Kazaa stands on the edge of a legal "maelstrom," and a Danish anti-piracy group mailed invoices to downloaders of copyrighted materials.
Kazaa's situation is discussed by John Borland:
- A Los Angeles federal judge heard arguments Monday as to whether record companies and movie studios can sue the parent company of Kazaa, the most popular online file-swapping service, in the United States.
Much of Kazaa's future, from a business and legal perspective, hangs on the judge's decision. The parent company, Sharman Networks, is headquartered in Australia and incorporated in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, and has tried to keep business contact with the United States to a minimum in order to decrease its legal risk.
If a judge says Sharman can be sued in the United States, Kazaa will get sucked into the same legal maelstrom that has grabbed Napster, Aimster, Audio Galaxy, Grokster and Morpheus, closing some of the popular services and threatening the existence of the others. The Kazaa case is the biggest yet in the recent copyright wars that have been testing the international reach of U.S. courts.
The judge did not rule on the issue Monday, but observers said he appeared ready to order Sharman to stand trial. A ruling is expected in the next several weeks.
"He seemed like he was pretty interested in keeping Sharman in the case," said Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual-property attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing Sharman rival Streamcast Networks in an associated case.
....If Sharman loses this round, the company will be added to a larger lawsuit ongoing against Streamcast Networks and Grokster, two rival file-swapping companies that use the same underlying technology as Sharman.
A critical hearing in that case will be held Dec. 2, in which both sides will argue that the case should be concluded immediately with a so-called summary judgment without going to a full trial. Each side is arguing for the completion of the case in its own favor.
The US counrts have not looked kindly upon P2P to this point.
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