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Skype Boys Chip In For Sharman Settlement |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Monday, 31 July 2006 |
Founders of tear-away broadband phone success stories, Kazaa
and Skype, have chipped in for a US$100 million settlement with the music
industry according to reports.
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who sold off the file
sharing network used to illegally pirate millions of copyrighted songs sold off
their Kazaa brainchild when legal problems began heating up. They then turned
and created another pee-to-peer Internet sensation, developing Skype, the broadband
phone system they subsequently sold on to eBay for billions of dollars.
The downside to the duo's success is that they couldn't travel
to the United States for
fear of getting embroiled in the legal dispute that has raged around Kazaa
since they sold the company to a Vanuatu
company which subsequently established the business under the company name
Sharman Networks based in Sydney,
Australia.
Now the way seems clear for them to venture to the U.S.
after all defendants in the copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the record
labels and music studios have agreed to settle for US$100 million plus.
The settlement clears Zennstrom and Friis to travel to the
States without fear of being served and detained.
In a Reuters
story, it has now been revealed that the billionaire duo have contributed
their own money to the settlement.
A spokesperson for Sharman Networks confirmed the two were
among those contributing to the settlement payment, though it's unlikely the amount
will do much to dent their personal fortunes.
However the legal woes resulting from Zennstrom and Friis'
involvement with Kazaa are not entirely over. The tow are named in a
racketeering suit bought against themselves and eBay.
The lawsuit alleges the two reneged on a deal they had with
Morpheus network operator, StreamCast, to sell it the Kazaa peer to peer
technology, FastTrack.
StreamCast claims the FastTrack technology is the basis
for the peer-to-peer system used in the Skype software Zennstrom and Friis sold
to eBay.
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