Report to Congress – Kazaa can block access to copyrighted works.

A group of technology experts issued a statement to the U.S. Congress o­n 1.13.04 expressing the opinion that P2P software provider Sharman Networks has the ability to prevent copyrighted material from being sent around the KaZaA network.

This is in direct conflict with the trial court’s findings in the Grokster case I discussed at EASL’s Dangerous Entertainment Seminar, and was in fact the main reason the trial court denied plaintiffs’ motion for a premlinary injunction based o­n the complaint for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. As further discussed, the Grokster Court welcomed a legislative solution in refusing to extend the copyright holders’ monopoly.

On 1/13/04 technologists acting o­n behalf of porn publisher Titan Media reported to Congress that P2P networks could (if they wanted to) use “fingerprinting” (aka hashing“) to detect copyrighted works and then filter them with the “spyware” installed o­n all nodes in the network.