The Australian record labels, through the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), intend to ask Australia's Federal Court to shutter the Sharman Networks Kazaa file sharing network, ARIA CEO Stephen Peach said this week.
Peach said the Federal Court had given Sharman until December 5 to include a 3,000-word filter in its Kazaa file-sharing software in order to block the downloading of copyrighted music tracks.
Instead, Sharman, by its own admission, blocked Australian users' access to the Kazaa site and warned Kazaa users in Australia to uninstall the software.
However, Australians who had already downloaded and installed the Kazaa software can continue to use the file-swapping service without restriction--as can Kazaa users worldwide. The only thing Sharman's move does is to make it impossible for Australians to download the Kazaa software. They can still install it if someone e-mails it to them, sends it by instant messenger or posts it on another P2P service for downloading.
"From our point of view they have clearly breached an existing court order. They have failed to implement the keyword filters that the court ordered on the last occasion," Peach said. "Unfortunately we'll be back to court. It'll be sooner rather than later."
The notice on the Kazaa Web site said, "Attention users in Australia. To comply with the Federal Court of Australia, pending an appeal in the February 2006, use of the Kazaa Media Desktop is not permitted by persons in Australia. If you are in Australia you must not download or use the Kazaa Media Desktop."
"Sharman has thumbed its nose at the court," said Peach. "They were given a chance to do the right thing and they've ruined it. They again have shown they intend to do nothing about the illegal activities occurring on a massive scale on their system."
When Justice Wilcox ordered Sharman to use the filter, he said, "I can't help feeling that if you could wipe out the 3,000 most popular tunes which would no doubt include the current pop favorites and you could update that, I think on a fortnightly basis, I think that is reasonable for a limited period. You are going to significantly affect the amount of damage that has occurred."
Sharman evidently understood or pretended to misunderstood Wilcox' order differently than the labels did. A December 7 press release from Sharman made it seem like it's business as usual: "Yesterday, Sharman Networks announced that it had complied with Wilcox' Order 4 of the 5 September Judgment by ceasing distribution of the Kazaa application in Australia before midnight on 5 December 2005, and using proven "geotargetting" technology and warnings prohibiting existing users from using the application. For Sharman Networks, it otherwise remains business as usual."
Sharman added, "The judgment pertained to authorization of copyright in Australia. All activity that could be deemed as authorizing has stopped so as to comply with the court orders, pending the imminent appeal in February."
Not mentioned in the Sharman press release is the subject of filtering, which the Federal Court of Australia ordered Sharman to implement as an interim step. The 3,000-word filter, which the labels submit to Sharman and update every two weeks, is designed to prevent the more popular songs from being illegally downloaded.
After finding Sharman guilty of copyright infringement on a massive scale, the judge ordered the implementation of a keyword filter as a condition of a stay on the copyright judgment. Without the filter, the Kazaa site is to be shut down.
The 3,000-keyword filter is to apply to all users, not just those in Australia. Initially the record labels wanted Kazaa to filter 10,000 words.
"It's now time for Sharman to match their words with action," Peach said.
Geo-targeting software identifies which country an Internet user is located in and can prevent the person from accessing specified sites. The BBC uses geo-targeting software to prevent non-BBC residents from accessing its online TV and music programs.
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