Really good news from the file-swapping side. The Dutch court has declared that the file-swapping service KaZaA is not responsible for the files that are shared on the network.
The judge in this case noticed the difference between Napster(Centralized network) and KaZaA (decentralized network) and decided that the developers of the software could not be held responsible for any illegal activities deployed by users of the software.
The Amsterdam Court of Justice ruled that Kazaa was not liable for any individuals' abuse of its software, which is being used by millions of people around the world every day to swap copyright-protected games, music, pictures and films.
"We are stunned by the verdict," a Buma Stemra spokesman in the Netherlands said, adding that the organization could appeal further to the High Court. But Niklas Zennstrom, the Swedish founder of Netherlands-based Kazaa and its technology provider FastTrack, heralded the decision as "a great victory for our company and for the whole technology sector."
However, he also said the ruling came too late to save Kazaa, whose main assets were sold after the initial ruling last year to Australian company Sharman Networks.
Zennstrom continues to run FastTrack, which developed and licenses the file-swapping software used by Kazaa and its U.S. peer Grokster.
As I live in the Netherlands I'm very satisfied with the results and I would say thumbs up to the judge ! It seems that you can at least in the Netherlands start a decentralized file-sharing network safely.
The future of KaZaA still remains a secret, I personally believe it will become a pay service once. But I think a lot of users will then just say one word: NEXT !
Source: Cnet.com
