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An Australian court has given file-sharing network Kazaa until Dec. 5 to either filter copyrighted music from its system or shut down, music industry officials said on Thursday.The imposition of the deadline follows a ruling in September by the judge in Sydney that Kazaa users were breaching copyright and that the network's owners had to modify the software.Other global peer-to-peer (P2P) services, which distribute data between users instead of relying on a central server, also have come under fire from courts in recent months.Kazaa's operators, Sharman Networks, had appealed the judgment. But according to music industry trade group IFPI, the Australian court said that to avoid complete shutdown Kazaa must, as a first step, put in place a keyword filter system within 10 days.Sharman Networks had said it could not control the actions of an estimated 100 million users.
The Australian court ordered two "conclaves." These conclaves were gatherings of technical personnel from Sharman Networks and the ARIA.The first meeting went very well, and both sides appeared close to coming to an agreement. Sharman Networks' stance on filtering copyrighted material with Audible Magic appeared to be gathering support of the ARIA's technical crew, but not with their lawyer, Mr. Michael Williams.Distressed in the direction the meeting went and not favoring the Audible Magic solution, Mr. Williams pulled the plug on the second meeting. Quite simply, Mr. Williams ordered the music industry's technical crew to simply not show up. This meeting could have accomplished a tremendous amount, such as organizing Kazaa's filtering technology for the December 5th deadline.However, Judge Wilcox was infuriated with the Australian music industry for violating the court's order.Since the music industry did not show up, Judge Wilcox granted Sharman Networks a further stay until late February of 2006. Sharman will still have to work on filtering technology, as per the original ruling, but an amazing technical blunder by the Australian recording industry has prevented the immediate filtration of the FastTrack network.
Just before the stroke midnight in Sydney, Australia, the Kazaa homepage was altered as expected. Yet there are no pop-ups and no changes to the key word filter. Instead, large red letters appear towards the top of the homepage, warning Australians against the use of Kazaa. Attention Users in Australia: To comply with order of the Federal Court of Australia, pending an appeal in February 2006, use of the Kazaa Media Desktop is not permitted by persons in Australia. If you are in Australia, you must not download or use the Kazaa Media Desktop.Other than the above warning, it does not appear that Sharman Networks has made any changes to the Kazaa client. But to Australian users, a much different story exists. When an individual with an ".au" IP address attempts to reach Kazaa.com, an inhibitive website appears. The website warns users "Important Notice: The download of the Kazaa Media Desktop by users in Australia is not permitted."
The key element of this order between the respondents (Sharman) and the applicants (ARIA) called for agreement to filter unlicensed work. Judge Wilcox stayed this order for a period of two months from September 5th to allow both sides to agree to a successful filtering resolution. The first meeting went well, and it appeared Sharman Networks and the ARIA technical crews were about to settle on the proven "Audible Magic" fingerprinting solution. Judge Wilcox further stayed the order on October 12th, and both sides were given to December 5th to resolve their differences. Unfortunately the last meeting between the two, referred to as a conclave, never took place. The ARIA lawyers pulled out of the meeting at the last moment, which infuriated Judge Wilcox.Hence, there was no resolution to Order 5. Since the ARIA pulled out of the final meeting, Sharman Networks, perhaps serendipitously, was alleviated from having to abide by the order to filter copyrighted material (but must still work on an effective solution before their February appeal.) In an effort of good faith however, Sharman Networks did abide by Order 4, compliance of which is clearly in their control. The following is Order 4:4. The infringing respondents be restrained, by themselves, their servants or agents, from authorising Kazaa users to do in Australia any of the infringing acts, in relation to any sound recording of which any of the applicants is the copyright owner, without the licence of the relevant copyright owner.
