Telco's Non-Denial Denials Of Sharing Call Records

Kazaa Owner Suing P2P News Site For Comments

from the bad-news dept

Wed, May 17th 2006 6:01pm — Mike Masnick

Someone who prefers to remain anonymous writes "It seems Sharman and Nikki Hemming have become court junkies... as if fighting copyright cases in both the United States and Australia isn't enough, now it appears they have turned on file sharing news site P2Pnet.net. Although owner operator Jon Newton is keeping quiet about the libel suit, Slyck.com has done some research and it appears that the Kazaa parties have lodged a civil action in the British Columbia Court of Appeals against him and his site. It also appears as though Jon is being sued, not for something he wrote, but for comments made on his site by members of the public." This is unfortunate for a variety of reasons. First, that Kazaa would go after a news site, but that they would sue the site for its comments. The case in Canada, where the laws may be different, but in the US it's pretty clear (still disputed in some areas) that the publisher of a website is not responsible for what others say on their site. This is the way things should be, as it would basically make any online forum impossible to run otherwise -- as the publisher would be entirely liable for all comments the publisher had no control over. Right now the details are still missing, but this is a strange move and one that seems to smack of desperation.

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8 Comments

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Leon, 17 May 2006 @ 6:52pm

WTF
Sue Happy bastard. Thats all I can say. Another sue happy bastard. He's getting f*cked in the A$$ so hes trying to take as many people down with him as he can.
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Bill, 17 May 2006 @ 7:41pm

Oh boy
I just love it how compainies nowadays are so concerned about copyright laws to the point of suing each other to death. I wonder how much better they would be if they put their money to better use...
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Nilt, 17 May 2006 @ 7:43pm

Re: WTF
It'd be helpful if you were a bit more specific. Without any access to the facts of the case at this stage, we just don't know enough to comment yet.

It may simply be a case of Sharman suing the site owner in an attempt to force the revelation of those who posted the allegedly libelous information. It may be a publicity stunt. We just don't know at this stage.

That's not to say I am defending Sharman. My gut reaction is to favor the little guy. Still, until we know more we are just babbling.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 May 2006 @ 11:29pm

Lets hope its just an attempt to find out who made the comments cos if Sharman and Hemming were really worried about their reputation in the p2p community it would have been a much better move to have demanded a full retraction and public appology rather than to take the litigation path... closing down p2pnet is not going to get people to move back to Kazaa, nor is it going to make up for whatever bad things were said about them
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p2pUnite, 17 May 2006 @ 11:38pm

can I just point out that the initial finding of it being sharman networks was first discovered by Emma at p2punite and not by slyck
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Ben McNelly, 18 May 2006 @ 6:56am

Kazaa sucks
Kazaa sucks.

In other news, Kazaa is suing TD For Comments.....
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Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2006 @ 6:29am

umm
who the hell uses kazaa anymore anyway

I can't believe people have still yet to discover IRC or torrents.
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null, 24 Jul 2006 @ 8:00pm

Re: Re: WTF
The aimini P2P 1.9.0.1 released and the all new aimini.net launch. http://www.aimini.net/

Aimini's users will can create sharing resource list on the website. The list contains personal information card and all type file: photo, video, music, software, games etc.

Aimini P2P software lets people communicate and collaborate over the Internet and corporate intranets, holding real-time communicatings where they can see, hear, and exchange information with each other. Aimini P2P software allows using PozID, IP, Hostname or URLs address to connect up in between users. Person to Person, direct connect up in between users, File Direct-Transfer, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, making for faster searches and downloads of all types.

Aimini P2P software supports industry standards and offers rich data transmission, audio transmission, and video transmission capabilities in a seamless, easy-to-use client. http://www.aimini.com/
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