Peter Griffin: They can cripple Kazaa, but downloading will continue

With the rabid zeal for which it has become famous, the music industry chased file-sharing bandit Kazaa to the bottom of the world. But as the outcome of an Australian court case looks to crush Kazaa once and for all, the record companies find themselves cornering a rogue whose day has passed.

Kazaa sprang in all its lime-green gaudiness to the attention of web users in 2001 when it filled the vacuum left by Napster, which itself was toppled by legal challenges.

Kazaa's software has been downloaded 317 million times since and its users download three billion files a year. In contrast, the most successful legitimate music download service, iTunes, had racked up 500 million paid-for song downloads by July, two years after it opened.

Kazaa is one of a handful of second-generation, peer-to-peer, file-sharing networks based on the FastTrack protocol. The technology allows interrupted downloads to be resumed and segments of a data file to be downloaded from multiple peers - a big advance on early file-sharing technology.

FastTrack really kick-started the spread of illicit music and video downloads.

But as impressive as the numbers are, Kazaa stopped being relevant as a major file-sharing force a couple of years ago when music downloaders began to find themselves swamped with the unwanted adware and spyware that was bundled into Kazaa software downloads.

Nothing comes for free, even unauthorised file downloads. Kazaa's owner since 2002, Sharman Networks, has pushed the Kazaa desktop as "the gateway to an online audience of millions" for advertisers.

Back then, Sharman boss Nikki Hemming seemed confident Kazaa wouldn't be paralysed by legal action. "Bottom line is that there is no litigation against Sharman Networks anywhere in the world," she told CNet News.

But as Kazaa became more sophisticated at trying to squeeze money out of its users, the ever-evolving file-sharing community was already moving on to gather at "direct-connect" hubs and services based on BitTorrent technology. And there they remain.

If Kazaa users are racking up several billion downloads a year, how much content is passing through the other file-sharing networks combined? Music industry executives would shudder to think. The successful action against Kazaa is a symbolic victory for the 30 record companies who mounted their A$9 million ($9.84 million) case. But it's an action that's going to have to be carried out on a much larger scale to seriously dent the downloading.

When music, videos and cracked copies of software hit the file-sharing networks, they escape like gas. Kazaa has no doubt fed the BitTorrent community, but not all the companies and people hosting those torrents have to be pursued. It's enough to keep the lawyers working for the rest of the decade.

The court action in Australia was also a mixed success. Kazaa hasn't been forced to shut down. Instead it's been given the chance to install filters on its software to make sure copyrighted content can't be downloaded. This kills the whole premise for Kazaa's existence.

An order to pay the record labels millions of dollars in legal fees may in itself be enough to finish Kazaa before mention of the billions of dollars in damages the music industry is expected to pursue.

Only a successful appeal will keep Kazaa alive, and that looks unlikely. While the court found that Sharman had violated Australian copyright law, it didn't slap it with the heavier criminal penalties the record companies were pursuing.

The music industry wanted a damning decision it could wave as a test case in pursuing other file-sharing network operators.It was denied, and as the industry celebrates the crippling of an old foe, the downloading will continue.