For those of you not aware, there is a trial ongoing down under in Australia, pitting record labels, among others, against Sharman Networks, the current owners of Kazaa.
The trial is about the usual beefs between the record companies and peer-to-peer networks, which we are not going to rehash here, as well as unmasking who actually owns Kazaa. You see, it seems that the original owners of Kazaa – a Dutch outfit headed by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis – sold Kazaa to Sharman, and indeed were by the terms of the agreement forbidden from competing with Kazaa for three years. But from there the trail got a bit muddled, and in part that is what this lawsuit intends to sort out.
But what is interesting to Aunty is what has come to light during discovery for the trial.
One of the claims against Kazaa is that it affects the performance of your PC, causing it to slow down and such, due to installation of adware. Sharman had staunchly denied this, however in discovery complaints from their own employees were uncovered. They didn’t like installing the software themselves, because of how it affected performance! Interesting!
Indeed, a memorandum from Sharman CTO Philip Morle himself reveals:
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“We need to be careful with user resources. Most obvious is in the adware we add to their machine upon installation. This software slows down users’ machines and can affect other activity such as browsing the Internet (as we have seen with PerfectNav). It is reasonable that we show ads in order to create our free software, but I do not believe it is reasonable to place a user in a position where this free software will also make their machine sluggish. Consider how many people that work for Sharman Networks and its partners that hate installing Kazaa on their machines. ”
Heh..gotta love that last line – in fact, Aunty is going to repeat it just because it’s so enlightening:
“Consider how many people that work for Sharman Networks and its partners that hate installing Kazaa on their machines.”
Whee!
Of course, this has nothing to do with the issue of whether Kazaa has legitimate uses, or indeed peer-to-peer networks should be allowed to exist. But it’s certainly interesting.
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