An Amsterdam court yesterday ordered the Dutch company behind the file sharing service KaZaA to halt the distribution of its software which has to date been downloaded more than 30 million times, according to KaZaA.com. However, the site was recently sold to an Australian company so the effect is ruling is still unclear.

According to Associated Press, the court found that the KaZaA Media Desktop encourages copyright infringement which “justifies on its own a ban on the use of the web site.” The problem for the record companies bringing the case is that those already using the software will be almost impossible to stop.

The file sharing service operates independently of the KaZaA site, which is different to the way in which Napster operated. Any individual with the software download and web access can share music, movies or other file types.

The KaZaA.com site was today continuing to offer the software download. The site claims that its software was downloaded more than one million times in the last week alone.

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