The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 18 March 2002
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HERE
Music's most wanted woman - Internet technology threatens record industry THIS soon might be the most wanted woman in Hollywood and the American music business, even though she doesn't act or sing a note. Sydney-based Nicola Hemming is now the proud owner of state-of-the-art Internet technology which threatens the very fabric of commercial global entertainment. Ms Hemming is the face behind a mysterious new company named Sharman Networks which controls the rights to a powerful Internet file-swapping program called Kazaa. In late-January, the Dutch inventors of Kazaa ``sold'' the rights of their software to Hemming's company to avoid litigation in their homeland. Weeks earlier, a Dutch court briefly banned Kazaa from distributing the tools that allowed Internet users to trade bootlegged copies of copyrighted material, including movies and songs. But Kazaa's website soon was up and running again -- legally � once its operations were moved to Australia. Styled in the tradition of the Napster website (which was shut down last year), Kazaa users are able to log on to the Internet and, for a fraction of the cost they would otherwise pay in the shops, download any combination of songs from any genre. The website's popularity is growing, with at least 2 million people downloading the Kazaa software each week. It's a statistic met with consternation by the recording industry, which has indentified the illegal trading of MP3 song files across Kazaa and similar networks as one of the main causes behind a 10 per cent slump in CD sales in the US last year. Until now, despite widespread international interest, little was known about Nicola Hemming of Mosman, CEO of Sharman Networks. Formerly chief executive of the failed Sega World theme park in Darling Harbour, the only contact Hemming has had with the world media has been via a public relations firm based in Los Angeles. Hemming will be formally introduced to the world media on March 26. ``Everything is in motion right now as the company develops its operations in Australia,'' said the LA-based publicist yesterday. ``It's all happening very quickly and Nikki's goal is to have it be done intelligently. She's building a business for life right now. And it doesn't yet have everything she needs to allow herself to be diverted to the media attention.'' The one-time general manager of the local arm of Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Ms Hemming currently still holds a job at the Darling Harbour Walk Management offices, despite now being the CEO of a multi-national company with representation across three continents. Sharman Networks is not registered as a company in Australia, although the Kazaa website states that it is now functioning under NSW jurisdiction. At the moment, Kazaa is a free service, although there are provisions in its terms of agreement for a fee to be introduced down the track without warning.
