An Australian court ordered Sharman Networks, the developer of Kazaa, to update the software to start filtering by keywords by December 5th. Judge Murray Wilcox allowed the record labels to provide 3,000 keywords as a partial measure to block access to copyrighted music. Sharman lost a federal court decision but is expected to appeal before the Full Court in February.

As the Napster 1.0 case showed five years ago, keyword filtering does not work. Furthermore it is a bludgeon that not only eliminates copyrighted works, but also kills millions of other legal files that contain the keywords. For example, many independent artists will put the keywords of similar sounding artists or songs in their own music titles.

Sharman has recommended fingerprinting from Audible Magic as a more effective filtering method. The record labels have rejected such technology as ineffective. However such a stance contradicts the situation in the US where the labels are authorizing such technology at SNOCAP and other ventures.

Marc Freedman
RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles, the leading multiple network file sharing software with search and download of ALL top networks.
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