HOWZAT
Attend a special evening hosted by Mike Atherton
Navigation - link to other main sections from here
Typical Kazaa users – cost-conscious consumers eager to latch on to new technologies – fall squarly into Skype's target market. The company recently launched SkypeOut prepay service, which allows users to call landlines and mobiles at a cost.
"Internet telephony is a new frontier in P2P communications and a rapidly growing market," said Nikki Hemming, of Sharman.
"The inclusion of Skype is a natural extension of the Kazaa product and of peer-to-peer. As pioneers in the P2P field, Sharman Networks believes the integration of Skype will deliver powerful consumer benefits."
Some experts think that Kazaa's legal problems could prove problematic for Skype. Spam travelling over internet telephone lines and firewalls blocking the software could also hit Kazaa's telecoms ambitions.
A United States federal appeals court has ruled that P2P companies such as Kazaa are not liable for copyright violations committed by their users. However, Kazaa continues to face legal problems stemming from copyright infringement suits filed by the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
In a signal that it still aimed to fight the unauthorised exchange of music online, the American recording industry this week filed copyright infringement lawsuits against another 761 computer users.
The RIAA claims the defendants used peer-to-peer services, including Kazaa, eDonkey and LimeWire to share music.
As in previous cases, the new lawsuits were filed against defendants identified only by their numeric Internet protocol addresses. Music company lawyers must obtain the identity of defendants by issuing subpoenas to Internet access providers.
In all, recording companies have sued 6,952 computer users in the United States since September 2003. To date, 1,300 defendants have settled their cases out of court, the RIAA has said. Settlements in previous cases have averaged $3,000 (£1,600) each.
However, another deal this week signalled the music industry's willingness to adopt file-swapping technology under its own terms.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group are expected to announce today that they will distribute songs for purchase on a file-swapping network called Peer Impact.
