Kazaa to become legal service must pay massive fine

July 27, 2006

GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us the popular file-sharing site Kazaa, has
announced it's intent to become a legal music download service. This is on
the heels of several high profile legal battles. Kazaa has also agreed to pay
out a staggering $100m (Â£53m) in damages to the record industry. The music
industry has claimed that some 20 billion music files have been downloaded
illegally in the last year and point to such peer to peer networks as a root
cause of continuing losses.

"We have won another battle in an ongoing war," said John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI).We move forward with a spring in
our step."

Kazaa follows other sites like Napster
which now offers legal downloads. Mark Mulligan, an analyst with Jupiter
Research said the amount of damages that Kazaa are willing to pay
demonstrates how big the service had become. "$100m is half of the
legitimate music downloads market in Europe," he
said.

Yeah, I'd have a spring in my step as well. Here we see
again, where a software provider is held responsible for the actions of it's
users. This can be done if it is obvious that the bulk of the activity for
such a product is for illegal actions. The part of this story that seems
most incredible, is that Kazaa could somehow pay the "record industry"
whoever that is, 100 million dollars in damages. Even Jupiter
research admits, this is half of the total legal music download market in
Europe. Notice this is not half the profit, this is half the market. Let's hope
they get the friendly time payment plan with a no-interest
guarantee!

Source: BBC