Kazaa owners launch defence in file-swap copyright infringement case
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) – The owners of file-swapping giant Kazaa claimed Tuesday their software, which allows users to exchange copyrighted music and movies online, is no different from video recorders as they launched their defence in a landmark music piracy case in Australia.
Lawyer Tony Meagher was outlining his defence strategy on the second day of a civil case in which the Australian recording industry is suing Kazaa’s owners for widespread copyright infringements by the global network’s estimated 100 million members.
Kazaa members download three billion files each month, record industry lawyers said Monday. Those files can include songs, movies and other copyrighted material.
Meagher cited a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said electronics giant Sony wasn’t liable when people used its Betamax videocassette recorder to copy movies illegally because the technology had significant uses that did not violate copyrights.
The same case was cited in August when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that two other leading file-swapping networks, Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc. were not legally liable for the songs, movies and other copyright works their users swapped online.
“It is plain (Kazaa) has lawful uses,” Meagher told Federal Court judge Murray Wilcox.
In another key element of the defendants’ defence in the three-week trial, Meagher said that even though the peer-to-peer software that underpins Kazaa allows users to breach copyright, the owners of Kazaa do not authorize piracy and cannot stop it.
“We are not in a position to control and we do not control use,” Meagher said.
A licence agreement that all Kazaa users have to agree to before downloading the Kazaa software tells them they must not use the network to distribute copyrighted material, but the record industry says Kazaa makes no effort to enforce the agreement.
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