During this quite extensive period, the music industry, through their release of music artists, made billions of dollars. This annoyed many people, for they were being ripped off. So a couple of years ago, a couple of Estonian programmers came up with a program to break the music industry's monopoly. And Kazaa was born.
Kazaa, and many other Internet or network based music distributors, flourished. Downloading free music was an offer most just couldn't refuse. But this made the music industry angry. They claimed they were losing money from these "pirates". Well, what would you expect if you charge us for music at an insane price?
The first significant legal action against free music distributors was by that famous rock band Metallica. Already washed up and losing money, it sued Napster (then the biggest distributor) for copyright infringement. Eventually, due to Metallica's huge wealth, Napster was forced to dissolve. But Metallica paid dearly for their actions, for their popularity plummeted after Napster's demise.
But hang on. I thought Kazaa was bigger than Napster. If this is so, why hasn't Kazaa folded? Well, it relates to how these distributors operated. Napster users had to download their songs from a central server that belonged to the Napster company. This became the Achille's heel for Napster, since they could now be sued for copyright infringment. But Kazaa works differently. The Kazaa company only provides the software for downloading music. The music comes from folders on the user's computer from which other users can download from, and vice versa. There is no central server, so it is harder to trace what is downloaded by who. A neat little system wouldn't you say?
Something like this would be readily accepted by teenagers, wouldn't you say? Well, apparently, it's not. I discovered much to my surprise last week as I read the newspaper that in a survey of 10 teenagers, only two liked Kazaa. The other eight hated it, or thought it was a bad thing. I personally thought that it was preposterous that so many teens could think like this. I began to think why. Then it hit me. These teens were afraid that by making it know that they both enjoy (and hence use) Kazaa, they could be sued by the music industry.
What at first might seen like paranoia to you isn't exactly so when closer inspected. A couple of months ago, I was downloading a Three Stooge's movie off Kazaa (it was You Nazty Spy if you are wondering which one it was). I managed to have a conversation with the user I was downloading it from. He told me that in his native land, the United States, a 13 year old girl was being sued by the music industry because she had more than 1000 songs downloaded onto her computer. The user continued by saying that in the US, the music ..........
