Kazaa CEO's Assets to be Examined

By Ed Oswald | Published November 17, 2005, 4:45 PM

If you believe the ruling of the Australian Court, Nikki Hemming made her money by taking advantage of thousands of Internet users' apparent careless attitude towards piracy.

On Thursday, an Australian judge ordered Hemming, the Sharman Networks CEO, to face cross-examination on her assets from record industry lawyers.

Sharman Networks was found guilty of copyright infringement on its Kazaa file-sharing network in September. The service was given a period of two months to eliminate piracy on its network, and a hearing to set damages was scheduled for early next year.

The ruling was another win for the record industry, who asked the court to order the disclosure of Sharman executives' assets after the sale of Hemming's mansion to a Sharman accountant in March. She has remained in the house since that time.

Judge Michael Moore said the sale -- and the way it was handled -- raised questions as to its purpose. For example, the sale took place five days after the company received the outline of the record industry's case.

"One can infer that the strengths and weaknesses of the respective cases would have been apparent to the parties and those advising them," Moore wrote in the ruling. "Greater clarity about this matter may arise from the cross-examination."

Sharman expressed its disappointment with the decision in a statement on Thursday, and said it would consider its options in the matter.

Comments

Kazaa? People still use that?

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What do you use?

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There's a Judge Michael Moore in Australia?

Interesting...should name a son that and see what happens. :P

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OK, so a mob boss is up on racketeering charges, and in an attempt to hide assets, sells or gives ownership to assets so they can't be taken..

Did I miss anything?

If I could be sued, I sure as hell would sell or give over everything I had as much as possible, so they can't come after my entire estate.. Yeah, I call that creative accounting, but its not illegal...

And its piracy... stealing is stealing, you can trust a thief? WTF?

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kazaa downloads are free, so i guess they got rich from the adware they installed on millions of computers?

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this is not even p2p ...is just spyware and adware installed in a computer

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Just FYI it is illegal to get rid of your assets if that is your reason; to avoid getting it taken away by the courts.

It works the same way with stocks. If you know your company is going to loss money because of a bad deal and you own stock in said such company, then your not allowed to do anything. Just take the hit.

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"stealing is stealing"

No one in this case was accused of stealing.
Irrelevant repetition is irrelevant repetition.

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OK, lets stop repitition, its repetitive, its redundant, its over and over, and the same thing all over again, and its getting repitious..

So stop, desist, quit, and otherwise cease to be repetitive, and quit repeating yourself. Quit repeating yourself..

One more time, quit repeating yourself.. :)

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