The outcome of the Kazaa case in Australia is a win for the music industry's slash and burn approach to peer-to-peer file sharing networks. On the face of it, their objections seem reasonable. Content creators should be able to protect their intellectual property, otherwise it
would be harder than it currently is to earn a living from singing, dancing or pretending to be able to do either. But there is more to it than that. What makes the record labels nervous is not copyright infringement per se, but any form of distribution that is not entirely within their control.

Distributing copyrighted material by sharing it with other users is actually not illegal. You only break the law when you distribute without permission. So, you ask - just who would be crazy enough to actually grant their permission?

Arguably, the only thing stopping most artists today walking from the record labels and distributing all their music, is that it takes a lot of retail distribution power to get albums on shelves, and marketing money to get people to pay attention. So even if you were confident you could bypass normal retail channels and sell direct from your website, you still need serious money or major media partnerships to effectively secure online distribution.

However, if enough of the world's music listeners were hooked up to a comprehensive P2P service, a popular artist could potentially turn music industry economics on their head - releasing music for free into the network and making money on concerts, merchandise and marketing endorsements.

And that would not be good news for the music moguls of the world.

So, with Kazaa out of the way, you can bet that eDonkey and Bit Torrent are next in the line of fire.

Luckily the Kazaa guys have another brillant idea up their sleeves - Skype. Which is not so lucky for the world's Telcos, who now probably wish they had their own grounds for a lawsuit or two to stop their industry being invaded.