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The Internet

KaZaA Collapses 373

Posted by Hemos from the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it dept.
MikeKD writes "according to SFGate, KaZaA has announced that it will fold due to the cost of defending itself against the RIAA & MPAA. The timing is notable since on Monday, Altnet (owned by Brillant Digital) announced plans for "sponsored listings in peer-to-peer search" on its "separate [and] secure P2P resource-sharing network"."
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KaZaA Collapses More

KaZaA Collapses

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  • Newsflash! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 )
    Being on the Internet does not make one immune to copyright laws!

    • Re:Newsflash! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Pogue Mahone ( 265053 )
      But whose copyright laws do you have to obey?

      • Re:Newsflash! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ranulf ( 182665 )
        But whose copyright laws do you have to obey?

        This new idea of being able to choose where to sue for copyright infringement seems very wrong to me. Surely the idea is that every citizen in any country should be responsible to keep to the laws in their country, and suffer the penalties imposed by their country when they break them.

        Ralf.

      • Re:Newsflash! (Score:2, Informative)

        by -brazil- ( 111867 )
        Copyright laws are pretty much standardized internationally through the Berne Convention, which says that any signatory nation must grant foreigners the same copyright protection which it grants its own citizens. There's another treaty that additionally specifies minimum standards of protection, and all members of the WTO must comply with both of these treaties.

    • Re:Newsflash! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Weh ( 219305 )
      This is not about copyright laws, this is about injustice. However you might feel about Kazaa doesn't change the fact that they claim not to violate any copyright law, so they must be presumed innocent until found guilty by court of law. The reason they are folding is not because they admit they are guilty, but because they cannot afford to pay for al the legal costs of lawsuits. It is really sad that in this case someone with a lot of money can prssure someone poorer in not having an honest court of law. It's really the law of the jungle, nothing new of course but still sad to see.

    • Re:Newsflash! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Beliskner ( 566513 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @08:06AM (#3571426) Homepage
      Being on the Internet does not make one immune to copyright laws!
      Copyright is an artifical concept. Many lawyers think intellectual *property*. Property being 90% of the law. In actuality it should be *intellectual* <font size=-3>property</font> which is completely seperate.

      Copyright laws can change tomorrow. Some artists and all record companies will want 100% control of their product - the DVD regions system is racist as it discriminates against people in other countries and thus inhibits free trade, violating WTO regulations, even if you're willing to pay full price for the product, they still want to control who buys it, where and when. This shows me there's no middle ground with these people - it's CDBPPTA or nothing, and they'll use the most expensive lawyers available. The outcome of legal action is a combination of Poker (cheaper to fold instead of raise, even if your own hand is better), luck and who's right and wrong.

      Everybody that I know that went to court "on principle" has lost their house, car and life savings as a result, despite the fact they were right. Losing everything to lawyer fees when you are 60 years old is NOT funny. This system is just plain wrong.

      I wish binLaden smashed planes into the Supreme court instead of WTC. Amen.

      Honestly, when I look at Sharia law I can see why the Middle East supports it, looked at objectively it as a whole at least gives the impression of love and caring for the average citizen, together with the accruing of large amounts of money being an abominational and disgusting act of selfishness. I dunno man, I can't help feeling that there's something there that we've lost.

      Sharman networks should move to Dubai in UAE, Towry Law is based there and it's a beautiful place, everybody has a Mercedes. The servers can be housed in Saudi Arabia, they have no IP laws there, but they'll need one big air conditioning unit. Why don't people locate server farms in Greenland, Norway or in the Arctic? No air conditioning costs whatsoever, just a few fans.

      Cheapest model in IT:
      Servers in cold countries (e.g. Norway)
      Coders in cheap countries (e.g. India, China)
      Consumers in rich countries (e.g. America)

  • KaZaa != KaZaa (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spacefight ( 577141 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @05:34AM (#3571087)
    Aren't the dutch representatives (the ones beeing sued) not the owner of the software (and with it, the newtork) any longer? Well why should RIAA & Friends sue them any longer? Why didn't they already filed suit against Sherman Networks in OZ? Or does anyone know if they alleged them already for copyright infridgement (lol)?

  • Try to catch me ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CyberQ ( 304799 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @05:35AM (#3571090)
    It seems "only" the company has to give up. The system will live on - in a more exotic location:

    The Web site and the software behind it are now owned by a privately held firm called Sharman Networks, based in Vanuatu, an island in the Pacific.

    This promises to be an interesting legal battle, esp. for jurisdiction and enforcement of any rulings. The question is: Will the servers be moved to Vanuatu as well?

    • Which servers? The supernodes (which holds up the net IIRC) are the users themself. Or are you talking about the DRM stuff (which nobody is interested in..)?
    • Vanuatu is trying to clean up it's banking system which has been used for offshore havens for all sorts of monies that should have been taxed. It's not really a surprise that a company trying to evade legal action would hide there. The lengths companies will go to to provide free pr0n and mp3z to people never ceases to amaze me :)
    • The Web site and the software behind it are now owned by a privately held firm called Sharman Networks, based in Vanuatu, an island in the Pacific.

      RIAA, please don't squeeze the Sharman...

      .

  • Someone actually uses Kazaa?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mindjiver ( 71 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @05:38AM (#3571098) Homepage
    Why would anyone wanna use Kazaa when you could use DirectConnect?
    • How do you search for files on DirectConnect?

      I admit that I've barely looked at it (I'm not exactly a huge p2p user anyway), but from what I saw the whole idea is that you connect directly to (a group of) computer(s), then see what's being shared on them.

      So, how do I find a specific song/video/document/whatever? Do you really have to connect to every computer on the network in turn, hoping that what you're after will be on them? Or is it only intended for people who don't particularly care what they find, as long as they find something?
    • Question: Does it work in Linux? If it does, I might give it a shot

    • Easy, because most Direct Connect Servers require you to 'share' up 5-20 gigs of your harddrive to the network. Thats a high price of admission.

      D

  • NOOOooo !! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23, 2002 @05:38AM (#3571099)
    I haven't finished downloading Star Wars yet !!

  • So???? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Newer Guy ( 520108 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @05:39AM (#3571101)
    "The collapse of Kazaa, however, is not expected to slow trading activity on the company's network, one of the most popular file-sharing sites in the world. Kazaa said it has sold the network to another firm that the music and film industry has not sued yet. " They sold off all their assets and now they're cashing out. Big deal.
  • "Kazaa said it has sold the network to another firm that the music and film industry has not sued yet."

    Just give them time, just give them a little time and they will have sued every one in the entire world :P
    • "Kazaa said it has sold the network to another firm that the music and film industry has not sued yet." [the emphasis is mine]

      The media is seeing a pattern. Interesting.

  • Cheers! (Score:2, Funny)

    by mqduck ( 232646 )
    Forgive me for stating the obvious, but I'm gonna bet that I'm not the only one who is unhappy about the legality of it, but excited that KaZaa might crash and burn.

    Long live Gnutella [gnutella.com]!

    -Jeff

  • "In a related story... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Soulslayer ( 21435 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @05:49AM (#3571123) Homepage
    ...Spy Software companies and makers of other beneficial consumer products wholly unrelated to virus software announce that they expect a downturn in profits and expect to lay off 75% of personnel."

    Seriously folks, is this really a bad thing?

    P2P software is a nice idea, but I would be more interested in them if they were more user controllable. I'd much rather have a P2P network comprised solely of individuals that I trust than to be connected to a sea of people do not know eating my bandwidth searching for things I do not have and do not want.

    Give me a P2P solution that allows me to selectively authorize requests to my system and communicate only with those other people that I wish to communicate with. A mini P2P between myself and my friends.
    • Um.. how about using FTP?

    • ummm, it's called FTP. set up an ftp server, give the address out to your friends, and have them set up ftps and give the address to you. simple. if you want to chat, fire up an icq/irc...

      • Re:"In a related story... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Beliskner ( 566513 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @08:49AM (#3571597) Homepage
        set up an ftp server, give the address out to your friends, and have them set up ftps and give the address to you. simple
        This is exactly how it was done in the past, friend - FTP. Oh man, I've been trading files since you were just a twinkle in your parents' eyes kiddo. 5 years ago in my day it used to be www.audiogalaxy.com as the search engine (like Fast Networks www.alltheweb.com FTP search). It spidered FTP servers. You'd type in the song you want and get a list of FTP servers matchig with their IP address and login/pass (usualy mp3:mp3). They'd usually be running warftp daemon, have an upload:download of 1:3 usually so you MUST upload a song to be able to download a song. Unlike Kazaa if you upload a song the guy doesn't want he takes it personal and *kicks* you from his ftp server. In other words you spent 1 hour uploading a song over a dialup connection just to get kicked after 1/4 of your download, and maybe get your IP address shitlisted (if the song you up'ed was that bad). This is why in my winamp 40% of songs are incomplete, ftp server admin kicked me. Sometimes you'd do a reverse-DNS and see the FTP server is in Russia, where it's 5am, so the FTP server is unmanned. This is when you have fun and upload win386.swp and kernel32.dll to get download credits. If you want to download a 5 Meg song, and the FTP server has a 1:3 ratio, you have to upload at least a 1.8 Meg song so you'd always have your mp3 portfolio in windows explorer arranged in size order. FTP admins got pissed off that only small songs get uploaded, but in dial-up days this still took an eternity.

        These were the days when CuteFTP was unstable and kept crashing. Ahhhh, those were the days when song-swapping was personal. Some people with me got kicked from the FTP server in mid-download, got pissed off and ping-flooded the FTP server for 10 minutes. It was all so personal.

        Usually the FTP servers would be busy with >50 simultaneous users so you;d have to hammer the FTP server with a 3-second wait timeout. Sometimes I'd use my own PC to hammer, and I'd ssh into my friend's linux box and use it's ftp to hammer also, and then use the first one to connect. Trouble is if you hammered to hard they'd ban your IP address for 15 minutes to 1 day. With DHCP just hang up and dial up again to get a new IP address. These were the days when a static IP address (like with ADSL) was something to be avoided at all costs.

        Sometimes I reminisce about the good old days by downloading from Kazaa and opening up an MSDOS prompt and typing netstat to get the reverse-DNS, makes things feel a little personal again for a few seconds. But I suppose old-timers like me with the personal touch aren't wanted any more *sniff sniff*.

        So when you kids point and double-click on Kazaa, remember us, the pioneers who did things the hard way.

        Score:5 Historic, pre-P2P era dinosaur, modded up out of feeling of respect for your elders, when everything wasn't as automatic as Kazaa

  • Truly Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by matrim99 ( 123693 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @05:51AM (#3571129) Homepage
    It never ceases to amaze me that the major record companies don't see *free advertising* when it's in front of their faces. Those folks who pirate content and don't end up buying that content wouldn't have purchased it in the first place, so there is no net loss. Those who would have purchased the content that they download can access a wider variety of content online, and will end up purchasing more. MP3 quality is a far cry from CD quality, afterall.

    Just look at what videotapes did for the movie industry (and when VHS/Beta first came out, the movie industry feared that these would kill the movie industry). They took the technology that they feared, ran with it, and ended up making MORE $ from video sales than from the box office.
    • And IMO it's not even about their experience with VHS time-shifting and video sales making them more money after they complained, as you correctly pointed out. (Of course, they also get a tax on blank media, still, for some reason...)

      I think the real conflict is about control. Control of artists, users, and any possible bottlenecks between them are therefore a GOOD thing, to the RIAA, because that's control and they fear losing control even more than losing money -- even if it would lead to a better product for consumers (or better compensation-levels for musicians, who must also be controlled).
      JMR

      (My opinions only, nobody else wants 'em anyway.)

    • Re:Truly Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheAJofOZ ( 215260 ) <`adrian' `at' `symphonious.net'> on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:24AM (#3571189) Homepage Journal
      MP3 quality is a far cry from CD quality, afterall.

      Well, not really. On a good quality sound system, MP3 is a far cry from CD quality - on an average sound system to average people, it's pretty much the same. I suspect that a very large majority of people would fail blind tests judging between MP3s and CDs playing on their own sound system. Heck, most people would fail when played on a top quality sound system - they listen to Britney Spears for goodness sake! :)

      • The term "CD Quality" refers to more than just the quality of the final sonic reproduction. That, is more dependant upon the equipment that is playing the media than the media itself, in most cases. Since it is so dependent upon the output equipment, it is largely irrelevant. The important issue of "CD Quality" is its "flawless" duplication. Sure, even when using an optical or coaxial feed off of the player, there will be some signal degredation due to faulty transport mechanisms, imperfections on the disc, dust, incorrect optical cable alignment, "jitter," ect. The effects of that are extremely minimal, however, and statisticaly insignificant, even over many multiple generations of duplication.

        MP3, on the other hand, is a dead end format. Once a waveform has been compressed, there is no going back without further degredation. Sure, the files can be copied from computer to computer with no information loss, but the audio itself can go no further. You cannot do much with it, other than listen to it on your mid-range to low-end audio set ups.

        Granted, that is all most people need, but it is the critical difference between master and duplication that the industry likes to gloss over and pretend does not exist.
    • Your analogy is flawed, since movies are actually sold. They make money on vhs, whereas they don't make money on p2p trading (yet). I agree that it's stupid to fight the free advertising. Problem is they want control. Radio works because you hear what they want you to. They don't care that you're not paying for it, because you only hear what they dictate. With p2p, you get to hear whatever you feel like downloading. Oh, and the other thing is that they ARE potentially losing customers. The people who download and don't buy. They may have actually bought the album if they couldn't preview it to find out that the rest of it sucked. Mind you, that's a shitty business model (hook 'em with one catchy tune, make 'em buy an album full of crap to get the good one)

    • "It never ceases to amaze me that the major record companies don't see *free advertising* when it's in front of their faces. Those folks who pirate content and don't end up buying that content wouldn't have purchased it in the first place, so there is no net loss."

      It's only free advertising if we accept your statement that the people who don't buy the content when they can/do pirate it also wouldn't buy the content if it weren't easily available for piracy. While I believe your statement may be true in some individual cases, I don't think it necessarily works as a blanket statement. It's not hard to imagine someone being interested enough in a given song/artist that that person would pay for the CD, but that the person loses their motivation to spend money on something they essentially already have.

      So if we accept that piracy cuts into some sales, it goes from free advertising to forced advertising. There's a cost (in the economic sense of the word) associated with the copyright violation of the work. The question becomes one of whether or not that cost is offset by the sales produced by the advertising. The answer is unclear. However, whether or not the product should be advertised in this manner is a decision that the copyright holder should be the one to make.

    • MP3 quality is a far cry from CD quality, afterall.

      double blind scientifically conducted and statistically valid listening tests with quality encoding software (not Xing!) have said otherwise.

    • It never ceases to amaze me that the major record companies don't see *free advertising* when it's in front of their faces.

      No, I think the RIAA is really just upset that nobody bothered to ask them first if they wanted free advertising.

      I am more than willing to provide free advertising for Porsche owners. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anybody to accept my offer by leaving the keys in the ignition of their car. I guess they just don't appreciate innovative and disruptive business plans!

    • MP3 quality is a far cry from CD quality, afterall.

      Not always. A specific preset in LAME 3.92 will provide transparent reproduction at an average data rate of 192 kbps. Read the "quality" section of r3mix.net [r3mix.net] to learn more.

  • How can Kazaa continue? I was always led to believe that it wasn't true peer-to-peer as you had to sign onto their servers.

    Surely if they go down, then all the clients will have nowhere to connect and hence not be able to locate other people connected on it. Unlike Gnutella in which each user maintains a list of nodes and tries all of them until it finds one connected in which to pull off other nodes.

    This would also explain why the need to "log on" to kazaa and why it's relativily (compaired to Gnutella) fast to find the nodes.

    Or am I missing something?

    • How can Kazaa continue?


      KaZaA is sort of peer-to-peer... Before KaZaA decided to shaft Morpheus users, there were open source clones out there. The reason these clones no longer work is that KaZaA began sending clients a key, and if you didn't have that key you couldn't communicate with other users that did. So, in that respect, KaZaA going down would be a good thing.

      As far as a central server being used to get the list of hosts... I believe you are correct that it won't use it's cached list.

      In response to your sluightly dergoatory mention of Gnutella, I can tell you that it would take only fairly minor changes to the Gnutella servants out there to make it much much better than KaZaA... But it seem Gnutella programers don't impliment the obvious for whatever reason.

  • This is the Dutch Kazaa, NOT the Vanuatu one (Score:3, Informative)

    by Zeddicus_Z ( 214454 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @05:53AM (#3571134) Homepage
    Kazaa no longer owns the client or the website. It sold them to a Vanuatan based company called Sharman Networks (originally thought to be based in Australia.)

    So, basically, Kazaa BV sold the application to Sharman to sidestep the lawsuits. Action failes and Kazaa BV goes down anyway.

    I spose they've just put Sharman on notice.
  • If the people running this do decide to thumb their noses at everyone, move the servers to this island and continue to do what they'd like, they better not live in the US, because they are still liable and will be hauled into court.

    So the owners better move with the equipment if this is the route they are planning on taking.

    *no where in the article did it say these things, this is just a hypothetical situation*

  • It's a shame... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DarkDust ( 239124 ) <marc@darkdust.net> on Thursday May 23, 2002 @05:58AM (#3571144) Homepage
    ...that "organizations" (they act more like companies like MS, don't they ?) like RIAA and MPAA are able to force other companies out of business simply by filing lawsuits until the company in question is running out of money.

    And it's a shame that no one stops those a******s at RIAA and MPAA. They both have far too much power at their hands and play us consumers for a sucker...

    Their pricy hands even reach us here in Europe... scary thing.

  • In-depth coverage in LA times article (Score:3, Informative)

    by Seth Finkelstein ( 90154 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:01AM (#3571147) Homepage Journal
    That story was the AP breaking-news version. There's much more detail in the LA times version [trb.com], which discusses the litigation in more depth. Particularly notable (money, money, money ...):

    Lawyers for another defendant, Streamcast Networks Inc., which launched the Morpheus file-sharing network, voiced a similar complaint. Morpheus' main law firm, Palo Alto-based Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, told the court it intends to withdraw from the case because Streamcast can't afford to pay the bills. ...

    Legal fees are running high in the case not only because it's extremely important to some of the world's largest media companies but also because it involves several of California's biggest law firms. ...

    Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

  • my life is a joke (Score:4, Funny)

    by clinko ( 232501 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:02AM (#3571150) Journal
    My life is a joke... I spent the last few weeks writing a p2p program.

    Just finished, at 5 a.m. Guess I don't want to get sued

    It was fun while it lasted...

  • Software is not to blame (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jukal ( 523582 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:07AM (#3571157) Journal
    If I create a system which enables people to share files, how do I violate anyones copyright?

    And if it does violate something, where is the magic line: why could not for example usenet news be considered as similar system then? It can be used as an organized tool for sharing copyrighted material. Should server admins start making sure that no copyrighted material is posted - and if yes, how do you make this possible? In my opinion, this Kazaa case is exactly similar.

    They can keep running Kazaa and it's future breed into bankcruptcy, but it will not solve anything. They are just playing cat'n'mouse. Someday, they will notice that mice fuck much more, kill one, and you have a dozen new. Someday, they will realise that they have to affect something else, this something else is in "peoples mind" and is the reason why Kazaas are created.

  • Interesting strategy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:10AM (#3571159) Homepage

    I'm actually quite taken with Kazaa's strategy. It seems like they're just going to keep "selling" the name and technology to own of their own subsidiaries or spin-offs, then fold whatever part of the company is currently being sued.

    Of course, it's a scam, and the [MP|RI]AA can just pursue the new owner... who can just sell on the name and technology, and fold. They'll have to actually go after the owners personally, which is a completely different proposition.

    I'm not exactly enamoured with Kazaa (gnutella for me, thanks), but I think they've hit on the only possible defence to the "litagate them into submission" tactics that the [MP|RI]AA are increasingly turning to. However, it's yet another indicator that if you want to start an innovative business, don't do it inthe USA, or in anywhere with strong treaties with the USA. That part is very sad.

    • Re:Interesting strategy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonj@NoSPaM.gmail.com> on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:38AM (#3571215) Homepage Journal
      ... yet another indicator that if you want to start an innovative business, don't do it inthe USA, or in anywhere with strong treaties with the USA.

      I mostly agree.

      If you clarify by saying "innovative and disruptive" business, then I think you are 100% correct. You can be innovative, but you can't disrupt revenue streams of larger corporations.

      Innovation may be tolerated, depending on circumstances. Disruptive technology will be eliminated at all costs.
      • Blockquoth the poster:

        If you clarify by saying "innovative and disruptive" business, then I think you are 100% correct. You can be innovative, but you can't disrupt revenue streams of larger corporations.

        I don't think you can have innovative technologies that aren't disruptive. If it plays nicely with what's come before, it's evolutionary, not revolutionary ... and it's a doomed revenue stream.

      • If it doesn't disrupt someone's revenue stream, it can hardly be considered innovative.

    • However, it's yet another indicator that if you want to start an innovative business, don't do it inthe USA, or in anywhere with strong treaties with the USA. That part is very sad.

      You can start a innovative business in the US, you just need to know who to talk to. Maybe they could hook up with John Gotti, Jr. or one of the other bosses who have a lot of experience setting up innovative businesses in the US. I'm not sure how you get in contact with them though as part of the secret of running an innovative business is to keep under the radar.

  • Oh no.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mumblestheclown ( 569987 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:10AM (#3571160)
    where will I get my spyware from now?

  • Kazaa folds, but lives on. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hkmwbz ( 531650 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:21AM (#3571181) Journal
    From the article:
    "The Web site and the software behind it are now owned by a privately held firm called Sharman Networks, based in Vanuatu, an island in the Pacific."
    This was presented as if it was something new. Far from it, Sharman Networks bought up Kazza a long time ago. I actually thought Kazaa was part of Sharman Networks (and not based in the Netherlands). In any case, as the article also states, it won't affect the network.

    Sadly.

    It is a waste to have to use a specific client to access this network. When I saw the "subject" of the story I thought for a moment that this would be a great time to open up the FastTrack network and remove the authentication.

    But it looks like the network and client software were never in danger here, and that they can continue the centralized authentication system.

    It looks like this is basically a non-event, as it has no effect what so ever, unless I've missed something.

    Sadly.

    • Re:Kazaa folds, but lives on. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @07:50AM (#3571390)
      Question, what reasons would you give me (if I was the CEO of Kazaa) for opening up the fasttrack network?

      Don't forget that I'm in it to make money because, after all, I can't pay my developers, admin, building etc.etc with anything else.

      Note: This isn't flamebait, trolling or whatnot. I'm interested to know because as far as I can see, opening the network up would benifit everyone bar Fasttrack - who might as well just vanish into thin air if they did. And if you can't give them a good reason - then there is no hope of it happening.

    • Further to this, version 1.7 of Kazaa was released yesterday [slyck.com], in which Brilliant Digital Player is no longer installed by default, and the search functionalities are enhanced.
  • These people not only steal other peoples music, but the scumware that gets installed onto your PC steals commissions from website operators.

    Check out scumware.com [scumware.com] and Parasiteware [parasiteware.com] for more info on these. Another case for AdAware!

  • More in-depth article at CNET (Score:4, Informative)

    by silvaran ( 214334 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:48AM (#3571244)
    CNet has a longer article with quotes from testimony, etc. @ Kazaa, Morpheus legal case collapsing [com.com].

  • bye bye kazaa (Score:3, Informative)

    by hopey ( 172229 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @06:57AM (#3571265)
    this works for me: [fsf.org]
    mldokey open source edonkey client for most unix platforms.

    hopey
  • In my understanding, Kazaa relies on user/client authentication by a server. This will ensure that the client is the one that is full of spyware etc. However, it was determined during the Morpheus collapse that if there was no logon server, the older Morpheus client could contuinue (it was just a one-time lock out in the registry that prevented the client from continuing).

    Is this true? Regrettably, Gnutella doesn't seem to be as effective for P2P, so it would be good if Kazaa clients can continue. In particular, it is plagued by tar-pits, that is people setting themselves up as supernodes or for unlimited uploading without having adequte processing power or bandwidth.

  • I for one dont think so. First of all Kazaa, Morpheus, Bearshare etc is one of a wast number of ways to get illegal content from the internet. FTP, Friends, IRC, SMB shares, Usenet, maillists with ftp addresess sent out etc. etc. The dont stand a chance to close down much. Especially since they havent got a fixed target. They try to get the biggest players down but there are quickly someone else there to fill the gap. How can you shut gnutella? Shut bearshare and then someone else sets up a hosts cache in tanzania, uzbekistan or perhaps write the ip with laser on the moon where noone have jurisdiction.

    They are fitghting a loosing battle and hsould rather think about how they can make money on this. To shut filesharing down is probably not possible.
  • Filesharing tools doesn't violate copyrights.
    People violate copyrights.

  • P2P Company Ownership (Score:3, Funny)

    by Organic_Info ( 208739 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @07:34AM (#3571353)
    How about P2P company ownership - i.e. an ownership token can be passed through the network. Each time legal action is instigated against an owner the token is passed on.

    The cost of constantly instigating action against an "owner" would cripple potential action

    -

    Hmmm this could do more harm than good in the long run. I personally think there are to many people who don't want to take responsibility for their actions. Perhaps its time tht everyone took on the industries and knocked it through their thick heads that people are tired of being ripped off.

    But hey I won't hold my breath and expect to see that sort of consumer action in my life time (if ever). We live in a flock (as in sheep) society - easy pickings for the wolves.
    .

  • Time to switch yet again... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Juju ( 1688 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @07:53AM (#3571395)
    Ok, so after Napster, Morpheus/KaZaA, people will now use Direct Connect...
    Or usenet, or message with FTP upload/downloads.

    When will RIAA and co understand that there is NOTHING they can do about P2P and data exchange!

    Unless they manage to somehow stop the internet as we know it, but I don't think they can get away with that kind of murder...
    • Two years ago, you were right. But the RIAA et. al. are not as dumb as they seem. They are using the "nothing they can do about P2P' in a so-far successful attempt to gain far more control over the use of their "products". Call it a counter-revolution.

      If they can gain control over when and how their products are used by the mass market, then the existence of marginal P2P networks will become nothing more than a bother. A cost of doing business. Meanwhile, Disney and WB will be collecting $10 a month from millions of households for access to their content. Plus the pay-per-use fees.

      If the RIAA and MPAA handle this right, and get some lucky breaks, this could be the best thing that ever happened to the entertainment business. In that light, their present spin/lobby/litigate strategy makes perfect sense.
    • Yeah, but how are they going to enforce that?
      Having CD players, amps and all the Hi-Fi stuff use coded signals? That's not going to work because the public will never buy those!

      Or buy adding tax on every computer, modem or whatever can be used to transfer music/films (like they did for the blank CD tax?)
      I don't think the PC manufacturers or users will accept that!

      I think RIAA is fscked and that by going on that way, they will only loose more and more business. Funny how the claimed 20% loss started after Napster was killed!

      I have not bought a CD from a non-independant label since... Same with going to the theater, I just stopped watching the crap they are trying to feed me! They are just hurting themselves by bringing all this bad publicity.
  • Apparently they are going to start charging for search results on their p2p network. Here is a quote from the article about what they are rolling out.
    "These technologies include TopSearch, a sponsored link engine that enables content owners to promote their content and receive preferred placement in P2P search results".
    Sound familiar? Sounds to me like RealNames [slashdot.org] and we all know how successful that was.

  • Ummm.. you want music? (Score:3, Informative)

    by LightJockey ( 459672 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @09:07AM (#3571708) Homepage
    Hasn't anyone here heard of AudioGalaxy? If I want pr0n or movies, then I'd have used Kazaa, but for music I always use AG Satellite... surprisingly their music dBase is a LOT bigger, plus they actually host indie artists whose music you are free to download without ANY copyright (ok, I might not be using the right term here so no post-whippings! :) )

    Put it this way... if you want commercial stuff, look on Kazaa. If you want that, plus lesser-known, indie, underground, or even oldies, go AG.

    You can always go old school too, since AG has a "backup plan" in case somebody goes after them for their sharing. They've been offering an FTP search database as well. I still remember that back in the day when it was called the Borg Music Search.

    • AG is great, but more and more "commercial' songs are getting flagged as being copyrighted, hence the X on them. Getting a bit frustrating, but there's always ways around it, usually by switching the artist name and song around.
  • I normally bash open source hippie zealots.. but this is one case where an open protocol with some solid open clients is the only thing that will survive, because it doesn't present an easy target.

    Any p2p type app based on a single company is going to fail

  • I'm sure limewire (gnutella) is loving this... (Score:3, Informative)

    by powerlinekid ( 442532 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @10:44AM (#3572442)
    Napster, scour, kazaa... all it goes to show is that commerical p2p has its flaws. The problem from what I can see is that they try to retain some control of the network, at which point RIAA says "Hey, you can stop this at anytime, do it!" and they have to. However, I'd love to see them go after gnutella. With dozens of free (beer and/or speech) clients and a pretty much completely decentralitized network there really is nothing they can do about it. Unfortunately there isn't too much on gnutella (content wise, as compared to fastrack) but when they're the last game in town I'm sure it'll get better. I'm sure limewire (the commercial gnutella company and yes they give it away, but they still sell stuff) loves this. They easily have the best gnutella client (morpheous has some stuff to work out) which is multi-platform and would probably love to have kazaa's share of the population.

  • It couldn't have happened to a nicer spyware distributor...

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