Slashdot Log In
Kazaa/Altnet To Pay Users For Trading Content
Posted by
simoniker
on Mon Jun 02, 2003 02:47 PM
from the not-as-good-as-it-sounds dept.
from the not-as-good-as-it-sounds dept.
mesozoic writes "News.com is reporting that Kazaa and Altnet are unrolling a setup where users are paid to distribute 'authorized content.' The article also mentions something about getting rid of unauthorized files, but is unclear on when and how. I'll be paying close attention to whether this P2P business model pans out; Sharman _has_ shown some shrewd business sense in the past."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Payed for spam! (Score:5, Interesting)
Great, now I can get paid to host some companies spam on my computer. Lucky me!
Re:Payed for spam! (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, I quote spam because it doesn't qualify if someone chooses to receive it. It is only spam if it is pushed on a user unrequested. Losing that distinction muddies an extremely important issue about our right to control what communication we receive.
Parent
Re:Payed for spam! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure but if you think you are getting one thing, like a brittney spears video, and instead you get some promo video for some porn site, then that qualifies as spam yes?
Re:Payed for spam! (Score:4, Funny)
uh, no, that would be more aptly categorized as a blessing.
Parent
Re:Payed for spam! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously though, both services are just rebadges of KaZaA or KaZaA Lite, for which they charge unsuspecting users $1-$2 a month (billed annually in advance, of course). There's nothing legitimate about them, but I'm really curious as to how many people have paid for them.
Parent
cut out the middle-man (Score:5, Interesting)
they can keep the money, we'll just call it even.
Mike
Kazaa Lite - Tastes Great::Less Filling (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Kazaa Lite - Tastes Great::Less Filling (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Kazaa Lite - Tastes Great::Less Filling (Score:3, Informative)
And just to make clear, kazaalite.com is NOT the official Kazaa Lite site; it is some squatter.
Re:cut out the middle-man (Score:3, Funny)
sounds like a dumb idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
Could Anyone Really Trust Kazaa (Score:5, Insightful)
As a host, I wouldn't put much faith in actually ever receiving cash from the company. Schemes like this tend to have a history of absconding with the cash.
Of course, it would be nice if there were an easy way for college students to make a little bit of cash by selling their school's bandwidth.
Parent
what ifs... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they stay illegal, they'll get trounced by Apple, keep their user base, and not make a penny for it. Great business sense indeed...
Re:what ifs... (Score:3, Funny)
Hell, That whole DCMA thing just went away when we got on the case, huh!
Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Where can I sign up? (Score:5, Funny)
Raises some interesting issues (Score:5, Interesting)
So say someone in the USA downloads my copy of 'That's When Your Heartaches Begin' to complete his Sun Studios collection, he would be a law breaker, a german doing the same would be enjoying his right to peruse material in the public domain, but where would I stand?
Re:Raises some interesting issues (Score:4, Informative)
With the Internet, things are less clear because the expanse and reach of it have only recently been addressed in the courts. Presumably, someone in the USA downloading your copy would be breaking copyright laws whereas someone is Germany would not. That is the present situation until the courts or governments decide otherwise.
Parent
Not exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that is not entirely so. In Europe, copyright expires 50 years after the death of the author, not 50 years after the work is published and the author is dead. In the US, the current limit is AFAIK 75 years. As a consequence, Elvis' works are not yet in public domain in Europe.
Other than that, you are absolutely right; it raises some interesting questions. For example, the works of George Orwell passed into public domain in Europe two years ago, but when I featured them on my Web site, I was quickly presented with a cease-and-desist letter from a US publisher. Residing in the US and having all my files on a US-based server, I had to oblige.
Parent
Seems to me.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seems to me.... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have 300 people downloading a 3MB file, that's 900MB you've got to move. Few people can afford to have that much bandwidth on demand. This is why things like BitTorrent [bitconjurer.org] exist. Now that I think about it, this system could do for small files what BitTorrent does for big ones.
Either way, this will save the content provider quite a bit of money in bandwidth. How much does 1GB of bandwidth cost these days? Suppose 300,000 people want that 3MB file? How much does 1TB of bandwidth cost?
Parent
Re:Seems to me.... (Score:4, Insightful)
They were initially going to force regular FastTrack users into assisting with the distribution if they had downloaded the file(s) in question. (They would force the file(s) to be shared.) Then a few people, myself included, started screaming rather loudly, and they eventually started looking for a different business model.
The problem with this scheme, as well as all its previous incarnations, is it doesn't directly provide any value to the entities bearing the cost. It silently pushes the bandwidth costs onto the ISPs of the P2P users. Eventually those costs will be borne by all internet customers. At least with this scheme they're making an attempt to provide some reward to some of those who will bear the cost. Those customers not using Kazaa will just have to deal with even higher ISP costs without receiving added value.
Parent
Don't squeeze the sharman (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, just don't squeeze him.
Great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Next stop, My computer will be used as a pr0n server without my knowledge, and since it will be (semi-)encrypted, I won't even necessarily know about it.
Re:Great! (Score:3, Informative)
You just described the freenet project. [sourceforge.net]
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Girlfriend: "What are these pictures I found on your computer?!?"
You: "I swear they're not mine! I was just trying to support Kazaa's new P2P business model! Honest!"
Parent
Kazaa Lite (Score:5, Interesting)
Or if anyone will care.
Sure, I believe you (Score:5, Insightful)
Sharman executives say the new system is well worth bundling inside their software, but they say it can be easily removed if users don't wish to participate.
"Altnet's Peer Points is like the spell checker in Microsoft's Word," said Phil Morle, director of technology for Sharman Networks. "It's an integral part of the program that you can choose to use or not."
And it's not like Sharman and Brilliant Digital would ever try to pull a fast one on their users, would they?
GMD
BITTorrent (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Funny)
One of those banned Shadowbane players already has 768,323,000,000 Peer Points, and plans to redeem them for a Harrier jet [snopes.com].
Sucker born every minute (Score:4, Funny)
Spyware fears with Kazaa? Unthinkable!
Re:Sucker born every minute (Score:3, Funny)
If you read KaZaA's "No Spyware" Policy [kazaa.com], you would know that KaZaA contains no spyware. It only contains the following.
Peer Points (Score:3, Funny)
[walks into amusement park, signs everywhere that say "Peer Points not accepted here"]
Doh!
Sounds like eBay for digital media (Score:3, Interesting)
Peer to Peer to Peer (Score:3, Interesting)
Gnutella proved to be a tad "too difficult" and Kazaa took off (taking Morpheus out in the process). Besides userbase, the only other advantage I see in Kazaa is the metadata. Still, though, when someone is in control of the entire network, you're forced to take what they give you (or run kazaa-lite).
I haven't followed peer-to-peer in quite some time now. Is there someplace that compares all the different services/protocols and rates them for ease of use, etc? I'm currently using gtk-gnutella but would like to know what my other options are. (qtella, eMule, etc?)
This is just the beginning... (Score:5, Interesting)
Kazaa's move is essentially an implementation of what BitTorrent's creator alluded to in the recent /. story --
getting past the "subversiveness" of file sharing and making it work for everyone, including the creators of the shared content.
Veddy interesting......
Keyword: Authorized (Score:3, Interesting)
To me this sounds like paying independents, and possibly some bigger companies small money for releasing their "preview" files.
This is not about the users of the network, it is about making the network seem more like a usable market or an advertising medium. Although this is not a bad step, I see no benefit to me, so I am staying on Gnutella, perhaps the only usable network that has no commercialism attached to it.
killing unmetered bandwidth DSLs (Score:4, Interesting)
The question is(as I am not going to install Kazaa and all it's junk on my pc), how much bandwidth would you need to provide in order to make 1$ - power bill.
And I gues it wouldn't make the job for admins easier at the misc, education institutions.
They may have problems buying prizes (Score:3, Informative)
How many prize cars does -$4,165 buy?
What about Acceptable Use? (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at my Roadrunner account's AUP:
Unless you have specifically subscribed for commercial grade service, the Road Runner service is provided to you for personal, non-commercial use only. This service cannot be used for any enterprise purpose whatsoever whether or not the enterprise is directed toward making a profit. If it is your intention to use this service for these purposes, please contact your local cable operator to inquire whether commercial Road Runner service programs are available.
I have to believe hosting Kazaa / Altnet content and getting paid for it *could* get some users in trouble.
More crappy patents (Score:5, Informative)
History Repeats... (Score:5, Insightful)
By unauthorized I assume they mean copyrighted/illegal files. I think it's also safe to assume that while Kazaa has legal uses, it's primary use is trading copyrighted material. If this material is removed for non-paying users, we'll see a dramatic drops in the number of users.
As has happened in the past, with Napster for example, once one peer-to-peer program removes copyrighted files, there is a mass migration to new, alternative peer-to-peer system that does allow it.
As others have mentioned, I hope that the least Kazaa will do for paying customers is remove all the spyware.
Kazaa Lite: No Altnet (Score:3, Informative)
Just keep using Kazaa Lite [k-lite.tk], that is, until they find a way to disable access for non-authorized versions, and we all end up with "only" eMule and the other networks, which will probably include a modified version of WASTE in the near future.
Definitions (Score:4, Interesting)
"Altnet's Peer Points is like the spell checker in Microsoft's Word," said Phil Morle, director of technology for Sharman Networks. "It's an integral part of the program that you can choose to use or not."
easily removed and integral part are mutually exclusive. Who are they trying to BS?
Getting paid for using my PC resources (bandwidth and HD space)? I don't think so. Have any of these schemes worked in the past?
Paid for browsing
Paid for viewing ads/click-thru's
Paid for buying 'Flooz'?
Yeah, right. All down the tubes, just like this will.
Throw in Brilliant's spyware track record, and this is a non-starter.
What is the conversion rate (Score:5, Insightful)
Another thing that Kazaa may remember that sometimes people may have more altruistic motives. Take for example Seti@home. Millions of people allow SETI to use their computers to analyze data signals for no charge. It might a little more successful if Kazaa allows points to be donated to charities at a higher rate.
Without more details it's hard to say how this system will really work.
Have you seen what they consider "payment"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Riiiiight. Thanks but no thanks -- earning access to paid content and the possibility of winning cash prizes isn't enough of a reason to allow BDE to make money using MY hardware and MY connection, whilst potentially affecting the stability of my system. Howzabout I keep on using Kazaa Lite [hccnet.nl] instead?
How long.... (Score:3, Interesting)
so, how long do you think it takes before your ISP alters its TOS to make it illegal for you to use your PC for this?
Kazaa Conspiracies (Score:4, Funny)
Ahem (Score:3, Funny)
Is the verification for the user sharing IP based? If so, I know for a fact that Verizon doles out IPs to anyone on a local network that wants one.
Take THAT RIAA.... (Score:4, Funny)