An Amsterdam court yesterday ordered the Dutch company behind
the file sharing service KaZaA to halt the distribution of its
software which has to date been downloaded more than 30 million
times, according to KaZaA.com. However, the site was recently sold
to an Australian company so the effect is ruling is still
unclear.
According to Associated Press, the court found that the KaZaA
Media Desktop encourages copyright infringement which “justifies on
its own a ban on the use of the web site.” The problem for the
record companies bringing the case is that those already using the
software will be almost impossible to stop.
The file sharing service operates independently of the KaZaA
site, which is different to the way in which Napster operated. Any
individual with the software download and web access can share
music, movies or other file types.
The KaZaA.com site was today continuing to offer the software
download. The site claims that its software was downloaded more
than one million times in the last week alone.
