The "verdict" just came in, and it's going to end up costing the makers of the once wildly popular music downloading service a huge sum of money. Sharman Networks Ltd, the producers of KaZaA, agreed to settle global lawsuits to the tune of $115 million.

The entertainment industry execs are, as always, putting on the face of deeply concerned citizens. The vice chairman for EMI Music made this philanthropic statement: "While the award may seem like a vast pot of money, it will merely offset the millions we have invested — and will continue to invest — in fighting illegal pirate operations around the world and protecting the works that our artists create." Sharman Networks has also said that they will do all they can to ensure that piracy is not widely practiced with their service. Exactly how KaZaA will go about this is still unclear. Since the settlement did not say that KaZaA needs to be shut down, the potential is still out there, at least it was immediately after the settlement was made official.

Since KaZaA is upping the effort to distribute music legally, the P2P client software is still available to download, though I'd imagine that not many people will want to use it for that purpose, and of course the obvious reason is because iTunes is the industry leader.

This settlement satisfies a multitude of lawsuits from various countries that had brought legal action against KaZaA. The ruling in February that stated that the software was illegal in Australia still remains intact.Full story

Report Published by: Mark Raby