Secret Kazaa Documents Revealed in Court 273
Dan Warne writes "A fascinating range of Kazaa's internal documents were revealed in Federal Court in the ongoing court case against the Australian-based company today. One extraordinary philosophical manifesto by the company's chief technical officer showed that he was aware that Kazaa's activities were a huge legal risk. He also feared being 'out-innovated' by other P2P programs that didn't come bundled with adware. "if consumers can connect to FT (as well as Gnutella 2, eDonkey and Bittorrent) and it has no ads or adware then it would seem a good choice," Philip Morle says in the his manifesto. The documents are full of all sorts of other admissions-that-you'd-be-crazy-to-put-on-paper like how Kazaa employees "hate" installing the Kazaa Media Desktop on their machines because all the bundled adware slows your machine down and can hijack your web browser."
Shock News Just In... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shock News Just In... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shock News Just In... (Score:2)
Of course he would admit there is spyware ; since it's so obvious.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shock News Just In... (Score:2)
Now if we could just find Dorthy, the Lion and the Tinman...
Currently... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:2)
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:5, Informative)
Kazaa says: No Spyware [kazaa.com]
Spot the difference, people!
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:3, Informative)
Except it's not their Skype website. The creators of Kazaa and Skype sold Kazaa off to the current owners quite a while ago.
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
So you've done your own audit then, yes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you also sure about your compiler, have you checked it? Not the source I mean, but do you know that the binary is a faithful reproduction of the source? The problem with a compiler, is that you compile it with an old version of itself. What if it has a backdoor that exists only in binary form, never in the source, but propagates on compile (see http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/)?
There's nothing about OSS that inherantly protects you. This is espically true since I'm guessing indeed you have NOT done the audit I described. Few people have the programming skills necessary to do so in a useful way and even fewer have the mountain of free time it takes. Rather, you are taking it on faith that others have audited the software you use, done a good job when doing so, and have spoken the truth and been heard if a problem was found.
A more realistic way to check to see if the software is all above board, and one that works equally well on closde source software, is to check the install. By that I mean log everything that is added, modified, or deleted. Then, when running the software, look for anomalous behaviour, like loading modules it shouldn't, trying to establish network connections, spawning other processes, etc. If you do that correctly, it's not hard to tell if something is acting evil or comes with stuff that does. It's also something that you could realisticly spend the time to do for all the programs you use.
Even then, I doubt you'd bother unless you are super paranoid. I'm sure you generally trust that others have looked in to it, and you'd have heard about it if there were problems. I personally only check the install and operation of a program that I find suspicious. Retail software, OSS, and 99% of downloads I don't bother since experience shows that there's nothing to worry about. I take on faith that there's nothing bad in there, and if there is one of my cleaner tools will catch it soon enough.
But my point here isn't to attack OSS, if that's what you are thinking, just to point out that this warm, fuzzy feeling that many people get from the openess is a false sense of security. They think because the code is open, and able to be checked, it means that there's nothing bad in there. Well, that's probably true, but only in the same way it's probably true that if you buy retail software it's also free of malware. Neither is a gaurentee of anything, and since 99.999% (or more) of people aren't actually using the openness to do their own audit, it's a false sense of security.
Basically, when you get down to it, you can never be sure there isn't something lurking there, unknown to the general population. The only way you could feel confident is if you wrote your own assembler from machine code, your own basic OS and compiler from that, audited every line of code in the OS, compiler and apps you were going to run, and then proceeded to build them 100% from source using your own tools. Even then, you still might miss something. Remember: We find holes in software all the time, we call them bugs or exploits, meaning they weren't intended by the developers. This happens even to OSS, even to major peices of OSS that have been looked at thousands of times over. Sometimes, you just miss things.
And none of these exploits were trying to be sneaky or hide on purpose.
I'm not trying to say grab the AFDB and trust no one, that's pretty stupid clearly. I'm just pointing out that you should put the same amount of stock in OSS you haven't audited as in CSS you can't. Consider the source, and if it's suspicious, do a checked install, and have programs setup to watch how it runs. With 30 minutes of work you can generally tell if it's safe or not.
Re:So you've done your own audit then, yes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So you've done your own audit then, yes? (Score:5, Insightful)
I love this argument. Of course the vast majority of people haven't pored over the source to find every detail. Similarly, few have opened their car engine's manual and pored over the specs to see if the Ford engineers got it right. But guess what, I can go to my mechanic and ask him: "What does this alternator thingy do?" and he can tell me. Not only that, but he can tell me how it does that. Not so with closed source.
I sincerely doubt many people have even looked at the gcc source (I'm guessing under 1%). But you _CAN_ look at it. That says a lot, both about the people who wrote it and about the people who package it. Writing code that you know people will see is a lot different than writing code that will forever reside in some closet somewhere in the bowels of Redmond...uhh...Sydney.
Do open-source bugs exist? Sure. Do open-source deliberate exploits exist? Unlikely. For one thing the exploit would have to be as you descibed, split over multiple calls & deliberately obfuscated to avoid casual detection. This level of complexity reduces the probability that such a thing exists and has avoided detection. It's not impossible, just unlikely. And that's good enough for me, cuz it's more than those closed source derivatives can say.
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:2)
When buying a pair of leather shoes, you don't really need a full medical check on the cow that the leather came from...
"Evaluation versions" are the software equivalent of "trying the shoes on"
Further over-extension of metaphor (Score:2)
Ah, but you're leaving out that the current shoes will attach suckers to your feet and start stealing your precious fluids. Often, the suckers remain even long after you remove the shoes.
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kazaa says "Trust me. My software is clean. Please install it on your computer." I say "Ha! Prove that your software is clean and then maybe I'll think about installing it to my machine. If you're clean, yous shouldn't have anything to hide by showing me your source code." Kazaa says, "No, I don't won't to show you my source code." I say "Cool. You keep your source code secret and I'll keep it off my machine."
Ashcroft says "We think you might be a terrorist. We want to come in and search through your hard drive for incriminating files." I say "I'm not a terrorist. I don't have to prove anything to you. You may not search my hard drive unless you have evidence and get a warrant." Ashcorft says "If you're not a terrorist, you have nothing to hide. The Unpatriotic Act III says I don't need a warrant. So when my secret agent takes his knee out of your back and lets you get up, please stay out of our way. You might be able to get your hard drive back in a year or two when we're done with it. Have a nice day!"
Do you see just a tad bit of difference in those two scenarios?
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:2, Informative)
Mercora free radio client.
MS anti-spyware spotted it trying to install the grokster adware bundle. Good catch.
-Nano.
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:2)
MS anti-spyware is a product in the grand tradition of MSAV. It detects a registry setting for magnet links, and thinks that means you've installed Grokster and its accompanying adware.
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:5, Interesting)
Kazaa says: No Spyware
Funny when companies have to explicitly mention they're not evil. Funnier is that Microsoft also says: "We're not saying there's no virus or malware in our product". Seriously... The MSN-Messenger license states that :
disclaimer of warranties. to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, microsoft and its suppliers provide to you [...] as is and with all faults; and microsoft and its suppliers hereby disclaim [...] all warranties and conditions, whether express, implied or statutory, including, [...] lack of viruses, [...]
Re:Sure there ain't no spyware... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Currently... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even in saying "Kazaa does not come with spyware bundled", followed by "Kazaa and the bundled software do not collect personal information" still leaves quite a large hole for them to just walk straight through. What if one of the bundled applications reroutes your HTTP traffic through third-party servers? All the application does is re-route your traffic, it doesn't collect any information at all. The information collecting may just as well happen elsewhere.
Again, always remain on the look-out for these things, however minor they may seem.
Re:Currently... (Score:5, Informative)
Just peek at Messenger Plus v3 (an add on for MSN Messenger) -- they include LOP in their installer, which hijacks your browser, your searches, adds a toolbar, and adds icons to your desktop, and is one of the most annoyingly difficult things to clean on your own. The Plus 'company' justifies it in that it's "adware", not "spyware", and that the user opted in when installing by not un-checking the default install option. What comes next is a hellish exercise of peering into the most obscure parts of the registry to kill the re-spawners that make the spyware^H^H^H^Hadware come back on reboot when things look clean.
Re:Currently... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Currently... (Score:2)
Re:Currently... (Score:5, Informative)
Step 1 of 4
Kazaa file sharing application with: Bullguard Virus Protection, Altnet Topsearch.
Kazaa is a free download supported by advertising from Cydoor, the GAIN Network and InstaFinder.
Altnet PeerPoints Manager Package, an application that rewards you for sharing on Kazaa including My Search Toolbar and P2P Networking Application.
Sharman Networks respects your privacy. Read the privacy policy. You must also agree to the user license agreements linked from below before continuing.
[ ] I agree to the Kazaa Media Desktop End User License Agreement and Altnet PeerPoints Manager Package End User License Agreements.
Seems it's just as polluted with spyware as it has always been.
They wouldn't be very good spies... (Score:2)
Covert!
Re:Currently... (Score:2)
Re:BitTorrent is dying?! (Score:2, Insightful)
And torrent was MADE with intention distribute LEGAL material
1] Host (Trackes) is easily indetificable and shut down should someone wish to do it thus killing all donwloads
2] File is verified upon downloading and you download using
Practice what you preach (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Practice what you preach (Score:2)
Re:Practice what you preach (Score:2)
It is also used predominately today by blind and deaf telephone users.
Re:Practice what you preach (Score:2)
Re:Practice what you preach (Score:2)
Wouldn't they have braille on the buttons to note the numbers and letters that they match to?
Re:WHAAA? ARE YA BLIND? (Score:2)
Eat your own dogfood (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of tech companies use it to describe th practice of using their own products in house. That's also where to discover many of the problems that infuriate customers.
It just goes to show... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:2)
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand that from the court's point of view such memos and letters are an important evidence that would allow them to judge not only the actions but also the intentions. Maybe that's what we should worry about? After all, it is really hard to prove intentions in cases like this - and even harder to judge them. An intention to rape & kill are obviously bad, but it is not as obvious with intention to develop a way for people to freely share files over the network. Here it depends on one's beliefs and interests whether he would see it the way I put it or as an intention to develop a way for people to steal precious and highly valued intellectual property of media companies. Are beliefs to be tested in court?
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:2)
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:4, Informative)
It is currently techologically possible to subpoena a person's thoughts: A witness can be subpoenaed to testify regarding their thoughts, and they are required by law to tell the truth. The only time your thoughts are protected (under the U.S. constitution) from testimony are when their revelation may incriminate you. If you commit your thoughts to physical form, however, they are subject to discovery just like any other physical object: should we be prevented from using a bloody knife as evidence simply because it is personal property of the defendant? If not, why should we exempt a written note?
You may not like the idea that your scribblings may be used against you in court, but it is the case, and has been for many, many years. If you commit a crime, then write about it in your diary, or send a letter to a friend confessing to the crime (or bragging about it, or whatever), those confessions damn well aught to be able to be used against you: they are directly material to the prosecution of the case and there is no state interest in protecting such communication (as there is in protecting communication between spouses, doctors and patients and lawyers and clients).
In the prosecution of almost any crime, there are two vital aspects that must exist: the actus reus (guilty act), and the mens rea (guilt mind). If the legal system can't attempt to substantiate mens rea, then we must either accept that no crimes can be prosecuted without a direct confession (completely unacceptable) or that intent is irrelevent to the crime (meaning that simple negligence would become criminal, also unacceptable).
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:2)
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:2)
No, the original poster isn't even addressing rights.
The advice to "Never write anything in a letter, e-mail, diary, memo or any other quotable medium that you don't want the other guys lawyer holding up in court." is more like the advice to lock your doors, or for young girls not to walk alone in bad neighborhoods at night. It's not that we assume others have th
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:2)
Perhaps there should be a limit, but there is not, at least not any limit that is helpful at hiding anything. Getting your opponent's documents during a lawsuit is part of a process called "discovery." The sooner people learn this, the safer they'll be. Lobby the legislature for a change if you want to, but this is the way it is in man
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:2)
Contemporaneous evidence (i.e. written at the time) is great since the writer often reveals at that time what he will later want to conceal from his opponent. This is true whether we are looking for evidence of intentions or evidence of actions.
(It's just that these intentions documents make for good reading.)
What a twisted philosophy (Score:2)
I am feeling a bit optimistic today, but I would rather that everyone write everything down. That way, the scumbags will be obvious and you can get a more honest view of things. It is like saying "don't be evil" as opposed to "don't leave a paper trail proving you are evil"
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:2)
Re:Intellectual "property" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Intellectual "property" (Score:2)
Not really. First we need to work out precisely what the supposed property is. But even then, we need to carefully look at the law to see whether the claims of ownership are justified. If the rights one holds over the 'property' are too limited, one is hardly an owner of it.
society of course will support mechanisms that allow for rewarding media producers
Of course, that's not even slightly accurate. Copyright and patent ar
Re:Intellectual "property" (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that's a fatally overbroad statement, and incorrect anyway.
I mean, the purpose of trademark law is absolutely not to encourage the creation of more trademarks. It is, again, to protect customers from being misled as to the source of goods or services. It's basically like the laws that mandate lists of ingredients on food products. Where ingredients are truthfully listed, customers will be able to know what's in the things they're eating. Wh
Re:Intellectual "property" (Score:2)
Nah, it's very different. It is a temporary monopoly granted by the government. Ownership doesn't have an expiration date.
With other property, you own the object. I can't take the object from you (without your permission), but I can copy it without affecting or lessening your possession in any way. The only value of intellectual "property" lies in its artificial monopoly.
article text (Score:4, Informative)
The Sale of Kazaa
Team Sharman came to court today with a strategic shift in direction: the revolution would now be a secret.
Their legal team presented a draft set of undertakings designed to suppress non-confidential documents from the media. It could have been a great plan if the Judge didn't think it was so crap, and with no supporting evidence for the basis of claim to confidentiality, Judge Wilcox swept away the majority of the claims for confidentiality by Altnet and Sharman.
There were 30 Altnet documents and four Sharman documents they didn't want publicised. We'll go through the Sharman documents today, and the Altnet documents later in the week.
The first item for discussion here at the Daily Dispatch is a 28 page contract between Kazaa B.V and Sharman, titled: Agreement for the Sale and Purchase of the Business and certain Assets of Kazaa B.V.
Buried within the most standard legal contract that makes you want to stab your eyeballs out, are the following nuggets of information.
When Kazaa's original Dutch owners got the jitters from pending US litigation by the music industry, the company was sold to Sharman for 600,000 Euros (about $1 million) to be paid in three installments. The purchase price included all company assets for the provision of p2p enabled software (which includes advertisement space for display advertising) to let users search and download files from other users.
Plus, all business and registered intellectual property rights, confidential information (defined as processes, methods, formulae, financial data, customer and supplier lists, marketing information, test results and reports, project reports, testing procedures, development manuals, training manuals, market forecasts, sales targets and stats, price sensitive information, research reports, business development reports), and all Internet domain names.
Bored yet? The sale took place in the Amsterdam offices of Van Doome at De Lairessestraat, and following the sale, Kazaa BV would have to change its name. Sharman was indemnified against all debts and liabilities and blah blah blah standard contract stuff. All employees were sacked after the sale (nice). Kazaa B.V ensured there was no Trade Union agreements or disputes in place at the time of sale. If there was, the leftie bastards would understand anyway, because every revolution starts a bit nasty. Of course, today Sharman enjoys the full support of a devoted staff that would never be treated so shoddily by their benevolent bosses if there were cause to up and move from a jurisdiction under legal duress. It's a revolution, it's Us against Them, it's Mabo, it's the vibe of the thing.
The Sales Agreement further confirms that when all employees were sacked, there was no way anyone could come back and haunt them to "assert any moral right in respect of any Business Intellectual Property Right." And if they did, then Zenstrom and Friis would be stung for it, not Sharman. So I'm guessing all employees were made to sign a contract as thick and dense as this one to make sure they kept quiet.
The original owners, Niklas "Skype" Zennstrom and Janus Friis were forbidden from competing with Sharman in any way for 3 years.
The deal was to be kept secret and not announced without the written consent of Sharman. The Sales Agreement was construed in accordance with the laws of England and subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
There were two clauses that seemed a bit odd. Under Schedule 3 of Vendor Warranties is the subheading Litigation. Clause 5.1 says:
Save as disclosed in the Litigation Letter, the Vendor (Kazaa B.V) is not a plaintiff or defendant in or otherwise a party to any litigation relating to the Business, which are in progress or threatened in writing or pending against the Vendor. So far as the Vendor is aware, no governmental or official investigation or inquiry concerning the Vendor is in progress or pending.
Th
How much does this matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't see that this is going to blow major holes in Kazaa's legal defense, although I do think they'll lose anyway.
I don't think Kazaa's argument was ever that they "didn't know" about all the illegal P2P traffic they were generating. Surely their argument is the old "Common Carrier" one, where they aren't responsible for anything Kazaa transports and responsibility is shifted to the software user? Maybe I've misunderstood, feel free to correct me.
Now, this is clearly embarrassing for the company, and the CTO especially, but I can't see that it's of much legal importance. Everyone knows about Kazaa and spyware by now, don't they/
No, really (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No, really (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone get the feeling... (Score:5, Insightful)
That maybe this chap wasn't -entirely- on side with the business strategy of the company.
To me this sounds like a techy complaining that the business is subverting the idea. In many cases this is because the techy doesn't understand the business model, but here it sounds more as if the business didn't understand the market.
suprising, or is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:suprising, or is it? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:suprising, or is it? (Score:2)
It's a little different now... Too many lawsuits, too much media coverage, and too much money pumped into "educating" the public about the "evils" of P2P and Kazaa.
Trial lawyers must not run Australia's economy (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is not to excuse his spyware-infested piece of crap. But where ever business memo must be written in such a way that you csn't tell the truth because it might be used against you in a court of law, your have a big problem with your tort system.
Not an issue w/ the tort system (Score:2)
But where ever business memo must be written in such a way that you csn't tell the truth because it might be used against you in a court of law, your have a big problem with your tort system.
Replace tort system with business practices. Now your statement makes more sense.
IOW, the problem is not in the tort system: if the truth is bad enough to get one in trouble then that is the real issue.
Your rightie provisional assumptions are showing (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, wherever putting details about your business model down on paper would result in serious legal liability, you have a big problem with your business model. Yes? The problem with Enron wasn't that they might get caught, it was that they used fundamentally dishonest accounting practices -- whether they wrote those pr
Still... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's simple, real (Score:5, Insightful)
If it weren't explicitly illegal, they'd even poison a town's water supply just for some money. Not an exaggeration: companies dumped toxic stuff into rivers right until the law forced them to stop. Or into the air. And even then, every time someone told them to use filters, there was endless moaning and bitching and lobbying about it.
Spam, tele-marketting, link-spam, spyware, etc, are just a symptom of the same thing: if it makes money and it's not illegal, hell yeah. Let's pollute and destroy another resource.
There was an interview with a link-spammer on The Register this week. Dunno, I found it surrealistic how the guy basically had _zero_ morals. Not even an "eh, it's wrong, but I need the money" kinda attitude. Nope. The general tone all over was along the lines of "who the damn has time to care about collateral damage? It makes money and it's not illegal. Period. If you have a problem with it, tough shit. Sucks to be you."
Basically it's the same with spyware. These people don't care, that's all. As long as it makes them a buck and isn't explicitly illegal, they'll clog your computer without thinking twice. If it was possible and made them a buck, they'd even make that computer explode without thinking twice.
Re:It's simple, real (Score:3, Insightful)
I do however claim that _some_ people, even if they _knew_ they're poisoning others, they'd still just not care at all. If you gave them a choice explicitly along the lines of "do we do X, and gain nothing, or do Y and gain 10,000$ at the expense of killing 100 people", they'd choose Y every single time.
Not because they like killing people, of course. Because, worse yet, they just don't care. The only
Re:Still... (Score:2)
Why be amazed? The adware/spyware is about making money fast. It really is that simple.
They're not trying to go the "correct way", no matter what they claim.
OK, bear in mind (Score:3, Informative)
Hoisted... (Score:4, Funny)
One nice thing about any devious plots. People always have to write them down to either keep their lies straight, or to justify it somehow to themselves.
Why not much free software innovation? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know the answer, but I guess I'm more qualified to answer than many because I've been coding one on and off for the past three years. I guess the answer is it's hard work. You're also not "following head lights", as even the eDonkey clones do. And the programming is not easy - with C language it's socket programming, which means all kinds of strange things can come over the network which have to be defensively coded against, and since you're using multiple sockets that means threading. And it takes a lot of code to just get a decent app, never mind cool bells and whistles. One reason mine is GPL is, aside from liking the GPL, this is my first big software project so I don't feel I'm at a level where I can sell my code yet. I've also borrowed GPL code from a program called gnut which helped. I would borrow from one called GTK-Gnutella but it's so big and complex it's hard to directly borrow from.
Of course there are exceptions - Gnutella (although AOL/TW killed the eponymous one, leaving only the protocol clones), and Bittorrent. With the Gnutella protocol, Limewire and Bearshare are commercial companies, but they agree on an open protocol, which they share with some free clients (like mine).
There are so many innovations possible - Bittorrent is one of the recent ones - it built on what Edonkey did, allowing hundreds of megs of files to be transferred, except with Bittorrent, it added speed to the picture. So because Bittorrent exists, people now have a better chance of getting ISOs of Linux distros, Indymedia videos or whatnot. It's such a cool area I wonder why the propietary folks so often beat the free ones in terms of innovation. I guess it's a wash now with who innovates more. And also, with sockets, trheading and protocols that obsolete older versions as time goes on (ay de mi!), it takes so long to get a decent app together that innovation seems a long way off.
I suppose another reason is the RIAA/MPAA is suing p2p developers left and right - that might explain why people are hanging back somewhat. It's unfortunate this fear is stifling p2p innovation. In many ways it seems ridiculous to me - on BBSs in the 1980s you had a file section and a message board system. Sometimes you didn't even have a message board - just a file section. People have been trading and sharing files on computers for decades, all of a sudden such communal practices are tainted, with accusations flying on Slashdot on how people use p2p to break some new laws that the big corporations passed recently in Washington DC that protected their soi disant intellectual property. It's ridiculous - there were normal BBSs and warez BBSs back then, just as there is an equivalent nowadays on the Internet. It would be insane for US-legal (for now) things such as sharing ISOs or Indymedia videos is crushed by the evil capitalist bourgeois corporations.
Re:Why not much free software innovation? (Score:2)
Now I'm an Apple fan boy. But they too use proprietary tech to make sure that just about the only things that will bolt on to a Mac or iTunes is an Apple product. Apple went the proprietary route for many of the same reasons, they wanted to be sure THEY would capitalize on the product's success, not a generic competitor. Especially since iTunes required licensing out intellectual property from
Re:Why not much free software innovation? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see how you can make this statement - Gnutella is in no way synonymous with P2P file sharing; having used it myself and knowing others who have tried it the only thing I would associated the name Gnutella with is a software application which getting any file will take a relative lifetime.
Napster however is a different story. They had a product which was used by many and had an immense amount of content
Re:Why not much free software innovation? (Score:2)
Re:Why not much free software innovation? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Lack of goal cohesion. In a proprietary company, you have a few people who design, and many who do as told. There are far too many variables around, often contradictory, like anonymity vs speed, centralization vs searchability, trust vs open network, leeching vs entry barrier and so on. Many networks have become not only a jack, but a deuce of all trades that way.
2. Lack of vision. Those capable of coding a network application are rarely the same ones who can imagine a working concept of a million nodes. In OSS, it is my distinct impression that those who can do, and those who can't are ignored. Such a network can never be simularted properly in a test lab, you have to do it in your mind. Which means others will disagree, and badly.
3. Standing on the shoulders of the wrong giant. By OSS's cross-breeding nature, it is much easier to keep building onto what is, than to change the fundamentals. In a proprietary network you're starting from scratch anyway, might as well do it "right", for whatever you believe is right. In networks, scaling is everything. If the way you construct the network is putting a ceiling on your app, the only thing you'll do is hit the roof again and again.
And what experience do I have about that?
Re:Why not much free software innovation? (Score:2)
The proprietary developers such as Napster/KazaA/Morpheus/Aimster were quicker to get into the fray because they believed there would be big dollars. By now, all the pro
Re:Why not much free software innovation? (Score:2)
Re:Why not much free software innovation? (Score:2)
Kazaa _must not_ fail (Score:5, Insightful)
<grumpiness size="extreme" style="curmudgeonly">
If Kazaa goes down, there could well be a flood of low-quality Britney_Spears_naked111.mpg traders and leeches coming onto the good p2p systems. I don't think I want that.
It'll be like AOL day all over again.
Support Kazaa -- or America's highschoolers will be trading on your network!
</grumpiness>
Re:Kazaa _must not_ fail (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Kazaa _must not_ fail (Score:2, Funny)
Do not underestimate the power of the September side of the Force.
But it ALREADY has! (Score:2)
Shareaza, on the other hand...
Out of curiosity... (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:3, Informative)
It's important to note that while you can kill the spyware bundled with Kazaa, if you modify the Cydoor installation, then Kazaa will cease to function.
Here is a good website [cexx.org] if you want to install "dummy" files to trick Kazaa and other adware software into thin
Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:3, Informative)
I think this is irony... (Score:3, Funny)
I really don't understand this (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Kazaa puts spyware crap in their product
3) Users think this is unfair
4) Kazaa is in court because of what they did
Am I crazy? Is there someone out there forcing people to install Kazaa? How many people were installing it for legit legal use?
You don't want spyware crap? Don't install shady programs.
This is like sueing a drug addict because he let you share his needle and you contracted HIV. I really don't get what all the fuss is about.
Re:I really don't understand this (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd Really Think, Wouldn't You... (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd really think, wouldn't you, that if your employees hate your product your customers might too?
Oh, right. They're just stupid kids intent on killing off the music industry throught their own needs for immediate gratification.
This CEO is not someone I'd ever hire to run my company.
Ways around Kazaa spyware (Score:3, Insightful)
kazaa lite is like the holy grail of windows p2p clients. If you search near and far then you just might be able to get your hands on this piece of p2p goodness.
Option 2
grab giFT! This is the most amazing p2p client I've come across because you can install modules that allow it to connect to all the p2p networks! gnutella, fast track and others at the click of the mouse!
Exaggerating "aware" of the "huge legal risk" (Score:5, Insightful)
Is your company using Linux? You could be at legal risk to a SCO lawsuit. Collect personal data on your customers? You could be at legal risk if that data gets hacked. Run a bungee jumping business? Legal risk. It doesn't say "he was aware they were performing illegal activities", it says he was aware of a risk. That is simply awareness that a) there was a real chance a lawsuit would be filed against them, and b) there was a non-trivial chance that, if sued, they would lose. Risk awareness does not imply guilt.
I like Kazaa.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And slashdot keeps advertising skype, (Score:5, Informative)
Skype is created by the original developers of Kazaa, but the original developers did not include any spyware/adware in KaZaa. The spyware/adware was added to Kazaa after it was sold to Sharman.
Re:And slashdot keeps advertising skype, (Score:2)
You're right, they just sold it to people who did. That doesn't sound like the kind of person I'd trust.
Re:VMware! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's even easier in the workplace where XP can be locked down on the security front.
Re:VMware! (Score:5, Informative)
Ha.
I'd say I'm far from stupid - not a genius of course, but I do enough knowledge to administrate Unix and Windows systems, and write software. Yet I can't keep a Windows box spyware and virus free, unless that's specifically my objective.
I mean, it's certainly possible, if what you aim for is a spyware free box. Yes, I can use vmware, every virus and spyware scanner, try to make sure everything I install is 100% safe, and perhaps get a clean and hopefully useful box out of it. But no normal user does that, myself included. I'm certainly fairly paranoid and won't install random crap from the net, but nice looking useful tools can have spyware too.
If you want a real example, here's one. Go to this Azureus page [azureus.org]. Well, actually that's not the Azureus page. It's a page that some jerks set up where you download spyware. The real page [sourceforge.net] is on SourceForge.
The cost of forgetting to look with a critical eye at the fake page is to have your system infected with all kinds of crap that will then pretty hard to remove. And it's pretty hard, mind you. I could fairly easily have fallen for it, if I hadn't seen the official one before and wondered why they changed their design so much. Normal users don't run strings(1) on suspicious executables and google for information, though.
Now, you could argue that this kind of thing applies to Linux as well. True. However, there's a critical difference: On any sane Linux distribution, the official release of Azureus will be a package. And if the user downloads the software on their own, it'd be installed in their home directory. At least, while running under your account such crap is limited in what it can do, and has it much harder to wedge into your system as to make it hard to remove.
Re:VMware! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:VMware! (Score:2)
Re:bloody bollocks wrong! (Score:2)
As an user of Unix systems you should know that a decent OS has the ability of limiting the damage a normal user can do. On Unix that mostly means limiting the damage you can do to your own account. While not perfect, it certainly helps.
Yeah, Windows has accounts, and privileges. The system is even nicer than the Unix one. However, I've never seen them actually working well. Windows is incredibly uncomfortable
Re:VMware! (Score:2)
Not only that, but it takes a bit more than "common sense and attention to detail". It's fairly evident sometimes when an app has malware bundled, but installing it might be worth it if you can just wipe it out later. The spyware is getting on there, just the same.
Re:um.. (Score:2)