Kazaa Offices Raided 787
rj writes "ZDNet Australia is reporting the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) this morning raided the offices of Kazaa owners, Sharman Networks, along with P2P company Brilliant Digital Entertainment, and the homes of key executives. Background on prosecution of copyright music in Australia over P2P is also available."
third of nine (Score:5, Informative)
Third of Nine
Anton Pillar order (Score:4, Informative)
-John
Re:Not likely (Score:3, Informative)
- BitTorrent [bitconjurer.org]
- Shareaza (gnutella2) [shareaza.com]
- eDonkey2000 [edonkey2000.com]
- FTP [wikipedia.org] - with IPs traded amongst friends/etc. (a crude P2P, in a sense)
- as well as a slew of others I'm not aware of, I'm sure.
All this knowledge simply from being online for a couple years. Imagine what a hardcore file trader is aware of.
Re:Anton Pillar order (Score:3, Informative)
-John
Re:MIPI? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not likely (Score:4, Informative)
Re:MIPI? (Score:2, Informative)
The ARIA press release is available here [aria.com.au] if anyone wants evidence that FUD isn't confined to Microsoft and SCO.
So in essence the MIPI is an organisation set up by the music industry to investigate alleged music piracy. I would have thought that carrying out the raid would have been the responsibility of the police or other government agency, rather than an industry association, but apparently jackboots are more freely available here than I thought (Godwin's Law notwithstanding).
Anton Pillar orders explained. (Score:5, Informative)
In Anton Piller K.G. v. Manufacturing Processes Ltd., [1976] 1 All E.R. 779 at 782 Lord Denning stated:
"Let me say at once that no court in this land has any power to issue a search warrant to enter a man's house so as to see if there are papers or documents there which are of an incriminating nature, whether libels or infringements of copyright or anything else of the kind. No constable or bailiff can knock at the door and demand entry so as to inspect papers or documents. The householder can shut the door in his face and say, 'Get out.' That was established in the leading case of Entick v. Carrington (1765), 19 State Tr. 1029. None of us would wish to whittle down that principle in the slightest. But the order sought in this case is not a search warrant. It does not authorize the plaintiff's solicitors or anyone else to enter the defendants' premises against their will. Id does not authorize the breading down of any doors, nor the slipping in by a back door, nor getting in by an open door or window. It only authorizes entry and inspection by the permission of the defendants. The plaintiff's must get the defendants' permission. But it does do this: it brings pressure on the defendants to give permission. It does more. It actually orders them to give permission - with, I suppose, the result that if they do not give permission they are guilty of contempt of court."
As you can see, you can if you so chose deny access, but you had better have a pretty good reason.
Australian law allows police to search (Score:5, Informative)
Australian law allows a warrant to be issued providing that a Justice of the Peace has been convinced that there is reasonable grounds for suspecting that there is evidence of a crime on the premises.
I don't know how this compares with the US justice system and whether this was only granted by the patriot act (I doubt it). This has been the case for many years.
This is an invetigation of kazaa and it is reasonable that police be able to investigate suspected crimes wherever the evidence may be, otherwise criminals could conceal evidence in their homes and be totally immune to investigation.
I wondered what was going on... (Score:2, Informative)
I followed them a bit of the way into the building but couldn't see anything.
Internationally news-worthy stuff doesn't normally happen near my house
Not the first time and it's getting worse (Score:5, Informative)
This has happened before in the USA and other countries, too. For example Cult of Scientology used to be famous for its raids to the critics' homes (Zenon's case [google.com],other cases [google.com]
The situation is also getting worse in Europe, because the upcoming IPR enforcement directive will greatly strenghen Anton Pillar orders in all member states (unless we will manage to mount enough public pressure to stop the process, which is unlikely but not totally impossible - contact your MEPS today!)
V.
Re:Anton Pillar order (Score:4, Informative)
If someone brings a frivolous action then they're likely to have costs awarded against them on an indemnity basis (as opposed to costs on a standard basis if they just lost without having been shown to have acted frivolously). Furthermore, a lawyer who assists in bringing a case s/he knows is baseless and is done for some ulterior purpose is likely to be forced to indemnify the client for costs, and may face disciplinary proceedings.
Both the crime and tort of barratry have, however, been abolished in most Australian jurisdictions.
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Informative)
You are correct, but your conclusion is not (and it's not your fault, either -- it's good ol' politics and business obscuring good clean engineering).
Kazaa operates in a fairly decentralized manner. At one point, the FastTrack network (what Kazaa uses internally) was open. However, the protocol was reverse engineered (by the GiFT project members and others), and third party clients started popping up. The FastTrack folks sold licenses to use their network -- plus, the use of an open protocol was detrimental to the client vendors, like Kazaa, as it meant that users could choose a (nicer) spyware-free client. The protocol was modified to contain an authentication system that *is* centralized. If Kazaa (the company) won't authorize you, you can't use the network.
The addition of the authentication system was a huge step back from an engineering standpoint, but a huge jump forward from a business one -- it make Kazaa very lucrative.
Re:Anton Pillar order (Score:1, Informative)
1. An extremely strong prima facie case (i.e. the case looks very strong on the immediate facts)
2. The potential or actual damage to the claimant if an order is not made must be very serious
3. There must be clear evidence that the defendant has in his possession incriminating documents or things and that there is a real possibility that he may destroy such material before any application with notice can be made.
Even if all these conditions are satisfied the judge may still refuse an order if he feels that it would be unjust to allow it.
The first reported case of such an order being made was in 1975, although it takes its name (Piller, not Pillar) from a case in 1976.
Judges (in England) recognise that these orders are extreme, and they have been described as "the law's nuclear weapons".
--J
Re:More than 1%? You bet! (Score:3, Informative)
You are wrong. Unless the company explicitly releases its copyright on the content and puts it in the public domain, the copyright stands even if the company doesn't (that's one of the big beefs with people that don't like current copyright laws - even after ridiculous amounts of time, liquidations, bankruptcy, death, etc. - it's STILL nigh impossible to have a copyright released). In Loki's case, I'm pretty sure they also transferred their copyrights back to the original game owners, but I could be wrong. At any rate, the mere fact that Loki is gone doesn't give you the right to download a copy of the title you didn't make yourself. That's the other catch: downloading a coyp from a pal is illegal - it has to be a copy YOU MADE from your OWN original.
And this is why I have exactly NO respect for most copyright laws and don't care one bit about the people "stealing" some music, movies, and software (but, hey - let's face it.. if someone's downloading a warez version of HL2 ten minutes after it hits store shelves... well, they're just a dirty theif).
Re:Legal? (Score:3, Informative)
this was Fortune Magazine Cover Story (Score:4, Informative)
Re:p2p valid uses and Movie/Music cost too much!!! (Score:2, Informative)
IMHO some of the reasons why sharing movies online is so popular are
1) movies are released 6 months after they are in the US. So if I want to see a recent movie I must get it "illegally"!!
2) movies are simply too expensive to see in the movie theaters. Last year I saw 2 movies. I simply can not afford the "price" of movies, sorry I am not rich!!
3) renting movies alwasy struck me as dumb idea. I find watching a movie twice to be a rather unpleasent experience.
a) After I watching the movie once, it is worthless.
b) The movies I rent always have scratches.
So IMHO I should be able to buy a movie for around half the price of a movie ticket, because I don't have a big screen at home. And a movie that'a an old release should cost half as much again.
I currently buy most of the movies I watch for a little under $2.00 US per CD. And at that price p2p sharing is not worth the bother.
Its a UK law, incidentally (Score:3, Informative)
It is very, very rare -its a kind of pre-emptive seizure which can only be justified by the 'recipients will destroy the evidence' claim.
Note also that in the UK there are essentially no limits on what the state security organisations can do in the country. Unlike the US, where the CIA and NSA are allowed to break US and local laws abroad. I guess only the FBI can break laws on the US mainland?
Whatever, the key point is that one democratic countries legal system cannot and should not act as a replica for another. Britain has silly laws (anton pillar, Prevention of Terrorism (emergency powers) act 1974 + successors, RIP (the encryption one), and politicians (esp that david blunkett) are always trying to copy the worst bits of other countries. And that is where we all need to keep an eye on all 'harmonisation' programs, be they copyright, privacy, terrorism: they always go to the most repressive, not the least.
Actually (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Goodie, goodie, goodie! (Score:3, Informative)
No, sorry. Can't quote anything Australian on the issue of freedom of speech or the press. Australia has no [anu.edu.au] constitutional clause or bill of rights on this topic. These issues seem to be decided by Australia's High Court, which since 1992 has said that there is an implied right [hrcr.org] in the Australian constitution to freedom of expression of public political topics, but not on much else.
What the Australian constitution [aph.gov.au] does say is, "Chapter I. Sec. 51.The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
IANA Australian (in fact, IAA American), but it seems that Australia lacks a rallying cry to match that part of the U.S. constitution [state.gov] that the *IAA keeps trying to monopolize for themselves: Amendment I. Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . .
None of this should be taken as a disparagement of Australia, of course. For instance, the U.S. copyright laws are at least as dense and a good deal more restrictive besides. It just seems that prohibiting the ownership and use of presses (e.g. CD burners) in the U.S. would involve slightly more hypocrisy than doing so in Australia. It is an equally bad idea in both places.