Kazaa offices in Sydney Australia were raided by record industry private investigators in an attempt to uncover evidence of alleged copyright infringements. Kaaza is the world’s largest P2P file swapping network which specializes in giving its users the ability to trade music, picture and video files via its software while also housing its own search engine and distributing various forms of AdWare to its users PCs.
Kazaa claims to house 3 million to 4 million users at any given time – given the distribution of keyword advertising and adware via Kazaa, that’s a big number.
AP wires report that The Federal Court gave five major Australian record labels permission to raid 12 premises in three states to collect evidence against Kazaa, said Michael Speck, general manager of the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (I just learned a difference between US and Australian law).
In the United States, a federal judge already has dismissed the entertainment industry’s lawsuits against two rival file-sharing services, Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., saying they could not be held liable for what their users do with the software. Basically file swapping services let users swap any types of files (most being bootlegs or illegal). That ruling has been appealed, with a decision expected in February.
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