Hemming may be gripping her anchor with extra intensity after the global music industry won a legal victory last week over her private company, Sharman Networks. The Sydney firm owns the hugely successful Kazaa file-sharing software that allows users to swap music files for free over the internet.

Sharman, in which Hemming is a joint shareholder, last week had A$30m (£12.5m) of its assets frozen and faces a huge legal bill plus damages, after Australia’s federal court ruled on Monday that Kazaa had illegally infringed music artists’ copyright.

Hemming vowed to appeal. “We are confident that we will win on appeal,” she said.

The federal court found six of the ten defendants — including Sharman Networks, Hemming, as well as Altnet, a Sharman software partner — guilty of copyright infringement and ordered them to pay 90% of the record industry’s A$9m costs.

The court said that Kazaa’s distributors encouraged users to share files, the vast majority of which were copyright material. Warning notices on the Kazaa website were deemed an insufficient deterrent. Sharman now has two months to comply with a court order to install filters on the software to prevent future trading of copyrighted music.

But the claimants, which number 30 of the world’s largest music companies, including Sony, Warner, EMI and Universal, want blood — and more than A$1 billion in damages.

Some 317m people worldwide have access to the Kazaa software. Last week alone 800,000 downloads of it were reported. There have been 390m since the software became available in 2001.

Sharman said its software is no different from a tape recorder or photocopier — and that Kazaa cannot control copyright infringement.

Hemming has invoked the support of her users, 60m people worldwide, 50% of whom are women, and most over 35. “They are a microcosm of the world. Yet suddenly they are supposed to be pirates,” she said, before the decision was handed down.

Her opponents are unmoved. Michael Speck, a spokesman for Music Industry Piracy Investigations, said: “Given that the value of the music ripped off was several billion dollars, the damages claim will be substantial. It’s about sending a message to illegal operators that they cannot get away with taking other people’s work.”

Hemming built her company on an idea — an idea that, she said, has changed the way we live. Sharman acquired Kazaa from Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders who went on to create telecoms sensation Skype (see below).

At its simplest, Kazaa is a freely downloadable software system that allows users (or “peers”) to swap digital files — any files — of music, video, photos and words.

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive