Kazaa Owners Accused of Ignoring Order
Australian record companies on Tuesday accused owners of the popular Kazaa file-sharing software of ignoring a court order to install filters aimed at curbing music piracy by Kazaa users.
But Sharman Networks, which owns Kazaa, said they had complied with the order by preventing people in Australia downloading the latest version of the popular software.
"We have complied with the order," said Sharman spokeswoman Julie Fenwick. "We have closed down access to getting the current version in Australia ... if a user already has it on his computer, he will see warnings."
The moves were the latest in a long-running legal battle by the Australian record industry to shut down Kazaa, which it accuses of music piracy on a massive scale.
Industry lawyers claim Kazaa users download up to 3 billion files each month, freely exchanging songs, music and television programs without paying royalties to the copyright owners.
Federal Court judge Murray Wilcox last week gave Sharman until Tuesday to develop a new version of its Kazaa Media Desktop software with a filtering system built in which was to include 3,000 so-called keywords, most likely the names of popular recording artists.
Any searches containing those keywords would be blocked by the filter, in a move aimed at stopping Kazaa users from swapping their copyrighted material. Wilcox also told Sharman to use dialogue boxes to urge Kazaa users to download the new software.
Instead, when users log onto the http://www.Kazaa.com site in Australia, they are greeted by a page carrying a warning in red letters which says: "The download of the Kazaa Media Desktop by users in Australia is not permitted."
Australian users who try to download the software are prohibited from doing so.
Source: AP
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