Sharman Defends Kazaa In Australia
from the how-many-places-do-they-need-to-defend-it? dept
Sharman Networks, the owners of the Kazaa software and network, were in an Australian court arguing that what they do is not copyright infringement at all – which is a fact. They don’t provide unauthorized songs for download – they simply offer tools for file sharing. Admittedly, many people use it for illegal file sharing, but that’s not the same thing. Many people speed when driving, but we don’t haul General Motors to court because of it. Apparently, Sharman had dug up a legal decision from 1899 which found that pianola rolls did not infringe copyrights. This argument may get a little tricky, since the original argument claimed that a pianola roll was quite different from playing music on an actual instrument. Sharman is going to walk down the somewhat tricky legal path claiming that a music file on a computer is not a “copy of a sound recording.” That may be a very difficult suggestion to convince a judge about.
