LOS ANGELES – The music publishing industry reached a tentative deal with operators of the Kazaa file-sharing network over claims of copyright infringement, an industry group said.
Publishers pursuing a class-action suit against Kazaa informed U.S. District Court on Monday that the peer-to-peer network had agreed to pay "a substantial sum" under the agreement, the National Music Publishers' Association said in a statement.
The amount of the settlement was not disclosed. It is subject to final approval by the association board.
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The settlement "will be another key milestone of the ongoing transformation of the digital music marketplace to one that will allow legal services to thrive," NMPA President and Chief Executive David Israelite said in the statement.
Phil Armstrong, a spokesman for Sharman Networks Ltd., which owns and distributes Kazaa, said he was not familiar with the lawsuit and declined to comment.
Sharman Networks announced in July that it had settled copyright infringement lawsuits with music labels and movie studios, agreeing to redesign its software to block customers from downloading protected music and movies and to pay more than $115 million in penalties.
The agreements are among a wave of legal settlements between file-sharing networks and the entertainment industry since the Supreme Court ruled last year that technology companies caught encouraging customers to steal music and movies over the Internet could be sued.
Last month, a federal judge ruled against StreamCast Inc., the distributor of the Morpheus online file-sharing software, finding the firm encouraged computer users to share music, movies and other copyright works without permission.
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