Planetarion Forums

Gayle29uk · 28 Jan 2003, 10:51

Using an interesting twist in US anti-trust law Kazaa last night filed suit against the major record labels for "attempting to stifle a legitimate and potentially profit-cutting business model". Altnet is the companion to Kazaa and delivers paid for legitimate content, or would if the music industry allowed them to. If the courts determine that the record labels have illegally blocked Sharman Networks (the owners of Kazaa) from distributing their content under a licensed model then under US law their copyrights become unenforcable. If THAT happens then all the music sharing on Kazaa is merely legitimate trade of uncopyrighted material and the entire music business is (for want of a better word) screwed.

Even that may not be relevant though, as this is an anti-trust case all other cases (like the RIAA suing kazaa) may be put to one side till this is resolved (as happened with IBM). Obviously as this new case has the legal potential (probably not the real world potential though) to render all the record label's music uncopyrighted the other cases cannot continue until it's resolved.

This is pretty much a delaying move by Kazaa but it'll have the RIAA worried, even though the odds of them winning are negligible the consequences if they do would destroy the RIAA. How effective this will be depends on the lawyers. IBM managed to keep it up for years though so let's all hope Kazaa does the same.