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The Internet Businesses Government Politics

Kazaa Blocks Australian Users 145

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the taking-my-ball-and-going-home dept.
afaik_ianal writes "The Sydney Morning herald is reporting that Kazaa is blocking Australian downloads of their client, just a day after the deadline passed for implementing keyword filters. According to the article, Shaman networks were still working on installing the filters yesterday."
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Kazaa Blocks Australian Users More

Kazaa Blocks Australian Users

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  • It's kind of funny... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Corsican Upstart ( 879857 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @10:34PM (#14190637)
    It's kind of funny.. they're based in Australia, and they can serve everyone but citizens of their own country...

    • Re:It's kind of funny... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kocsonya ( 141716 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @11:04PM (#14190768)
      > It's kind of funny.. they're based in Australia, and they can serve
      > everyone but citizens of their own country...

      What's new? The government in Canberra has been doing it for ages...
      • *sigh* if only i had mod points to blow.

      • Well, that's what happens when you don't have your parliament in your capital.

        Then the proles can keep an eye on them ;)

    • Re:It's kind of funny... (Score:5, Informative)

      by NoGuffCheck ( 746638 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @11:17PM (#14190811)
      While Sharman Networks is based in Australia here is the company structure:

      Sharman Networks was registered in Vanuatu in January 2002 as a private company that markets and owns Kazaa.
      Kazaa includes Kazaa Media Desktop, kazaa.com and kazza.n et.
      Sharman Networks has nil authorised capital and two ordinary issued shares.
      The shareholders are two companies: Global Nominees and Credit Facilities Limited.
      The beneficial owne rs are Vanuatu International Trust Company Ltd as a trustee for the Sharman Trust.
      Sharman License Holdings is 100 per cent owned by Sharman Networks, and the beneficial owner is Sharman Trust.
      Worldwide Nominees is the director of Sharman Networks and Sharman License Holdings.
      Worldwide Nominees is owned by Global Nominees and Credit Facilities Limited. The director is Geoffrey Gee and Regent Limited. Geoffrey Gee is a Vanuatu-based solicitor.
      The beneficial owner is Trustees International Limited as trustee for Golden Sands Trust.
      Global Nominees is a Vanuatuan company, the beneficial owners of which are the partners of Vanuatu accounting firm, BDO.
      Credit Facilities Limited, which is one of the nominal shareholders of the shares in Sharman Networks, is similarly a BDO company.
      Lindsay Barrett is a partner of BDO in Vanuatu. He's also director of Vanuatu International Trust Company, VITCO.
      VITCO is the trustee of the Sharman Trust and owner of the whole of the issued capital of Sharman Networks Limited.
      The nominated eligible beneficiaries as defined in the trust deed are the International Red Cross.
      The International Red Cross claims to have never been contacted about this. Nikki Hemming is listed as "director" of VITCO, which is the beneficial shareholder of the Sharman companies located in Vanuatu.
      Sharman operates in Australia via LEF Interactive.
      LEF is an Australian registered private proprietary limited company. Sole director is Nicola Anne Hemming, whose only property asset has been sold to Sharman accountant John Simon Myer.
      LEF has paid up capital of $1.00.
      If you can set up this sort of company structure and understand it, you deserve to live in a multi million dollar mansion.


      Now I cant remember what your question was but I hope my answer clears it up for you...
    • Out of pure interest, how many Australians like myself are active users of slashdot, it seems faily often amooung a great many American forums, like slashdot and the steam forums, i reguraly run into fellow aussies.

      By the way, like, 3 people will be pissed off by this slow and painful death of kazza.
      • By the way, like, 3 people will be pissed off by this slow and painful death of kazza.
        1. Kazaa is not yet dead, the network is still alive
        2. Even if Kazaa (Media Desktop) may no longer be distributed in Australia, there are still other clients which one can use.
        3. ... and other countries in which one can still download the client
        4. Last time I checked, the Kazaa network still had 3.000.000+ users online

        Dead? Hardly. Fake-file, porn-, virus-filled? Maybe. But it appears that a lot of people still use it and swea

    • Been there done that. It's the same situation with our online casinos. If they're based in Australia, they can accept customers from anywhere in the world except Australia. It defies imagination really...
  • Why are they voluntarily blocking downloads? It's not like there's a Great Firewall of Australia to block them, and they're not based in Au, so do they really have to cave in? Or are they doing it voluntarily for good karma?

    • Re:why listen? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @10:44PM (#14190676) Journal
      Why are they voluntarily blocking downloads? It's not like there's a Great Firewall of Australia to block them, and they're not based in Au

      From Wikipedia:
      Consumer Empowerment responded by selling the Kazaa application to a complicated mesh of offshore companies, primarily Sharman Networks, headquartered in Australia

      So actually, yes they are based in the AU. So yes, they kinda do have to follow rulings made by Australian courts.
    • They are doing it because they were given a date to block keywords and haven't managed to do it. This stops them getting a massive fine and being forcably shut down, I think.

      If I was being sceptical I would say that they were perfectly able to impliment the key word filtering but want to keep the network alive for anyone else around the world who uses it (if anyone still does, thought Kazaa died years ago)

      • Keyword filtering has very questionable legal standing as it implies ownership of the words and the ability to legally restrict the use of those individual words. The Australian court has way over stepped it bounds in attempting to to restrict the use of specific words for the financial benefit of others, in effect selling the legal rights to those individual words, copyright abuse at it's worst.
    • They are based in Australia...

      -everphilski-
    • and they're not based in Au

      Except, they are.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharman_Networks [wikipedia.org]

    • I'm sure all three of them are devastated. Col.(ret) Natural Guard

  • So. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Data Link Layer ( 743774 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @10:36PM (#14190648)
    Looks like those 14 people are going to have to find another method to all their copyright infringed material from.

  • LATE BREAKING NEWS (Score:5, Funny)

    by irc.goatse.cx troll ( 593289 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @10:39PM (#14190660) Journal
    NEWSFLASH: Kazaa is still around.

    people still use that?
    • http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=www.kazaa.c om [alexa.com]

      Traffic Rank for kazaa.com: 3,951

      That's pretty high I guess.

      Though that doesn't mean everyone who visits their site downloads Kazaa. The high rank can also be attibuted to malware/zombie pcs.
      • And the ranks posted at Alexa are so accurate. By web rank counting based on their uber-toolbar, who could deny that they represent the vast majority of web users. I mean doesn't everybody use their toolbar...oh wait...
      • Whatever, I am attributing your post to Zombie slashdot reader...

        If I ever released a worm that put a P2P client on every zombie PC, and listened for 24 hours and got the top hundred list of common search terms on whatever P2P network, then downloaded it (to reshare), I could easily 1) infect with worm, 2) ???, 3) PROFIT!!!

        The cat is out of the bag, P2P is here to stay, I don't care how deeply you inspect my packets. The internet and it's users will always be one step ahead of EVERYTHING. Adapt or die!

    • Re:LATE BREAKING NEWS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Leroy_Brown242 ( 683141 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @11:59PM (#14190993) Homepage Journal
      I said the exact same thing.

      Myself, I couldn't see myself trusting any company or application like this. Seems like every time I have to fix someone's computer, it's because of shit they got from kazaa or whatever.

      On the other hand, people keep smoking.

    • Ssh. Now that all the trendy kiddies have gone off to bittorrent, it's actually pretty good again.

  • Can anyone tell me (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NoGuffCheck ( 746638 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @10:47PM (#14190689)
    What is stopping Sharman Networks from closing down and starting up under a different company and name. I would think that brand has almost zero good-will when it comes to p2p clients... why bother jumping through hoops when it seams like they could start again at very low cost and have **AA begin their whole lawsuit process again (at great expense of both time and money).
    • Well, IANAL, but if they just shut up shop the owners/directors could still be liable - this probably depends on the company structure. They also might have trouble registering their new business if they have a trail of unresolved litigation behind them. And I doubt the courts handling the current case would be too impressed by such a move. Also, it would be nigh-impossible to pull such a move without drawing public attention (such as in slashdot) and the new company would be starting with a hangover from t

  • Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bwd ( 936324 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @10:49PM (#14190698) Homepage
    Kazaa has been relegated to the trash-heap of the net with the advent of bittorrent and registration-only bittorrent trackers. They went the same direction of Napster, because they were litigated into nonexistence.

    Decentralization is key to survival now if you want to avoid litigation on the infrastructure.

    • Re:Irrelevant -- reasons for trash heap (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @11:07PM (#14190778)
      Kazaa has been relegated to the trash-heap of the net with the advent of bittorrent and registration-only bittorrent trackers.

      Kazaa has been relegated to the trash-heap of the net because it's laden with spyware, has an ineffective hashing system that has allowed it to become more polluted by OverPeer and its ilk than any other P2P system (in excess of 50% of the files on KaZaA are damaged, in excess of 90% for some very new releases), hasn't been updated in 3 years, and gathers more lawsuits of users than all other P2P systems combined.

      • The great thing about Kazaa is that it is distracting the **AA for the moment. Sure nobody uses it, but it gives the legal losers something to pat themslefs on the back about.

        Bandwidth is increasing and becoming cheaper. There is nothing they can do to stop the black market of overpriced goods.
  • I didn't know they named the company after Santana's last album. ;-) Yes, it's a typo!

  • Bit misleading? (Score:3, Informative)

    by NewsWatcher ( 450241 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @10:51PM (#14190711)
    I thought the story headline was slightly misleading. People in Australia with KaZaa can still use the service, they are just trying to block new users downloading the software. Bit pointless really given any number of other P2P applications will turn up versions of KaZaa or KaZaalite.
  • I really wonder if they even attempted or considered implementing the filter. Doing so would obviously bog-down development a bit, especially since there is no mention of exactly how updates to the filter list would come in. The article makes it sound as if the record companies could just send some list without any standard format to Kazaa. On top of that, more and more artists are sure to jump on the bandwagon, so updates will be numerous to say the least. Another question would be the window of time t

  • Time vs Money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bifurcati ( 699683 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @10:55PM (#14190731) Homepage
    These days, I don't (er, and never have) download music from filesharing networks - sites like AllOfMP3.com [allofmp3.com], where I can download music for 6-10 cents a song means that it is far easier for me to get on there, find the album I want, choose the exact encoding I want and get the album fast and conveniently. Plus, I know for certain that it's a good quality encoding, that it's actually the right file, and that I can get all of the album. (Provided, of course, that the album's actually on there!)

    Ultimately, the death of pirating shareware is going to be governed by the pricepoint more than anything else. Sure, free is always cheaper, but if you can get the music at the right price (and I certainly think allofmp3.com has got it!) then that's going to be a major player.

    (And yes, I know there are questions about the legality of the service. But so far it's stood up the legal challenges presented, and it's got to be "more" legal than filesharing, right? :) Not that that matters twojots to the RIAA I guess :)

    • "More" legal? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Nerdposeur ( 910128 )
      And yes, I know there are questions about the legality of the service. But so far it's stood up the legal challenges presented, and it's got to be "more" legal than filesharing, right?

      Not necessarily. According to an IP trace, that site is based in Russia. They're selling songs for a fraction of the going rate here, and if they don't have an agreement with the labels, they probably aren't paying the labels anything for it. (I don't know that for a fact.)

      *IF* these guys have stolen the music and are s

      • Re:"More" legal? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Bifurcati ( 699683 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @11:36PM (#14190887) Homepage
        As best I understand it, they pay the Russian music body a licensing fee, and as far as Russian law goes, they've satisfied all the requirements necessary to distribute music. The grey area is whether they have the right to sell it to us folk over the seas. If it were CDs, then there's no law against importing a CD, but the internet is a different kettle of fish - it's quite unclear what their legal obligations are. They're probably not in the spirit of the law, but seem to be within the letter. The RIAA tried to get them shut down, but failed; it remains to be seen what course of action they take.

        As for the paying/not paying thing, artists (of major lables) get virtually zip from CD sales; I figure at least this way, the albums I buy are making it to the Top 10 on this site, which then encourages more people to buy them, etc, which ultimately results in more listeners and hopefully bigger sales at concerts, where they make their real money. Of course, this doesn't work out so well for the Labels (and hence the sustainability of the current industry model) but that's all for the better we might start to see some shake up.

        Anyway, I rarely buy new music - it's mainly jazz I'm after, and the occasional soundtrack.

        • ...isn't the way that all big bands make their money. Some bands [www.dth.de] sell their tickets at a break-even point, so that if a show doesn't sell out completely, they actually lose money on said show (or with a bit of bad luck technically, on an entire tour).

          They do this because they feel that they do well enough on sales alone, and don't want to price their shows out of reach of some of their fans. Also, merchandise isn't sold at rip-off prices.

          Mind you, said example is an exception to the rule of concert pric

        • Re:"More" legal? (Score:3, Informative)

          by mcubed ( 556032 )

          The grey area is whether they have the right to sell it to us folk over the seas. If it were CDs, then there's no law against importing a CD

          You can't legally import a CD for resale in the U.S. if the exclusive U.S. distribution rights to that CD have been purchased by/granted to a company. Same goes for books. If, say, a record label in Brazil (or Belgium or Belize, etc.) makes a deal with a record label in the U.S., giving the latter U.S. distribution rights, then it would not be legal for a U.S. sto

          • If I purchase a CD legally in Russia I can legally bring it back and listen to it here. Why shouldn't it be the same for Russian servers? I smell imperialism.

          • Re:"More" legal? (Score:5, Informative)

            by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @03:30AM (#14191768) Journal
            You can't legally import a CD for resale in the U.S. if the exclusive U.S. distribution rights to that CD have been purchased by/granted to a company.

            That's correct - except that AllofMP3 isn't importing anything. They're exporting from Russia. Importing anything into the USA requires a legal entity here, in the States!

            I can legally buy something from a mail-order catalog from Brazil and have them ship it directly to my house, if I desire it, for personal use. They aren't breaking any laws, and neither am I.

            So, AllofMP3 isn't importing anything at all, they're selling items over the Internet to whomever wants to buy it under Russian law, apparently in full compliance with the letter of Russian law. What's more, US copyright law specifically allows imports of copyrighted materials from oversees when purchased for personal use, when such materials are sold in compliance with the foreign jurisdiction, even when foreign laws conflict with US law!

            IANAL, but it seems pretty bullet-resistant to me. And, it's damned convenient...
            • Actually no one is importing or exporting anything. The internet communication is no different than a basic international phonecall. Import/export laws are not involved.

              Everything is legally fine on the Russian side, but there is still a question on the US side, because when you receive the data you generally create a copy on your harddrive. Creating a copy does fall under the perview of US copyright law.

              Whether making that copy is legal or not... well that is a very very messy legal question. If ANYONE (ot

            • IANAL, but it seems pretty bullet-resistant to me. And, it's damned convenient...

              Heh, and I thought MP3.com was pretty bullet-resistant also, and look what happened.

              I don't think it's a question of personal liability. I can't imagine anyone being sued over purchasing music from AllofMP3.com. Worst-case scenario would be having one's hard drive confiscated. (Like, if you bought a bootleg CD in a store right at the moment when the authorities rushed in and arrested the store owners/managers for traff

          • You can't legally import a CD for resale in the U.S. if the exclusive U.S. distribution rights to that CD have been purchased

            For resale, perhaps. But if you're just buying it for yourself you should be okay.

      • Re:"More" legal? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by geminidomino ( 614729 ) * on Monday December 05, 2005 @11:42PM (#14190914) Journal
        not only are the copyright owners screwed, but you feel justified in screwing them and are supporting their (unfair) competition.

        Whereas if you pay iTunes for it, you're supporting THIER mafia-like tactics.

        Thank the gods for cdbaby.com :)
      • They're selling songs for a fraction of the going rate here, and if they don't have an agreement with the labels, they probably aren't paying the labels anything for it.

        My understanding is that they don't have an agreement with the labels, but that they are paying them. Just like here in the US there is a standard fee for covers (I don't really know how it works, but someone described it that you can send in a default fee to cover a song), there is a default fee they pay per song there. They are collect
        • What laws on importing?

          Quality King Distributors Inc., v. L'anza Research International Inc. (1998, WL 9625)

          This decision supports the right to import copyrighted material that you purchased overseas, whether the copyright holder gives you permission to or not.

          Allofmp3 is legal and it drives the RIAA crazy. Fuck em.

    • Re:Time vs Money (Score:3, Insightful)

      by StikyPad ( 445176 )
      As a wise man once said, "The reports of piracy's death have been greatly exaggerated." Or maybe it was an insane man. Nevertheless..

      I don't think there will ever be such a thing as the death of filesharing, licit or otherwise. I agree, however, that extremely low price points and faster-to-market than pirates (which seems rarely the case) will wipe out the bulk of illicit filesharing. Further, I think publishing companies stand to make even more money through bulk than they do right now. If we could d
      • Yeah, excellent point re the bulk buying. I certainly download a lot more stuff at 5-10cents/song than I would at $30+ per album. If I don't like it, well, who cares? Just give it 1 star in iTunes and let it sit in case I need it later, or even just delete it.

        A similar example is my local video store which now offers all videos, including new releases, for $3 (ain't competition grand?) That makes it more convenient for me to just go and rent the video than to find it and download it, or even copy it o

  • Nobody will care (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mancat ( 831487 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @11:04PM (#14190766) Homepage
    Kazaa was good in its day, but offers little to no anonymity, and is completely infiltrated by RIAA/MPAA/*. So, if you want to go to jail, go ahead and use Kazaa to download your copyrighted material.

    That being said, few people are still using it. Nobody will care. Those that do care, can now move on to a better client/network.
    • So, if you want to go to jail, go ahead and use Kazaa to download your copyrighted material.

      Remember that download is legal in many countries, OTOH upload is not.
  • I know the Bit torrent kicks monkey butt for finding whole albums, but suppose I just want one song? Napster was so great for that back in the day, and then Kazaa was pretty cool, but now I can't get Kazaa lite to connect. I've tried emule, but it's absurdly slow. Does emule work well for anyone else? Or is there someother good way to get singles?
    • Limewire is another p2p service which is pretty good. The more popular songs are corrupted, and I don't know how RIAA'd it is, but it's an ok kazaa substitute for now. Also, with bittorrent you can download a torrent for an entire album which has your song in it, and using the Azureus bittorrent client you can go into the separate files and highlight everything but your desired song, right-click->priority->Do Not Download.

    • Re:Where to find single mp3s? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You can use Bittorrent for individual songs as well. Most Bittorrent clients these days allow you to view the files within the torrent itself, and either rank them in priority, or choose to not download them at all.

      So, all you have to do is find a .torrent of the album that the song you want is from, open the .torrent, and set all the files to not download, except for the one(s) that you want. Of course, this won't work if the .torrent contains a .zip, .rar, or another archive file with the songs inside.

    • The thing that I like about BitTorrent is that you pretty much have to download the entire album; otherwise one would not appreciate the artist as much as one does. Like if one were looking for a specific song, but now one has to listen to the entire album...

      Not that I download music from BitTorrent. That's illegal.
    • Gnutella is a good filesharing protocol, and it's open. You have multiple choices of client, on the Windows side your main choices are Limewire and Shareaza.
  • [2:10]I just tried to install this Kazaa program but this anoyng MS Anti-Spyware doesn't like me installing it.

    [2:15]Ok Iv disabled anti-spyware and I am installing it again.

    [2:20]Just finished insntalling #ddffh@4(*(&^#*&%*&%^&^%76#$*7$%[CARRIER DISCONNECTED]
  • So they'll use another P2P software to get Kazaa now?

  • It's also an improvement (Score:4, Funny)

    by rolypolyman ( 933130 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @11:27PM (#14190846)
    On the announcement, Telstra said it would proceed with shutdown of several OC-48 backbones as spyware traffic falls.

  • P2P Profit Model Changing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by burningion ( 936461 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @11:49PM (#14190947) Homepage
    With all the litigations coming from the music and movie industry, it just doesn't make sense for a company to try to own the P2P software.

    Instead, companies should develope and release the software for free, into the wild, and create a profitable market using the network itself. It's time for a really creative person to figure out how to release a lasting P2P client/network and make a profit from it in a really untraditional way.

    Like utilising all the traffic to build models for what people are searching for. Selling the information to marketers. Letting people sell content through P2P networks, whatever. I'm not the one to create the next fix for P2P, but it is out there, and I'll be the first one to use it.

    • From what I've read companies already do this, using P2P to track whats hot and whats not. The thing is that record labes/movie studios keep the fact that they buy this information very hush hush otherwise it would legitimize P2P and actually prove that it profits them in some way. It's actually a good deal. You get marketing + tracking for free and I get the music. Just need to make a payment method based on the marketing and things could be nice.
    • Pft, if they did that then everyone would complain about how it was spyware, and all the privacy fanatics would go on about how evil Kazaa was for trying to steal their personal information. Corporations just can't win in the eyes of some people :)
      (Note, these aren't my opinions, I have nothing against people making money, indeed I hope to make some myself someday)

  • Multichoice test (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skingers6894 ( 816110 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @12:19AM (#14191066)
    When all current filesharing systems have been hunted down and destroyed the users of those systems will flock to:

    a) CD Stores
    b) The next, better, faster, more anonymous filesharing system

    What do you think?
  • im a fair dinkum aussie bloke, and in ozland, peer to peer clients go out of fashion faster than wrestling crocs with one arm and holding your new-born in the other....

  • Ka-what? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Havenwar ( 867124 )
    You know, I must say, presently Kazaa is the best filesharing protocol in the world! At least for us overweight hairy horny sweaty geeks living in mothers basement. Whatever I search for, I get more pr0n for my ever growing collection! Sure, a few broken files, but it is quantity that matters, not quality!

    Of course... in reality I long since moved out of mothers basement, she died, and so did Kazaa. I'm still overweight, hairy, horny and sweaty, but nowadays I use the ed2k and bittorrent protocols for filet
  • Each country has different laws. It would be interested to know where download is legal, where it is not. Same for upload. Please contribute this thread. I will try to summarize all the information and set it on a website for reference.
    AFAIK, download is legal in France, upload is illegal
    Please state for other countries.
  • that's so bad.

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