Do you still use Kazaa? Options

[tofumonzter]

Do you still use Kazaa or those Peer-2-Peer software?

The servers are in Denmark. The software is in Estonia. The domain is registered Down Under, the corporation on a tiny island in the South Pacific. The users - 60 million of them - are everywhere around the world. The next Napster? Think bigger. And pity the poor copyright cops trying to pull the plug.

By Todd Woody

On October 2, 2001, the weight of the global entertainment industry came crashing down on Niklas Zennström, cofounder of Kazaa, the wildly popular file-sharing service. That was the day every major American music label and movie studio filed suit against his company. Their goal was to shutter the service and shut down the tens of millions of people sharing billions of copyrighted music, video, and software files. Only problem: Stopping Napster, which indexed songs on its servers, was easy - the recording industry took the company to court for copyright infringement, and a judge pulled the plug. With Kazaa, users trade files through thousands of anonymous "supernodes." There is no plug to pull.


Michele Aboud
Nikki Hemming, CEO of Sharman Networks, contracted by LEF Interactive, owner of Kazaa. 
Nor, as attorneys would soon discover, was there even a single outfit to shut down. That's because on a January morning three months after the suit was filed, Amsterdam-based Kazaa.com went dark and Zennström vanished. Days later, the company was reborn with a structure as decentralized as Kazaa's peer-to-peer service itself. Zennström, a Swedish citizen, transferred control of the software's code to Blastoise, a strangely crafted company with operations off the coast of Britain - on a remote island renowned as a tax haven - and in Estonia, a notorious safe harbor for intellectual property pirates. And that was just the start.

Ownership of the Kazaa interface went to Sharman Networks, a business formed days earlier in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, another tax haven. Sharman, which runs its servers in Denmark, obtained a license for Zennström's technology, FastTrack. The Kazaa.com domain, on the other hand, was registered to an Australian firm called LEF Interactive - for the French revolutionary slogan, liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Confused? So were the copyright cops. "It's hard to know which one to sue," complains Michael Speck, an investigator with the Australian Record Industry Association. Hollywood lawyers figured the best way to bring Kazaa to justice was to squeeze Sharman. Trouble was, Sharman, which operates out of Sydney, had no employees. All its workers, including CEO Nikki Hemming, are contracted through LEF. The names of Sharman's investors and board members are locked away in Vanuatu, a republic that bills itself as an asylum whose "strict code of secrecy" is "useful in any number of circumstances where the confidentiality of ownership, or control, want to be preserved."

Why all the subterfuge? It's an international business model for the post-Napster era. A close look at Kazaa reveals a corporate nesting doll that frustrated Hollywood attorneys for more than a year. From Estonia to Australia, they pleaded with courts to force Kazaa's operators out from the shadows. Meanwhile, every week that Sharman was able to hold the law at bay, countless copies of Kazaa software were being downloaded. In the last six months alone, PC users have downloaded more than 90 million copies. Kazaa has 60 million users around the world and 22 million in the US - an irresistible audience to marketers. Last year, Sharman raked in millions from US advertisers like Netflix and DirecTV, without spending a penny on content. The chase could have gone on forever.

And then, suddenly, a few days before Thanksgiving, it ended.

Hollywood's disdain for file-sharing can be measured in the 10-foot stack of papers that make up Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios v. Grokster et al., which sits on file in the Los Angeles federal courthouse. In the suit, a roster of entertainment conglomerates accuse FastTrack-enabled services Kazaa, Morpheus, and Grokster of profiting from a "21st-century piratical bazaar." Record labels and movie studios want the services closed and fined $150,000 for each illegally traded song or movie. Given the billions of files changing hands every week, the damages could be astronomical.

With US operations, Grokster and Morpheus were easy to pin down. But before attorneys could make their case against Kazaa, they had to find Sharman, which hadn't left so much as a paper trail to the US. Many of its contracts with US companies are negotiated through LEF, whose sole director is, not coincidentally, Nikki Hemming. So the lawyers asked their Australian counterparts to track her down. "They're doing everything they can to avoid being located," grumbles Richard Mallett, an executive with the Australasian Performing Right Association. One Australian attorney invoked the Hague Convention to obtain a court order compelling Hemming to turn over documents. Even then, the lawyer claims it took the subpoena server a week of cat-and-mouse games to corner her.

Finally, the company decided to stop running. Hemming chose to be deposed in Vancouver; she feared that simply stepping foot in the US could complicate matters. Likewise, she didn't show up at the late-November jurisdiction hearing in Los Angeles. Sharman's lawyers were there, however. The question before US District Court judge Stephen Wilson was simple: Does Sharman do enough business in the US to be lawfully included as part of the Morpheus-Grokster lawsuit? But the proceeding quickly became a referendum on the company's alleged sins. "Sharman has done everything it can to exploit and enhance the copyright-infringing activity of its members," said the industry's lead attorney David Kendall. "There is no intention to promote wrongful uses," countered Sharman lawyer Rod Dorman. "Is my client aware that people do that? Yes."

"I realize that some of these issues are uncharted," the judge told the attorneys. "I'm inclined to find there is jurisdiction against Sharman."

It was bad news for Sharman but, with the hearing on the industry's home turf, not surprising. Sharman has been preparing for litigation. For months, the company has been bundling Kazaa with Altnet, a P2P network that delivers encrypted songs, movies, and videogames. But while Kazaa downloads are free, Altnet works on a micropayment model - and has attracted legitimate technology and entertainment clients. As a result, Sharman is ready to argue that Kazaa can be put to legal uses and so, under the law, does not violate copyright statutes. With Altnet, Sharman has begun the transformation to an upstanding business.

Can a company built on the trafficking of other people's property shed the secrecy surrounding its operations and go legit? Hollywood's pinstriped suits think they know the answer to that question - it's a ruse. For every legal file on Altnet, there are millions of illegal ones on Kazaa. Altnet may be a good idea by itself, but on the back of Kazaa, it's one more tactic to delay prosecution while Sharman sells more advertising.

tell us what you think------------>

[DIRTYdirt]

wow... so much baggage in kazza and the whole sharman network thingy... im suprised that in using a software that has roots from Amsterdam to the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. interesting article .... so wat happens now... is kazza allowed to run legally?.. and how aboout the clients of kazza.. like you and me that "share" files... r we apart of this contreversal law suit

[Mireh]

I deleted KaZaA a while ago... I thought I would be arrested...peh

[insertusername]

Erm... I use Kazaa Lite...

[*kryogenix*]

not really. i don't listen to music

[silver]

if you used kazaa lite you don't get caught?

._.

i deleted it because so many people around here got warnings

[nas]

http://www.slsk.org

[*Podomaht*]

lmao kazaa haha

kaaa is a bitch to use. i hate kazaa. DC++,mIRC and winmx owns

[Maria]

i stopped using regular kazaa a while back .. but now i use kazaa lite k++ but what sucks is that if you wanna get it now, you hafta pay .$$$. luckily i got it before, and it`s still free

i have winmx too, but i don`t really use it ..

[*kryogenix*]

go mIRC and bittorrent

[wayne]

bleh, forget all those programs, I go to the store and steal music! HAHAHAHA! J/K

[*Podomaht*]

  bleh, forget all those programs, I go to the store and steal music! HAHAHAHA! J/K

hey!!!! i do that too!! we must be twins!!

[chopstix-ninja]

use bittorrent.. good for animes. like NARUTO!!! GO SASUKE!

[conster]

i used to have kazaa lol but my friends told me a girl got sued like $1,000 per song.. so i was like ... heh if u want u can try imesh.com its pretty good

[casssy]

nope i have so many cds

[jeppu]

bt k-lite/kazaa winmx etcetc etc alll blocked -- the only way to get new releases for me at university is to wait in long queues on mIRC . lol

but at home -- bittorent is godsend

[hybrid]

Kazaa slows down my computer. That's why I deleted it a long long time ago

[tofumonzter]

guyss..

peer-2-peer softwares are:

kazaa
kazaa lite
limewire
........and software that share stuff... it`s all illegall...

but i still wanna use kazaa lite.. hahaha...

[aznhybriddragon]

Even With Kazza Lite, U can Still Be Sued, u know, nothing thats P2P is safe now and days, Nothing............... But yea I use Mirc mostly

[aj637]

i barely download anything off kazaa anymore even though i still have it. i mostly get my music from links. the ghetto-isT way to get music but it w0rkss =)

[pinoyboi312]

Just dont share your files. Easy as that. I use Grokster and Limewire.

[insertusername]

i stopped using regular kazaa a while back .. but now i use kazaa lite k++ but what sucks is that if you wanna get it now, you hafta pay .$$$. luckily i got it before, and it`s still free

i have winmx too, but i don`t really use it ..

Kazaa Lite K++ is still free.

[xstyles]

i don't trust kazaa (crashed my pc) so i've used winmx n i'd had no problems ever since, but kazaa if better in downloadin videos

[Maria]

Kazaa Lite K++ is still free.

i couldn`t get to that link you put ..

[blahblahx3]

i LOVED kazaa...use to dl...all this stuff...then my dad banned it from meeh...then i got it bak...and hid...it...then...my dad sed they caught 300 more ppl and r suing em...skared...NO MORE....let other ppl dl...and get in trouble hahahaha...jp jp...i just go to sites now...if i can...or have ppl who go to hong kong buy me bootleg kopies! hahahaha