barkingmoose

Late last week, Dutch file-sharing company KaZaA suspended downloads of their popular software to comply with a court order while awaiting a ruling in a copyright infringement case. There were some anxious moments for KaZaA users, but there wasn’t a rush to grab all the free music imaginable, because there didn’t seem to be a serious threat that the entire network would be shut down despite the court’s efforts. Only downloads of the KaZaA client had been suspended, not using the program to download music, movies, etc.

A final ruling from the Dutch court was expected around Jan. 31, but then KaZaA threw a wrench into those plans—earlier today, KaZaA was sold to Sharman Networks in Australia, effectively removing the website and the application from the Dutch court’s jurisdiction. Client downloads were immediately restored, and a glance at the ticker on KaZaA’s website shows it’s more popular than ever. I wonder what will happen if a similar lawsuit is filed in an Aussie court?

While poking around the KaZaA site, I found the KaZaA Winamp Plug-in. “You can search for music by artist, title, album or keywords, and play or enqueue the tracks directly in Winamp.” It’s in beta, and it’ll be installed on my machine first thing in the morning.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2002 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.