The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) may have won its domestic battle against Napster, but as an increasing number of peer to peer providers develop overseas, it has become apparent that the file-swapping battle has really just begun. Its initial userbase was made up of users of the Morpheus program, formerly a client of MusicCity. However, once the official Kazaa client became more widespread, its developers used their ability to automatically update it, changing the protocol in February 2002 to shut out Morpheus clients when its developers failed to pay license fees. Like the creators of many similar products, Kazaa creators have been taken to court by music publishing bodies to restrict its use in the sharing of copyrighted material. A court of appeal in late March 2002 reversed the earlier judgement, stating that Kazaa was not responsible for the actions of its users. However, in 2002 Sharman Networkswas sued in Los Angeles by the RIAA and the MPAA. That lawsuit is still pending. Sharman Networksresponded with an antitrust countersuit, claiming that the major music labels had conspired to shut out Sharman's secure music distribution service based on Altnet. The suit was dismissed in July 2003. Sharman further claimed that it couldn't be sued in California as it lacked substantial contacts with the state; this claim was also dismissed in July 2003. (Good & Krekelberg:2004)
In September 2003, the RIAA filed suit in civil court against several private individuals who had shared large numbers of files with Kazaa; most of these suits were settled with small monetary payments. (Good & Krekelberg:2004)
On Feb. 6, 2004 the music industry's copyright enforcement arm, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) raided the Australian offices of Sharman Networks and Brilliant Digital Entertainment seeking documents and electronic evidence to support its case against the peer to peer company Kazaa. Specifically, the MIPI claimed that the raids executed on the Sharman premises may be in breach of Australia's Telecommunication Act. The service of Kazaa provides a completely different kind of service from Napsterand a whole new set of jurisdictional, legal and enforcement problems. This is predominantly due to the fact that Napster used a central server for filesharing, whereas Kazaa had no central server, however a series of interconnected servers. Understanding the usability and privacy function of Kazaa may narrow the speculation concerning Kazaa's legal rights and obligations. In February 2004, the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) announced its own legal action against Kazaa, alleging massive copyright breaches. The organization's chief piracy investigator said "This is the largest copyright infringement case in Australia", "these people are the largest infringers of copyright in the world", and added that their operation is "based almost entirely on illegal traffic."(http://www.aria.com.au, 2004) However, as the case continues in U.S and Australian courts, so to does the uncertainty of copyright in the digital age.
See also:
Australian Record Industry Association, 2004, retrieved on October 21, 2004 from URL:http://www.aria.com.au
Good.N and Krekelberg.A. (2004) Usability and privacy: a study of KAZZA P2P Filesharing, retrieved October 21, 2004 from URL:http://www.hpl.hp.com/shl/papers/kazza/KazzaUsability.pdf
Leuf,B. (2002) Peer to peer : collaboration and sharing over the Internet, Addison-Wesley, Boston
