Kazaa Almost Over

A ruling by an Australian court, the country of origin for P2P Kazaa, which forces heavy filtering and promises hefty fines effectively shuts down Kazaa for music and video file sharing.  But rest assured that the hipsters and techies have already migrated to other services and variations on the technology. There is no stopping this juggernaut; and the industry’s only hope is in creative solutions like much, much lower pricing, licensing at the ISP level, and most of all better contact.  Give a kid a reason to buy a CD or tracks and make it easy and affordable for him to do it and we’ve got a chance.  Any attempts at going half way – like variable pricing at iTunes with even higher track prices for hit product – and you drive the consumer right back to illegal but free downloads.