"BBC has the following breaking story: File-sharing site Kazaa will become a legal music download service following a series of high-profile legal battles. The peer-to-peer network has also agreed to pay $100m (£53m) in damages to the record industry. The announcement follows the release of a music industry report that says more than 20 billion music tracks have been downloaded illegally in the last year. Hungry artists across the globe rejoice." Source: Slashdot BBC Article: Kazaa site becomes legal service
Its not poor kazaa, it is fool kazaa having to pay for letting users to abuse... For eg.. A neighbour of yours leave his car key inside, you know that you will not steal it because of your good ethics but everybody doesnt think like that. At last who will be in loss? owner of the car.
The owner is at loss, but your analogy simply cannot be used in this case. Kazaa is the client, not the network. Why not sue all the other P2P clients as well, let Limewire have it, Bearshare etc etc. If private FTP was used to distribute copyrighted files then would you sue the user or the FTP client/server used to access it?
Surely Kazaa had a disclaimer saying that they were not responsible for what files were shared, if not they should have. Before you download Limewire, it asks if you are going to use it to break copyright laws, if you click yes it doesn't let you download (you have to click back and then no). Also when downloading music / video, it says "this file hasn't got a license", and warns you that it may be illegal. I think it would be harder to sue Limewire (and possible other p2p networks) because they make it obvious that it is not legal. I'm not sure if Kazaa does / did that as I've never tried it.
