Geeklawyer has a fair number of punters on the ‘wrong’ side (from the record industries perspective that is) of the p2p industry. The news that Kazaa eventually settled out of court for $100million was, on one analysis, a predictable form of its demise.
Kazaa was simply to high profile and too symbolic to be allowed to live. The movie/record industry had to whack it ‘pour encourage les autre‘. With the application of liberal amounts of cash it was always likely to succeed and it seems that it has. They will now have to incorporate filtering technology and pay licence fees to the *IAA.
Cue bollocks about this being a victory for the fan of musics and the artists.
Of course it didn’t help that Kazaa fucked up big time: it restructured its operations but bollixed it up by operating stupidly: this provided ample smoking gun evidence during discovery and sunk them. Geeklawyer believes that; and as a result he has advised his punters how not to repeat this mistake.
Kazaa is now the new Napster: a ghost walking the music business but unaware that it’s dead and no-one can see it.
Ultimately it is the public music fans technology and competition that suffers.
[…] Over the last couple of weeks there have been several reports regarding suits against downloading clients. Firstly there was KaZaA settling out of court with major music publishers in a deal worth roughly $100m, in which Geeklawyer describes KaZaA now being “the new Napster: a ghost walking the music business but unaware that it’s dead and no-one can see it.” […]