Tag archive: Kazaa

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner of Boston was handling the case of Joel Tenenbaum versus the Recording Industry Association of America. Tenenbaum had been found guilty of using file-sharing software Kazaa to download and share 30 tracks. The original amount of damages to be awarded to the RIAA was $22,500 per song, but was reduced by Judge Gertner down to $2,250 per song making the full payment $67,500. She originally… Read More

A federal court has reduced the damages award against the Jammie Thomas-Rasset from $62,500 for each song she's accused of sharing over peer-to-peer networks to $2,250 per song, bringing the total penalties against Thomas Rasset from $1.5 million to $54,000. Judge Michael Davis — who has presided over many incarnations of the case, wrote in his decision: “The Court concludes that an award of $1.5 million for stealing and… Read More

In her third round in court, Jammie Thomas-Rasset has once again been found guilty of downloading and sharing 24 songs on Kazaa. This time, she has been ordered to cough up $1.5 million for a couple dozen tunes, which allegedly included Green Day and Aerosmith. Earlier this year, when Thomas-Rasset was found guilty for the second time, she was ordered to pay nearly $2 million, but the judge in her case ruled that was “monstrous and shocking,”… Read More

File sharing pioneers Janus Friis with Niklas Zennström are back again: after launching Kazaa, turning their attention to VoIP and launching Skype (and dare we mention Joost?) and enduring years of court battles and corporate negotiations, Friis and Zennström are back with Rdio, an all-you-can-eat subscription-based music service aimed at Web and smartphone users. But Rdio won't just be a run-of-the-mill music service: it aims… Read More

Cable operator Comcast has agreed to pay some $16 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over selectively blocking traffic from peer-to-peer networking applications in the name of “network management.” The case goes back to 2007 when the Associated Press first exposed Comcast blocking BitTorrent uploads by forging shutdown messages; the practice was later confirmed, and the Federal Communications Commissions sanctioned Comcast… Read More

Sharman Networks, owners of the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing service, announced today that they have settled all litigation with four of the world's largest music publishers (Universal, Sony BMG, EMI, and Warner Music) for $100 million, and immediately commits to “going legal” and using Kazaa to distribute only licences content. Sharman has also settled with the Motion Picture Association of America (PDF), which said… Read More

Corporate officers at Sharman Networks, operators of Australia's Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing service, could face jail time if a judge finds them in contempt of court for failing to implement search filtering technology designed to prevent the illegal trade of copyrighted material. In late November, Australian Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox ordered that Kazaa must deploy search filtering technology by December 5, 2005 to… Read More

An Australian court has ruled that the peer-to-peer file sharing network Kazaa authorized copyright infringement by knowingly permitting infringing material to traverse its system, and, furthermore, encouraged such infringement because it was in Sharman's financial interest. The suit was brought by Australian record companies and units of international record companies such as Universal Music, Sony, and EMI. Kazaa is currently… Read More

In the federal lawsuit, Fabian Toader, who now lives in Redmond, Wash., claims he wrote the computer code for the Kazaa program in 2000 while working in Romania on a freelance basis for Kazaa B.V., which sold the rights to the software in 2002 to Sharman Networks Ltd. Mr. Toader claims he never signed a contract with Kazaa B.V. and asserts that, under copyright laws in the United States and Romania, he is the copyright owner of the… Read More

Look out Recording Industry Association of America. Web surfers wanting information about the Kazaa peer to peer file sharing program pushed the software to the top of Yahoo's list of the most popular search terms in 2003, beating out media heavyweights such as Harry Potter and Britney Spears, Yahoo said on Monday. The annual report lists the top 10 most frequently searched-for terms on Yahoo's search engine over the entire year… Read More

The decision upheld a 2002 appellate-court verdict in Amsterdam that dismissed a suit filed by Buma/Stemra, which protects the interests of the music industry. Buma/Stemra had demanded that Kazaa stop offering free downloads from its Web site, or face a daily fine of $124,000. Kazaa's Media Desktop software is one of a variety of file swapping programs used by tens of millions of people worldwide. Kazaa alone has 3 million to 4… Read More

Turning the tables on record labels, makers of the most popular Internet song-swapping network are suing entertainment companies for copyright infringement. Sharman Networks Ltd., the company behind the Kazaa file-sharing software, filed a federal lawsuit Monday accusing the entertainment companies of using unauthorized versions of its software in their efforts to root out users. Entertainment companies have offered bogus versions of… Read More