Does Imesh Connects to the KaZaAnetwork?

[BuzzB2K]

Monday January 21 2:53 PM ET

KaZaA Sells File-Sharing Software; Downloads Resume
Audio/Video



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dutch Internet file sharing company KaZaA BV, which is facing a copyright lawsuit, on Monday said it had sold its KaZaA.com Web site and software to privately held Australian firm Sharman Networks Limited.

Along with the sale, KaZaA said Sharman will once again make the KaZaA media software, which lets users search and download music and video files, publicly available.

On Jan. 17, KaZaA BV said it suspended downloads of the popular software, pending a decision in a copyright lawsuit filed against it in a Dutch court. But users who already had the software were still able to swap files.

Included in the sale are the Web site, the KaZaA name and logo, as well as a license for FastTrack, a file-sharing technology that it licenses to other file swapping services, such as Grokster and Morpheus.

Terms of the deal were not made public, and further information on Sharman was not disclosed.

KaZaA and FastTrack were both founded and run by the same person: 35-year-old Swedish-born Niklas Zennstrom.

"The original brains behind Kazaa have moved on to develop new innovative software,'' the KaZaA.com Web site said on Monday.

The site also listed a copyright notice saying users of the software are bound by the laws governing copyright in their respective countries.

Downloads of the software were brisk on Monday. In mid-afternoon Eastern time, about two users downloaded the software each second, according to a ticker on KaZaA.com.

In November, a Dutch judge ruled that the company must stop its users from sharing copyrighted music files, but the company said it could not comply because its decentralized system did not allow it to know who its customers are.

KaZaA and other file sharing services have been named in a separate suit filed last fall by the trade groups for the music recording and motion picture industries.

The trade groups claim that the services permit users to download and trade copyrighted material without permission.

The Recording Industry Association of America grounded Napster the wildly popular music sharing software, in July with a similar lawsuit.

Major media companies have since moved to take advantage of the pent-up demand for sharing media files online. Sony Corp. and Vivendi Universal have backed an online subscription service called Pressplay.

AOL Time Warner Inc., Bertelsmann AG and EMI Group Plc have established a rival service called MusicNet

Not a lot more information, but the article will expire so I printed it here.