RSSKazaa Owner Settles with Record Labels
By Ed Oswald | Published July 27, 2006, 12:09 PM
Sharman Networks, owner of the Kazaa P2P program, said Thursday that it had reached a settlement with the record industry that would immediately drop all pending litigation against the company. Sharman will also pay the industry more than $100 million and immediately go legal as a result of the agreement.
Filtering technologies will be introduced on the P2P service that will make it impossible to share illicit files. Kazaa's P2P technology would now only be used to trade legal files, the two sides said. Record industry advocates hailed the agreement, while Sharman said the distribution deal was a long standing goal of the company.
"This is the best possible outcome for the music industry and consumers. Our industry will have a new business partner and consumers will experience new ways of enjoying music online, with more choice," British record industry consortium IFPI CEO John Kennedy said. "This is a win-win scenario."
Sharman had hoped to create a system several years ago that would have allowed it to sell licensed tracks, however talks between the two sides fell apart. In an Australian case against the company, record industry lawyers said that afterwards Sharman became even more intent on spreading its software, creating a "copyright piracy engine."
While the record industry cast Kazaa mostly in a negative light in its remarks announcing the settlement, Sharman chose to accentuate the positives, saying it legitimized P2P as a download medium for digital content.
"All the parties involved now recognize the time is right to work together, and we are looking forward to collaborating with the music and motion picture companies to make P2P an integral part of the future of online digital entertainment," Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming said.
Supporters of P2P said that the settlement was welcome news, and claimed it would help the industry grow further. P2P Interest group The Distributed Computing Industry Association said that digital rights management systems have been proven to work in a peer-to-peer sharing environment.
"The Kazaa settlements should help advance commercial development of the P2P distribution channel," DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty. "Such conflict resolution represents a positive step for industry growth, removing an impediment to progress towards realizing the full potential of file-sharing technologies."
The DCIA represents some 80 members, consisting of peer-to-peer software providers, content rights holders and service-and-support companies.
But JupiterResearch analyst Mark Mulligan says the settlement is about two years too late, noting that Kazaa's reputation has been severely damaged through the legal wrangling and spyware issues that have plagued the company.
"it is questionable just how useful and large this new audience will be and also there are concerns about what such an association will do to the reputation of the music industry," he said.
Used to use KLR for music videos but now i use youtube smaller file sizes faster downloads can't ask for much more other than a decent freeware program to convert those .FLV files;)
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One program down, a few hundred more to go. They try so hard and do so little.
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There's always Limewire...
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...
Maybe Kazaa could load their product with
even ~more~ SPYWARE to raise money to
pay the recording industry.
...
The Computer Rodent
...
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$100 million? Don't you think that is a little much? I mean how much could they possibliy have made off Kazaa in the first place?
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You'd be surprised.
All the adware and crap bundled into it, plus the suckers who payed for the pro version.
I would say they made quite a few more 100 millions than that.
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I was wondering when they would finally cave. All I can say is that it's about time.Kazaa is nothing but a huge pile of spyware anyway. Nothing lost here but yet another headache.
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Thus dies KaZaa. Watch the users leave in thousands.
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Yeah... this is no surprise. Sherman Networks and Kazaa were raping their users with soem of the worst spyware commonly infecting computers. It only makes sense that they would try and join other like minded (ie: screw your customers) entities...
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For every big name File sharing company the RIAA bends to its will and makes a big deal about, hundereds of OpenNap channels and Torrent hosting sites are quietly created and pick up the slack.
They can't stop it; they can only hope to contain it.
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All I got to say is The Hell with the RIAA and MPAA. I use Kazaa Lite K++ which is still the number one P2P sharing software. As far as what happens to the RIAA and MPAA in the future, I Got Three Words For Ya! I'LL NEVER PAY!!!
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http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/p.../klite/klitekpp243e.exe
Tadaa.
Virus Scan it if you don't trust me ^_^
There may be a newer version, but I can't be bothered to look.
Do some hunting yourself.
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http://www.my-k-lite.com/index.php?page=downloads
That should do ya.
Latz, SB
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i still don't see how the manufacturers of a tool can be responsible for it's users actions. I don't care which company it is.
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agreed
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Well, the supreme court ruling was that it can't... unless the plaintiff can show that the manufacturer was encouraging/inducing illegal activity.
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yea I haven't used kazaa in years didn't even know it still existed
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I wonder who's next?
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Kazaa sucks anyway. It had its day, not to mention I am not suprised that the "Industry" bullied them as they do everyone else.
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