Four years later, Sharman paid $100 million to settle music industry lawsuits and agreed to turn Kazaa into a legitimate service. In 2002, the Kazaa website and logo were sold to Australian Sharman Networks Ltd. However, because the Kazaa system was totally distributed, existing users could still swap files, and people still continue to swap music using programs such as Kazaa Lite and Kazaa Resurrection, although to a significantly lesser degree. The music industry sought to close down the company, and a Dutch court ordered the cessation of the Kazaa software. Although users were encouraged to not share copyrighted material, most downloads violated copyrights. Supported by advertisers, the Kazaa Media Desktop software enabled users to view paid content from Altnet as well as content from other users, the latter seriously vexing the music publishing companies. Within two years, Kazaa claimed a record 230 million downloads. The original "KaZaA" was a file sharing service founded in 2001 in Amsterdam by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who created the underlying FastTrack peer-to-peer technology that was also used to power other services such as Morpheus and Grokster. An unlimited number of ringtones were also available for one cellphone. For a monthly fee, Kazaa provided unlimited downloads of music for playing on up to three PCs. KazaaAn earlier subscription-based online music service from Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc., Sherman Oaks, CA.
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