Lawyers for Australia's recording industry are set to go to trial Monday against Sharman Networks, the owners of the popular KaZaA file sharing software. The strategy is to file a civil case to hold the software company liable for breach of copyright and loss of earnings by providing tools to users to help accomplish such acts. They are being sued as an enabler it seems, or at least for turning a blind eye to the alleged misuse.
|
The entertainment industry already has sued file-sharing services in the United States. Two federal courts in California have cleared Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc. of liability, though the industry has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Sharman is named in a similar suit whose ruling is pending in a lower court. Analysts say the U.S. cases likely will not affect the Sydney trial, but all share the principle that a software developer is not directly responsible for the activities of its users, just as Xerox cannot be blamed for copying done on its machines. Kazaa already has one major court victory under its belt. In December 2003, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that Kazaa's Netherlands division cannot be held liable for copyright infringement. |
This does seem identical to the situation we had in the United States. Of course a court in another land will not have any bearing on the case. We have seen this already, as in Canada's attitude towards filesharing, that legal logic can be quite varied. In Canada, it is just fine to download all you want. Just don't upload anything that's not considered legal at all.
Source: CNN International
