Kazaa To Sue Entertainment Industry For Copyright Infringement
from the no-joke dept
In a move that seems likely to backfire on them partly out of the audacity of the move, Sharman Networks, the company behind Kazaa, can now sue record labels and Hollywood studios for copyright infringement. We had briefly mentioned this case back in September, but now it's been given permission to move forward. Sharman claims that the entertainment companies violated copyright law by using Kazaa Lite (which is not actually associated with Kazaa) to get on the network and monitor the file trading that was occurring. At the same time, they claim that those same companies broke the terms of service of Kazaa by sending threatening instant messages to file traders, warning them that they were distributing unauthorized music files. Sharman clearly has a stronger copyright case against the industry than the industry does against them (in that they're actually accusing the companies of copyright violation, rather than just "facilitating" copyright violations) - but, it still seems like a long shot that could reflect badly on them in their other efforts.
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Forget sueing them.....
Change the license agreements such that it forbids the use of any data (username, IP, etc) from being used in subsequent court procedings. Even if that got thrown out it might not be bad to set limits on what you can do with a software license.
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Re: Forget sueing them.....
If you know someone's violating your IP, can you essentially hack their network to find proof? Or is that hacking in and of itself a crime, and violation of the terms of service by which you are granted access to the network to begin with? This case could really set the pricident for what comes next, and in effect, what does comes next. I wait with anticipation.
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