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The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.

Krazy Kazaa Ruling

Still extremely busy in my world. I am still currently wading through all the red-tape I have to get through to settle the unit me and Despina are buying, but that is all fun-and-games that doesn't really need to be mentioned here.

In the news recently, is the Australian Federal Court ruling that the record companies won their case against the makers of the file-sharing program, Kazaa (the case was in Australia because the makers of Kazaa are based here). This totally baffles me for a few reasons: A file sharing program like Kazaa has a wholly legitimate purpose to it, and Kazaa strongly encouraged and encourages people not to use their software to share copyrighted material.

I like the whole car-analogy (or the similar photocopier one), which likens Kazaa to a car or a photocopier. Like a car or a photocopier, Kazaa is promoted as a product for legitimate use. It has its legitimate purpose, but can be used for illegal purposes. A car can be used to run over people (murder), rob banks, transport drugs, criminals etc etc, and the photocopier can be used to copy copyrighted material. But the car or photocopier manufacturers aren't sued because their products have the capacity to support illegal activity, as long as they don't encourage or promote such activity. They aren't responsible if people use their perfectly legitimate product for illegal purposes.

I think the same applies to Kazaa.

It is unreasonable to expect Kazaa to screen every piece of content that is shared on the internet through their program (whether it be pictures, movies, music, etc), even if that is possible (which in my opinion it isn't). It is just as unreasonable for car manufacturers to monitor the use of every single one of it's cars (and the scale is probably similar), or the same for photocopier manufacturers to monitor everything that is copied with their machines.

Anywho, that's my spiel. (and it's the first rant i've done in a long time!)

5 thoughts on “Krazy Kazaa Ruling”

  1. the makers of the program have no domain over the files that people share with the program, and i'm not sure but i don't think that they can actually check or have the right to check, breach of privacy.

    well that's what i think anyway.

    Reply
  2. so what's the essential difference here:
    *kazaa allows file-sharing, which makes each person into a download-upload facility.
    *internet explorer allows a download-upload facility.
    should explorer be sued because its users use it for illegal purposes? if not, why kazaa?
    a/s

    Reply
  3. Boys, boys, boys. You are overlooking a very minor but crucial detail. The Australian law court rulings are based on which party has the deepest pockets. That is, who ever has the most money wins.

    How can you expect a couple of computer geeks (said in the nicest possible way) who probably represented themselves compete with giant record labels who can afford to spend millions of dollars on flashy teams of lawyers.

    You do the math.

    Reply

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