Kazaa In Court This Week

**sharedholder** · 02-09-2004, 08:01 AM

Kazaa in court this week

It could all be over soon for the file sharing network Kazaa, which had its offices raided last week and whose executives will appear in court this week.

Investigators raided Kazaa's Sydney office last Friday, collecting evidence about copyright infringement that will be presented in a Sydney court on tommorrow (Tuesday).
While the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been ferocious in their quest to stamp out illegal file-sharing, the local equivalent, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) has appeared less than active in recent years, despite Kazaa operating out of Sydney for the last three years. That is, inactive up until yesterday.

The man behind the raid is Michael Speck, the head of ARIA's Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) unit. He explains how ARIA's position of power recently changed.

"We started an investigation six months ago and it was based on technical and physical changes in the infrastructure of Kazaa" he said.

"At that point it was becoming apparent that they had become an Australian operation infringing Australian copyright".

"Essentially there were physical changes to the resources and technical changes of the software that make it clear that what the Kazaa operation is doing is clear-cut infringement of copyright in Australia" Mr Speck said.

"We've actually over the last several years run a whole range of important strategic cases. The objective of those cases was to develop a safe and productive environment for music business and their consumers," he said. "As far as Kazaa is concerned this last six month period has changed their position."

ARIA/MIPI issued proceeding against Kazaa in the Australian Federal court under strict guidelines.

SOURCE