Simon Hayes on Sharman License Holdings, summarising the positions of the parties:
The essence of the industry’s argument was that Sharman could stop illegal file trading on the network, but chose not to do so.
Indeed, the music giants argued, it encouraged piracy through advertising and promotion, and had ‘knowledge and awareness of rampant copyright infringement.’
‘Rather than get asked what’s your licence number and told here’s a termination notice, they got a biscuit and sent on their way’, music industry counsel Tony Bannon SC argued.
Sharman’s argument was that it could not control file trading on its network, and that there were no reasonable steps it could take to do so.
Sharman counsel Anthony Meagher SC referred to the Amstrad precedent, in which CBS Songs failed to convince the British House of Lords that the computer maker was implicated in piracy, even though its machines could be used for copyright violation.
Mr Meagher said Sharman’s position was not materially different to Amstrad’s.
‘We provide them with the software to search and download files — we don’t control what they put in their MyShare folders’, he said. Ironically, while the court has been hearing the case, the world may well have moved on. While Kazaa claims 317 million registered users, experts say it is no longer the largest of the filesharing networks, having ceded that title in the middle of last year to the likes of BitTorrent and eDonkey.
