America's music industry has finally got its way with Kazaa, and squeezed $100m out of the filesharing network as well as a promise to filter out copyrighted material from its services. There's a story on MediaGuardian [reg reqd].
Under the terms of the deal, Kazaa's owner Sharman Networks will pay the world's four major music companies - Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music - more than $100m and has undertaken to become a legal download service.
"There are very substantial damages being paid - in excess of $100m - and Kazaa will go legal immediately. They've had time to prepare for this," said John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
The EMI Music vice chairman, David Munns, added: "This is a victory for anyone in a creative industry that has had their works stolen and distributed through an illegitimate P2P network.
Score one to the labels, then. But the difference here is that - unlike Napster and Grokster before it - Kazaa isn't being shut down. In fact, it seems that the record industry may take a stake in the firm.
Will it work? Analyst Mark Mulligan of Jupiter Research makes a good point when he says this is about two years late.
Kazaa isn't what it used to be. Whilst all the behind the scenes legal wrangling has been going on Kazaa's reputation among the file sharing community has plummeted to potentially irreversible depths. Sharman Network's strategy of Spyware bundling with the Kazaa app resulted in massive consumer backlash.
Despite Kazaa's attempt to see the silver lining in the big black cloud, however, ("This settlement marks the dawn of a new age of cooperation between P2P technology and content industries which will promise an exciting future for online distribution in general and Kazaa users in particular," *cough*) it looks like there's not much left in it for them now. Other copyright-breaking services will take over their crown, while legal services are already a long way ahead in the legit market.
Is it time it simply shuffled off to meet its maker?
