Kazaa to Sue Movie, Record Companies

[bilu]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/24/168235

Sharman, targeted by studios and record companies because its software is used to trade music and video files, has sought to turn the tables on the industry, accusing it of misusing Kazaa software to invade users' privacy and send corrupt files and threatening messages.

Bilu

[Sirber]

good :D

But someone should sue Kazaa for massive adware distribution... :devil:

[Wilbert]

Studios and record companies had asked the court to throw out Sharman's countersuit, but U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles declined to do so.
Anyhow, pretty much pointless. To quote a reader from slashdot:


Well, it's AN argument, but not the best argument. They seem to have chosen this case based on ironic value rather than legal value. ie, "Oh look! Kazaa is suing the RIAA for the exact same thing the RIAA sued them for! That's t3h funny!"
One problem I see is that they're attempting to sue them for using KazaaLite, in violation of Kazaa's license agreement. Which means they are attempting to enforce an agreement that the RIAA may have never signed. And it would be a whole lot easier to hit KazaaLite with an IP infringement case than users thereof. The argument CAN be made, but it's not a very strong one. (it would be, as I see it, basically equivilent to suing a kid for wearing an unlicensed Simpsons T-shirt - in strict legal terms it might be illegal, but it's very problematic to argue. To begin with, you'd have to establish malicious intent and some sort of knowledge that the product in question was illegitimate)

About EULAs / licence agreements (a quote from someone else):

This is actually good news, because If the RIAA wins, it effectively destroys the credibility of click through or shrinkwrapped contracts. That means that suddenly everything you've ever clicked yes too becomes null and void.

I actually hope the RIAA wins this one, it'll mean the end of all the stupid crap that I have to deal with when i have to reinstall a friends windows box.

Another nice quote about DMCA and copyright law:
The FastTrack network (KaZaa), supports multisourced downloading. This cannot be changed in the settings. So, here's the problem: When the RIAA goes to court, how are they proving that the downloads haven't been multisourced from different people? Because if they are, at worst they're only proving that the client had SOME of A FILE which happened to come together into the song in the end. For instance, let's say I had a song that began as a sample from an RIAA-copyrighted song but then broke into a song that I created. If they're using multiple sources, how can they prove that the song they have isn't the beginning of their song with a middle and end that belong to me?

But what if, to avoid the above legal problem, the RIAA made their own client that did not support multisourced downloads, which is what I believe they have done. Wouldn't this require them to reverse-engineer the KaZaa client, and wouldn't THAT put them in violation of the DMCA AND general software copyright law since they are using it to make a profit [thestreet.com]?

We will see what comes out of it :)