Phil Morle
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Phil Morle (born 1968) was the Director of Technology for Sharman Networks, the owners since 2002 of Kazaa until 2006. Kazaa holds the record for being the most downloaded software program with over 60 million copies downloaded by 2003. Morle also designed the Kazaa website which was one of the top ten sites in terms of visits as at 2003.
Morle was a theatre director in Perth for ten years and was working in information technology to subsidise his interests. By 1997, he became a web designer. In 1999, he joined Brilliant Digital run by Kevin Bermeister which ran Internet auctions for Sotheby's and Christie's. While working in Darling Harbour in 1999, Morle met Nikki Hemming and the pair became friends.
Morle was asked to redesign the Kazaa website in October 2001 as they were a client of Brilliant Design. Kazaa was then owned by its originators Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis and the company was facing legal action from the Dutch music industry which was suing the company for copyright infringement.
Sharman Networks bought out Kazaa in early 2002 with Bermeister and Hemming recruiting him as Director of Technology. Kazaa was the main beneficiary of the demise of the first version of Napster in the middle of 2001 and by the beginning of 2003 over 60 million copies had been downloaded. Kazaa's website was one of the top ten websites in the world.
Organisations such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) have accused Kazaa of facilitating breaches of copyright. Morle gave evidence in the civil suit that ARIA has taken against Kazaa in the Federal Court of Australia in December 2004. He claims that Altnet that the company developed allows bands to use Kazaa to distribute their material.
Kazaa has been accused of bundling adware, spyware and malware with their software. In a 2003 interview with The Guardian, Morle described this as an urban myth spread by companies marketing anti-spyware. However, CNet's Download.com stopped hosting a download capacity for the program on its site because of malware packaged with the program.
In his testimony before the Federal Court of Australia in December 2004, Morle testified that it was not technically possible to filter adult and illegal sexual content such as child pornography from underage users. This contradicted claims by Alan Morris, the Vice-President of the company to a Committee of the US Senate that the company's Adult Filter provided such a capacity.
