Seems that KaZaA has been nailed by the Dutch government. As the article says:

“A Dutch judge has ruled that Internet company KaZaA must stop its users sharing copyrighted music files, but the company said on Friday it could not comply because, unlike Napster (news – web sites), it does not know who its customers are.”

KaZaA uses FastTrack technology to implement its P2P functionality. It’s completely serverless, so there’s no way that KaZaA can conceivably comply with this ruling. Similar lawsuits by the RIAA and MPAA against Music City and Grokster will also create a compliance problem.

Frankly I think there’s going to be a huge compliance problem out there. These systems were built as serverless, self-organizing systems specifically so the companies could avoid any copyright compliance problems. In many ways, this problem is exactly like copy machines. As you know, you are not allowed to copy copyrighted material on a copy machine. Yet the publishing industry allows those devices to exist. The music and motion picture industries are now faced with this problem and they are likely going to completely fail in controlling it now that Pandora’s box has been opened.

The only potential outcome from these suits is that they can force certain developers to stop distributing their software. But this is clearly an infringement on free speech, which I don’t think will stand up in the Supreme Court.

Read the full article at Yahoo.