News Arhive: Australian Court Shields Kazaa Assets From Record Labels
A court decision Friday denied Australian recording companies the right to see the assets of Kazaa as they await a decision is their landmark case against the file-sharing server.
Kazaa allows users to share music and videos freely throughout the world without paying any fees. The record companies down under are going after the Australian-based Kazaa in the same way American companies infamously took down Napster. Kazaa's owners are being sued for copyright infringement and loss of earnings. The record companies wanted Kazaa to disclose their assets to the court while waiting for a decision because they want to know what they stand to gain if they win.
The labels’ lawyer, Tony Bannon, asked in the claim to stop Kazaa from being able to sell any of their assets in or outside of Australia. The claim came after Kevin Bermeister, the chief of Altnet — one of the companies that owns Kazaa — sold half of his multimillion dollar mansion to his wife and the mansion of Nikki Hemming, Kazaa's chief executive, was sold to the company’s accountant. The labels want this to stop before a settlement amount is reached in the case.
Mary Still, a lawyer for one of the companies that own Kazaa, says they’ll agree to not sell their assets, but not to show them to the courts until a final decision has been made. The hearing resumes on March 22. This is the second trial for the file-sharing company. In 2003, the Netherlands division of Kazaa won a suit in the Dutch Supreme Court saying the company wasn’t responsible for the copyright infringements.
On Friday, The British Phonographic Industry announced the illegal file-sharing lawsuits they were working on in England have been settled and now they have set new targets. Last year BPI took 23 people to court for file sharing and have now produced a fresh list of 31 potential offenders. The file sharers targeted are members of eight different P2P networks.
In the first cases, the 17 men and six women settled for an average of over $4,500 Canadian.
