling will be really intereting. But again - I think there is a high probability that the ruling will just be ignored.
Flashforward (Score:5, Insightful)
$G
P2P will survive (Score:3, Insightful)
Freenet is up to build 543. (Score:2)
You mean like Freenet [freenetproject.org]? The freepages don't have everything, but they are often completely anonymous.
Don't we already have something like this? (Score:5, Informative)
The best thing Kazaa could do... (Score:5, Interesting)
But then who enforces that decision?
Feh, I'm soon to be a lawyer, but in this case, Kazaa shouldn't subject itself to the costs of defending itself in this sort of suit if they don't have the resources to make it a good fight. This is terrible legal advice, but it's good practical advice. If RIAA can't enforce a verdict, any victory they have will merely be symbolic. And it won't matter a hill of beans as far as precedent is concerned because a) there's plenty of precedent that what Kazaa is doing is wrong and b) the precedent would only have true practical effect for a Kazaa-like company based in the United States.
Now, if this were a criminal case, it would be a completely different matter, because then there would be a rigorous enforcement system in place.
But Kazaa could reasonably just ignore this suit, take the loss, and stick up their collective middle finger at it.
What the RIAA should do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the RIAA should do. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't decide what the RIAA and MPAA are up to. Are they just looking for exposure? Are they trying to generate some cash? Are they trying to establish civil precedents that will allow them to sue OTHER CONTENT PROVIDERS that have nothing to do with MP3 distribution and which could provide them with a much larger payoff? Are they trying to establish a chain of civil verdicts that will allow them to go to Congresscritters and "encourage" them to pass laws specifically targetting p2p?
Or are they just stupid? (In the un-troll sense. I literally mean, do they honestly think they're going to win anything substantive?)
If they wanted to get rid of Kazaa, they'd sic the criminal prosecutors on them... or are RIAA and MPAA afraid that what Kazaa is doing isn't wrong enough to be considered "criminal"?
Oh this is cute (Score:3, Interesting)
Wilson pthe presiding judge] said the case was different from a similar one involving a Texas man who was sued in California for distributing a DVD-descrambling utility online. The California Supreme Court said in November 2002 that Internet distribution of software did not subject someone to California jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court briefly put that decision on hold, then backed out of the case this month.
Obviously there's already a case on point, so on appeal, jurisidiction will be reversed. But could somebody please tell me how this case is different?
Re:Oh this is cute (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh this is cute (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is that Texas is a state in the United States and was considered to have stronger claim of jurisdiction on the case than California did(Texas or the other state which I no longer remember where the man initially put up the web site), but kazaa is based in another country and who has jurisdiction in the matter is bit trickier.
Re:Oh this is cute (Score:2)
Internet distribution of software did not subject someone to California jurisdiction.
In other words, if I distribute something online, I am not subject to the laws of the people who download it from me.
As an example, note that places which distribute child porn from outside the US borders, even across the net, are not prosicuted by US law. Instead they are subject to their host countries laws. The same would / should apply here. Of course, that means there's nothing stopping California from ruling possesion of Kazza illegal, but that's another battle in and of itself.
A while coming? (Score:2)
Kazaa and the other file sharing networks have been sitting pretty for a long while now, but how much longer is it going to be before something more substantial than the courts "saber rattling" is going to happen.
Plus, the amount of file sharing networks out there is going to increase as time goes on (I stopped using Kazaa for eMule).
The only thing that is going to curb file sharing is when it is handled by the ISP's... even though I didn't get any warning, but other OptimumOnline customers did and were "advised" to curb the upload connections, it was still enough to make me manually throttle back my upload settings just as a precaution. OptimumOnline is too good a service to risk losing, plus they don't give customers the same amount of crap as Verizon and other broadband suppliers... even though they mentioned that the packet saturation was killing some of their nodes (there have been outages in the past couple of months), and not because they don't want people using the share networks (considering they still use the "you can download music faster" line in their adverts).
What do they hope to gain? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are more arguments, but I don't intend to try the case here on /.
Man Gets 70mpg in Homemade Car-Made from a Mainframe Computer [xnewswire.com]
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (Score:5, Interesting)
The Bad: Kazaa is going down.
The Ugly: Kazaa is spyware.
All things taken into account, hopefully the next p2p network won't have the spyware built in.
ANYWAY...I thought Kazaa was a self-supporting network, i.e. people act as super-nodes who hold a list of files for others to search, and there's no centralized server. What control does Sharman have over whether or not the Kazaa network is still around, sure, they can stop the downloads of the client, but if the client can also act as a server...meh, it's unstoppable!
Re:The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (Score:3, Informative)
FastTrack? (Score:3, Insightful)
Law is relatively clear (Score:5, Funny)
Italy and Australia have both issued recent high profile opinions that allow US businesses on the Internet to be sued in their respective countries. This is hardly a new thing.
Unless of course you're a slashdotter who doesn't know a damn thing about the law.
Zippo v Zippo.com (Score:2, Interesting)
Very true... in fact there was a case a few years ago, Zippo v Zippo.com, where Zippo (the lighter company, based in PA) sued a dot.com called Zippo.com (an "information delivery" company) for trademark violations in PA court. .com claimed that they never did any physical buisiness in PA so PA shouldn't have jurisdiction. Lighter company showed they did have subscribers in PA, hence were doing business there, hence they could be sued in PA.
Same idea - jusisdiction of a court over a company that provided purely electronic product, in a different place, can be sued in a place where that product was used, even without physical presence. Difference is one is a state, the other a country.
Yahoo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if the case came to court and the judge ruled in favour of the media companies, would Sharman Networks have to pay?
There is a precedent [com.com] for cases like this. Yahoo! did not have to comply with the French order because Yahoo! has their servers in the US and they are a US company.
How is this any different?
So what if millions of Californians use Kazaa? There are many times that number of Kazaa users who are not Californians. Millions of French people could access the US yahoo.com site - the ruling says:
What laws are the MPAA and RIAA using to sue Sharman Networks? Are they applicable in Australia or Vanuatu
Mediums (Score:2)
When your phone bill came in, you'd have these charges, that you couldn't have removed, because you accepted the call, and the Government couldn't do anything about it, because it was from over seas, and out of their hands. So now, because the victims are a coropration, suddenly the courts CAN do something about it? That hardly seems fair.
Whom do the courts look out for? Citizens, or Corporations?
Id like to buy the RIAA/MPAA a clue please Bob (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Id like to buy the RIAA/MPAA a clue please Bob (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I have already given up on public swapping and just trade with a group of friends on a private server.
And how do they expect to enforce? (Score:2)
Does a California judge really have that much authority or ability to dictate policy in an other country, with different laws and practices?
Even if they can, of course there is always non-centralized P2P alternatives like Gnutella.. Resistance is futile.. ( and only breeds further discontent )
IANAL but... (Score:2)
While they may rule in California that they can sue them, does not California's jurisdiction stop at the California border? Say they ignore the suit, the judge rules against them, and just don't pay up. What does California do then? The worst they could ever do it seems to me is prevent them from ever visiting California for fear of being arrested... not too much to worry about if you ask me. Its not like a ruling by a California court would allow then to expropriate funds from a foreign bank.
Stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
This decision by your judges has now made it possible for anyone in your country that does not like my instructions (which should be protected as Free Speech, something which your country is supposedly so proud of) to sue me. Not that I'd be responding or something but it's just stupid. I urge you all to actively do something about this aggresive act of world-domination which should even be illegal under in your constitution. You guys aren't making any friends this way.
Re:Stupid! (Score:3, Interesting)
I can see your point here. It's just that I didn't vote for 'em, don't approve of what they are doing, and can't do anything to stop it. I talk to a friend of mine, trying to tell him why what's going on is so bad, and the reaction I get is "You're just a liberal democrat", like that's a real answer to an arguement. (Yes, I am liberal, but I don't always vote for a Democrat. I vote for the person I think will do the best job.)
So be angry with the government if you wish, and I'll agree with you. But don't call me part of the problem. I'm doing my part.
Makes No Sense.. (Score:2)
Microsoft's P2P .NET (Score:2, Interesting)
In other news (Score:2)
hmm.. US Laws, eh? (Score:2)
U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson said a lawsuit against Sharman Networks (the makers of Kazaa) could proceed.
(The Australia-/Vanuatu-based company had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it was not bound by U.S. laws since it did not have substantial contacts with California.)"
Wow... Why isn't this a surprise. The Americans decide that people outside their own country are bound by their laws.
If the RIAA wants to take on Kazaa, take them on in Australia. Oh wait, no that wouldn't work, because the Australian justice system wouldn't waste their time on this.
Someone need to go let the states know that they don't own the world, yet, and until they do, companies from other countries do not lie under their jurisdiction.
Nothing to do with imperialism. (Score:5, Interesting)
(The Australia-/Vanuatu-based company had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it was not bound by U.S. laws since it did not have substantial contacts with California.)"
Wow... Why isn't this a surprise. The Americans decide that people outside their own country are bound by their laws.
If the RIAA wants to take on Kazaa, take them on in Australia. Oh wait, no that wouldn't work, because the Australian justice system wouldn't waste their time on this.
Someone need to go let the states know that they don't own the world, yet, and until they do, companies from other countries do not lie under their jurisdiction.
Your disgust is founded in ignorance.
Anyone in a common law system (USA, Australia, UK, etc.) can sue anyone else. There are only two considerations: a) whether it can be heard in a particular court and b) whether there is anything practical to be gained by it.
Question B is not so much a question of law as a question of strategy. A court which would issue a decision can enforce its will only so far as the person losing is present within their jurisdiction (either they live there, or have assets there). People have sued the government of Iran in US federal court, and have won, and have collected their judgments out of funds belonging to Iran which are present in US banks. But if you were to sue North Korea and win (probably because nobody showed up to represent North Korea), there'd be little you could do to collect your judgment, because there wouldn't be any assets of North Korea within the jurisdiction of the court.
So, setting aside question A for a moment, the RIAA can sue Kazaa in federal court in California. The question is whether they have anything to gain by winning. As a previous poster pointed out, Kazaa could just ignore the whole thing and take a loss, if they don't have anything *in* the US that a judgment could seize. (The RIAA probably wants an injunction of some kind, but even still it's questionable how useful it would be for the US to order Kazaa not to do business here anymore.)
Question A has a lot more to do with the law, and jurisdictional questions are quite complicated. The basic idea is that you can only bring suit against someone in a place if that someone has had something substantial to do with the place. (Lives there, does business there, has assets located there, committed an act there, etc.)
The decision referred to in the headline is that the judge decided that the fact that many people had downloaded Kazaa software in California was a sufficient contact with California that Kazaa could be sued there. He reached this decision after examining the law of California. If Kazaa appeals, the court of appeals will either confirm that this is the law, or will overturn the judge and not permit him to hear the case.
In light of the above, your rant is more than a little silly. Every nation is willing to submit every person to their own laws - the only question is whether it will do the plaintiff any good, and whether the courts of that nation will let such a lawsuit go forwards. The US is no different from anyone else in this respect. "Companies from other countries" do lie under US jurisdiction, insofar as they have ever had anything to do with the United States.
Re:Nothing to do with imperialism. (Score:3, Insightful)
But I do appreciate your response which clarified a few points which I wasn't aware of.
Personally, I find it disgusting the way the american justice system forces their laws on other nations haphazardly (Look at Dmitri for example). But I do understand what you are saying, and that your "Question A" has a lot of merit.
Naturally though, you should be able to understand my frustration (as a non-American) with the way the Americans do things. Sometimes it is aggravating.
I do appreciate you taking the time to explain the finer details of the judicial system to me, though, and although I agree that the Americans can sue KaZaa (by what you said), I believe that they have no right to since KaZaa is not an American company and doesn't have substantial contacts in California. (It's only on the internet.)
I hope now, you understand where my initial rant came from.
I don't think that the Kazaa downloads are sufficient contacts to frame the basis for jurisdiction in California either, and I suspect that Kazaa could prevail on appeal.
Note again that you've said "I find it disgusting the way the american justice system forces their laws on other nations haphazardly". The process isn't very haphazard - the court attempts to determine whether contacts exist through relatively straightforward reasoning. And it's not "America" which is trying to force anything on any other nation. The RIAA is trying to get the United States to enforce its laws on Kazaa's activities or property in the United States.
And all the judge here has decided is that the law permits him to consider the RIAA's request.
They should all move (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They should all move (Score:3, Insightful)
Most likely both. Don't think that they wouldn't do it either if Sealand ever became a nuisance.
Another Elcomsoft fiasco! (Score:4, Insightful)
Eh. (Score:3, Insightful)
subversive broadcasts? (Score:5, Insightful)
FastTrack history (Score:3, Interesting)
Not Surprisng - Welcome To The 2000's (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal responsibility is out the window, and I don't see it ever coming back.
Jurisdiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Sharman Networks...should be held accountable by U.S. laws.
Bzzzt! Wrong! They should be held accountable by Autralian and Vanuatan laws. The United States (Je naait 't steeds
If I owned a company and got a summons from a US court I would RSVP that I am declining the invitation (and contact a lawyer to prepare for any possible extradition hearing).
I don't think my government would send me over there unless the US told them I'd killed someone or something like that.
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a criminal matter. Nobody would be extradited for anything.
It's a civil matter. If you're a New Zealander and your company does business in the US, it's only fair that your company could be sued as a result of those actions. (And vice versa. If an American company did something in New Zealand, New Zealanders should be able to sue them in New Zealand courts.)
If your company doesn't do business in the United States, and somebody tries to sue you there, screw 'em. Your best bet would be to not even bother to RSVP. The guy would win by default, but since you don't own anything in the US, then there's nothing he could do to you.
Sheesh. It's easy to be paranoid about the US when you invent your own fears.
In a startling turn of events (Score:3, Funny)
In other related news, the California Supreme Court has ruled that all public libraries are a direct infringement of copyright laws, since they contain large volumes of books and at least one copying machine, used for the exlicit purpose of copying books, without paying for them.
This conflicts with a recent ruling (Score:3, Interesting)
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=california+
Just a few weeks ago the Supreme Court reviewed the Pavlovich case to decide jurisdiction (Pavlovich posted his website in Indiana and is now a resident of Texas). The courts ruled that merely posting a website does not give California jurisdiction. The Supreme Court put a stay on that decision for a week and then let the stay expire -- reducing the chances the case would make it on appeal to the high court.
Based on the findings in this case and the Supreme Court's seeming approval, the ruling against Kazaa directly contradicts previous precedents.
Re:was fun while it lasted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:was fun while it lasted (Score:2, Interesting)
It would take time for FT to equal that, seeing as how KL seems to be the only popular alternative (not counting giFT; different network, IIRC).
It makes me wonder if Shareaza, the closed source Gnutella/Gnutella2 client, is doing the right thing by not GPLing the souce until the technology is ready to prevent rogue clients.
Damn AOL! Damn them and their buying-up-software-companies ways! (Refer to the history of Nullsoft for more on this.)
And P2P wan Kenobi sez... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:was fun while it lasted (Score:4, Funny)
Re:US Rules (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole attitude seems reflected in US fiction such as Star Trek, StarGate. The US ideas of justice are taken as entirely good, and applicable to even alien races. Notice that the intergalactic federations in these programs are centered around the Earth, and even perhaps around America, and uphold entirely America's ideals.
America not only seems to overstep the mark, but seems to do it acting entirely in its own selfish interests. Acceptance of American software patents would cripple foriegn software industries as America grabs what it terms "intellectual property rights" over our ideas - without a chance for us to compete as we don't yet have the ability to create such patents for ourselves. It would be like invading a foreign country and claiming ownership of all of its land for American exploitation.
I wonder if Microsoft would be treated so leniently if they were not an American company. I wonder, in this case, if the country that they were based in would come under similar political pressures as Iraq.
- Richard
Re:i thought that this coulndt happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Porn, as well, is freely available in some places without Kazaa, and most of the Kazaa porn is pirated as well. (I'm sure all those ripped porno DVDs were public domain, right?)
HTML is just a language. You can use English to say something illegally too.
Firstly, FTP has greater accountability. You can't open a Warez FTP site to the public and not get caught. And secondly, FTP was created to transfer files, not to transfer files *AND* mask identities *AND* advertise to pirates.
Kazaa knows that a ton of people are using their network to illegally traffic things, and so they can get money by advertising to them. They know that illegal activity is rampant on their network, and they don't monitor it or report it, which is basically aiding and abetting. So I guess if you wanted to get really technical, we could make a federal case out of this...?
But, going strictly on intent, they are knowingly aiding pirates, which means less money is making it into the hands of the people that are supposed to be getting paid for their work, which means civil suit, and a completely justified one in my opinion.
Substitute "KaZaA" with "ISPs" (Score:3, Insightful)
P2P might have more illegal stuff than Internet in general, but I'm pretty sure those mp3s/divxs add up to quite a bit of the total Internet traffic too. You want to ban "Internet" too, reducing it to "approved services"? Or have your ISP monitor everything you do?
Your blurb about how FTPs are more "accountable" doesn't make any sense to me. Do you know how many "public" (ie. you don't know who the other person is in real life) FTP sites (or for that matter, HTTP sites) you can find with warez, of which about 0.000000001% ever get caught?
As the recent action in Denmark shows, where lots of people were fined for illegally downloading stuff from KaZaA, it can be done. It's just that there are litterally millions of people blatantly breaking the law. And the legal system was never made to be able to deal with "everybody" breaking the law. Kinda like minor speeding. At least here, you could pull everybody off the road and fine them for driving 3MPH over the limit. They don't though, they take the drunk drivers and the road bullies. Same goes for copyright infringement, the police won't give a rats ass about small stuff. The RIAA might try to create a few examples, but it won't really work.
The only thing that could happen is that a real distributed P2P network would take over, like gnutella or similar. No central server, no software company "in control" of the program, just users. At which point I'm sure they'll try to ban it altogether, like that South-American country that wanted to ban VoIP (by banning UDP).
Kjella
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
There is nothing that gives FTP accountability. First, you can't open a warez P2P collection to the public and not get caught either - the instant you start downloading it, you can pull an IP address - exactly as much information as FTP provides. But the analogy is flawed - FTP as a protocol is designed to efficiently transfer files. P2P's design is more of a high-availabilty, low capacity system - hence the massively parallel searching, and consequent slow downloads. P2P's ability to transfer files is an add-on - just like HTTP's ability to send cookies is really an add-on. And finally, the advertising is entirely a separate entity. There is no practical reason P2P clients need advertising, there simply hasn't been a popular non-advertising client yet. Advertising provides a source of income for the development of easy-to-use P2P clients - it's no more a part of the network than the ads you see on TV are a part of the show you're watching.
And the people who make guns are aiding and abetting murdurers and the people who make CD burners are aiding and abetting pirates (never mind me who uses it to make off-computer backups of important data). This is an old argument. A while ago, I read a news report about a carjacker who had the bad idea of stealing a car from a group of judo students on their way to a tournament. A bad choice for him... the police, though, were very careful to note that they recommended people NOT attempt to stop carjackers - it's the police's job, they have the training and responsibility to stop carjackings, and everyone else doesn't. This is a similar situation - there is no law demanding that Kazaa take responsibility to police it's own network. Now, they could voluntarily, but it's not their responsibility - nor is it within their capabilities. The difference from Napster? Napster decided to attempt to filter their network, and essentially took responsibility - then failed to succeed. Admittedly Kazaa is being actively hostile to the idea of policing their network - but it's not their job. It's the job of the government - and probably some as-yet-uncreated federal agency. (I wouldn't be happy about such an agency, but I think it's inevitable.)
Conceeded. Deliberately avoiding a resolution to the problem is exactly in keeping with a civil suit. But only a civil suit - this line couldn't go to a criminal case (perhaps that is why the lawyers are making it a civil case?). AND the court has to have the jurisdiction over BOTH parties to institute a resolution to the problem. My opinion is that I doubt the ruling will stand on appeal, but even if it does, the rest of the posters in this thread are exactly correct - the California judge can't do a thing to the company. It's not like there are assets to freeze, a company charter from the state to revoke, or any such matters - the judge's abilities will be restricted to banning future business dealings and throwing around contempt warrents, and will be completely ineffective at actually stopping abuses.
I may be rare among the Slashdot crowd for agreeing (for the most part) with copyright law (my qualms are about overpricing only - which means I actually DO buy much of the stuff I've downloaded in the past. Which amounted to about one movie and a dozen songs). But I really hate how the MPAA/RIAA goes for a publicity-stunt, slap-on-the-wrist lawsuit instead of doing something constructive.
Re:Good (Score:2)
That just raises the issue of accountability again. Modern P2P networks are designed to mask identity, to aid people in obtaining what they want, when they want, without having to pay for it (and to find it easily). In a store, people would see you, remember your face in case you got away, attempt to detain you, and call the police to throw you in prison.