Are the executives at the helm of the Kazaa file-sharing service headed to the slammer?

An Australian judge said yesterday that it was entirely possible, sending the legal squabble between the music industry and popular but controversial Kazaa into uncharted territory.

In a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Australian record industry last year, Justice Murray Wilcox found Kazaa guilty of copyright infringement in September and ordered it to block Australian users from trading copyright-protected works on its network.

When the deadline arrived earlier this month for Kazaa owners--Australia-based Sharman Networks--to do so, it posted a message on its Web site telling Australian users not to download the service. It also said it would be blocking users from the country through IP-filtering technology.

But the service said it did not have time to install a keyword-based filtering system to prevent the trading of copyrighted songs, as the court had also ordered Sharman to do. Sharman and the music industry had opposing interpretations of Wilcox's ruling late last month. The ruling said that Kazaa deosn't have to shut down until the court hears Kazaa's appeal of his decision in February 2006.

Dissatisfied with Sharman's efforts, music industry lawyers filed a motion this week to find Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming and Kevin Bermeister, CEO of Kazaa technology partner Altnet, in contempt of court. The motion also included Sharman Networks, LEF Interactive, Altnet, and Brilliant Digital Entertainment.

"Contempt proceedings are fairly rare in this court and I've never yet sent anyone to jail," Wilcox said in the Federal Court in Sydney yesterday, according to Australian media reports. "I've threatened to a few times, but there's always a first, I suppose."

"If there has been a breach [of the court order], that's contempt of court," he continued. "On the other hand, if [the order] has been complied with, that's the end of the contempt charge. This motion is going to raise the matter of whether there is compliance or not."

Record industry lawyers told the court that they would not push for jail time, but would ask for some kind of punishment for the contempt charges, saying Kazaa's blocking technology was "ineffective."

Wilcox will rule on the contempt-of-court motion on January 30.