- Phil Morle
Phil Morle (born 1968) is a consultant advising internet startups on building and operating large-scale consumer internet platforms. In recent years Morle has advised startups including
Yoick ,YelloYello ,Omnidrive ,Prime ,3eep andTangler . Morle has been active in industry standards groups, as one of the founders of [http://dataportability.org Dataportability.org] and a workgroup member ofAPML ( [http://apml.org] APML.org). He has also been a film producer on the independent film [http://akas.imdb.com/name/nm2711307/ "Mine" (2007)]Prior to 1997, Morle was a founder and artistic director of [http://kaostheatre.com/ Kaos Theatre] 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 byKevin Bermeister which ran Internet auctions forSotheby's andChristie's . While working inDarling Harbour in 1999, Morle metNikki 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 originatorsNiklas Zennström andJanus 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 theAustralian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) took legal action against Kazaa, alleging that the company's products facilitated breaches of copyright in the Australian Federal Court. The court found that Kazaa had authorised users to infringe music industry copyright, though proceedings against Morle were dismissed.Kazaa was accused of bundling
adware ,spyware andmalware with their software. In a 2003 interview with "The Guardian ", Morle described this as anurban myth spread by companies marketing anti-spyware. However, CNet'sDownload.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.ee also
* [http://www.apml.org/ APML.org]
* [http://www.dataportability.org/ Dataportability.org]
* [http://kaostheatre.com/ Kaos Theatre]References
* [http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/developing-a-better-world/2007/08/13/1186857427336.html "The Age" profile on Phil Morle]
* [http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Bump-in-the-hall-for-Kazaa-man/2004/12/08/1102182366534.html "Sydney Morning Herald" article on Morle's testimony to the Federal Court of Australia December 9 2004]
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/talktime/story/0,13274,1030232,00.html "The Guardian" interview with Morle August 2003]
* [http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;705113803;fp;2;fpid;1 "PC World" interview with Morle]
* [http://philmorle.com/ "Phil Morle's Blog]
* [http://www.centernetworks.com/dataportability-google-facebook-join "Google and Facebook Join the Data Portability Movement" - Centernetworks.com]
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