FW: Dutch Court Orders Halt to Swapping of Copyright-Protected Files on KaZaA

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from: cahamake@email.uncc.edu

  Friday, November 30, 2001

  Dutch Court Orders Halt to Swapping of Copyright-Protected
  Files on KaZaA

  By ANDREA L. FOSTER

  A district court in the Netherlands on Thursday ordered
  FastTrack, an Amsterdam-based company that operates a
  peer-to-peer file-sharing service that is popular with college
  students, to halt copyright infringement of artists' works.

  If the company fails to comply with the order, it faces a
  penalty of $40,000 a day, up to a maximum of $800,000.

  The file-sharing service, KaZaA, allows Internet users to
  trade audio and video images using FastTrack software.
  Grokster and Morpheus, other peer-to-peer file-sharing
  services, also use the software.

  The court's ruling was in response to a copyright-violation
  complaint lodged by a Dutch recording industry group against
  KaZaA.

  The Recording Industry Association of America and many of its
  member companies also filed suit against KaZaA and other
  file-sharing services last month. That suit, filed in federal
  district court in Los Angeles, accuses the services of
  copyright infringement.

  The Recording Industry Association of America declined to
  comment on the case.

  Neither KaZaA nor officials from the Dutch court could be
  reached for comment Thursday.


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 Copyright 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education