An Australian court has ruled that users of the well-known file-swapping program named Kazaa are infringing copyright.

Kazaa has been used by millions of people across the world to share music, films, games and other files for several years. Most of these files are copyrighted and the record industry has claimed it has therefore lost large sums of money to illegal sharing of music through programs like Kazaa.

The ruling is only enforceable in Australia although the record industry is still claiming a victory, despite the failure of several similar actions in the past to make any significant change to people's file-sharing habits, most having moved on to other file-sharing programs such as BitTorrent already.

Many see the record industry fighting a losing battle to stop its consumers accessing music they way they want to, and as one file-sharing program or site is shut down, several replacements will appear as previously occured with Napster. Instead the industry should focus on evolving to take advantage of the potential offered by Internet music distribution, as witnessed by the success of legal download sites such as iTunes.