RIANZ welcomes Kazaa verdict in AustraliaFor those of you who follow this sort of thing, you'll already be aware that the company behind file-sharing software Kazaa have recently lost an Australian court case bought against them by Universal Music Australia. The court found that...

...Sharman [the operator of Kazaa] has infringed upon the copyright of sound recording holders, and ordered that the companies involved be restrained from allowing Australian Kazaa users to violate copyrights. In a lengthy summary, Judge J. Wilcox ordered that Kazaa upgrade its file sharing system to include non-optional keyword filtering technology to exclude copyrighted works, that all future versions of the software must include the filtering, and that "maximum pressure" be applied to have users upgrade their software.

The same sort of thing happened to Napster a few years back, with the result being that everyone ditched that particular brand of p2p software for other ones which weren't so crippled by filtering. Even now, the ruling against Kazaa is fairly pointless, as more and more people are already switching to more efficient and faster p2p software like bittorrent, or the myriad of other freely available p2p programs that keep popping up. As much as the music industry would like to see an end to software like Napster, Kazaa and Bittorrent, it's a bit like shooting flies with a shotgun - you'll get one once in a while, but there's plenty more where that came from.

Anyway, here in NZ, the local industry bigwigs have obviously been watching the Australian trial with some interest. Campbell Smith, RIANZ CEO (amongst other employee-creating positions) welcomed the decision, and had this to say on the topic...

The fight against internet piracy is a priority for RIANZ and its members. While RIANZ now has clear international precedent for taking legal action against both users and operators of unauthorised file swapping networks in New Zealand, we hope these decisions provide a strong incentive to those parties to respect copyright and become legitimate. If they do not heed the warning and continue to break copyright laws, legal action is inevitable.

Crikey. It's at times like this that I wonder how sensible it is helping run (or, more accurately, neglect) both an mp3 blog and podcast site that both rely on copyrighted material for their content.
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