KaZaA: AN ONLINE AUSSIE SUCCESS STORY?
Sealed Section January 30
Can this be right? An Australian website in the world top 10. Surely not. A
particularly web-savvy Crikey friend writes from London:
"Few people realise this but the amazingly popular file sharing program
KaZaA, and its parent company Sharman Networks, are in fact based in
Australia. On its website, Sharman Networks is described as a consortium of
private investors with multimedia interests. Both the Sharman Networks and
the www.KaZaA.com domain names are licenced by a Phil Morle of Cremorne in
Sydney.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, Sharman Networks is one of the top ten
biggest internet parent companies in the world, by volume of "unique
audience", coming in at number nine. As you can see this certainly puts
Sharman in the big leagues of online business, just behind online shopping
giant, Amazon.
Top 25 Internet Parent Companies
Week end of January 19, 2003, U.S.
1. AOL Time Warner
2. Microsoft
3. Yahoo!
4. Google
5. eBay
6. United States Government
7. Amazon
8. Terra Lycos
9. Sharman Networks
10. About-Primedia
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings Audience Measurement Service.
Sharman's main product is the world's most popular person to person
file-transfer application which allows people around the world to share
files, such as music and movies. It was downloaded at www.download.com
almost 3 million times last week alone, making it by far the most popular
title on the site (the next best had only 610,000 downloads).
This popularity has placed KaZaA and Sharman at the forefront of the
current debate about online piracy and copyright, which was sparked by the
success of Napster. Sharman Networks is currently being sued in Los Angeles
by major film and record companies for alleged copyright infringements, but
launched a countersuit this week claiming that the entertainment companies
had violated anti-trust laws by conspiring to control the online
distribution of movies and songs.
The story has received coverage in the Fin Review and this San Francisco
Chronicle article
Sharman must also have made a fortune for Telstra and other internet
providers around the world, as an unattended connection to KaZaA,is the
most common explanation for the huge bills, sometimes in the thousands of
dollars, received by many new broadband users. This is due to the fact that
all internet traffic, which includes uploading or sharing as well as
downloading, is charged to your broadband account and it is not unheard of
for more than 5 gigabytes to be uploaded through KaZaA in a single weekend.
Of course Telstra doesn't make this clear when you open your broadband
account, as they charge 15 cents for every megabyte you use over your
monthly allowance. So make sure you close your connection to any file
sharing program such as KaZaA when you aren't using it."
A great feature about KaZaA entitled 'The Race to Kill Kazaa', can be found
in the current issue of Wired Magazine.
http://www.crikey.com.au/media/2003/01/30/20030130kazaa.html
