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Kazaa to be shut down?
Posted by
chrisd
on Fri Nov 30, 2001 12:30 AM
from the it-aint-piracy-unless-you-have-an-eyepatch dept.
from the it-aint-piracy-unless-you-have-an-eyepatch dept.
darkpriest writes "According to this article on The Register, the file sharing software KazaA has been ordered to cease copyright infringment. They have two weeks to comply with the Judges ruling or face a penalty of $40,000 a day." CD: We've gotten a number of submissions about this, I had no idea Kazaa was this popular (must be all those a's in their name). I bet anyday that the RIAA will sue cisco for making routers that could be used to infringe.
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Kazaa to be shut down?
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Popularity (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Popularity (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty clear that it's a big part of the reason they're being targetted by the BSA, RIAA, etc. currently... I can only hope that University research into these things doesn't fuel the corporate interests backing the anti-P2P movement.
Some background on the FT network (Score:5, Informative)
The KaZaa/Morpheus servers handle logging in and refer the node to a supernode, where the node sends its list of files it wants to share. These super-nodes store these lists, and search queries are forwarded to the supernodes.
A supernode also gives the lists of some of the clients its connected to, so if the supernode disappears nodes can talk to other nodes about supernodes without getting kicked off the network.
So, effectively the network is controlled by the supernodes, which can be just ordinary PCs with reasonable bandwidth. The KaZaa servers only handle the logging in pretty much, so I doubt the FastTrack network could ever technically be shut down. Unfortunately the FastTrack protocol is very proprietary, and uses some closed-source algorithms. It would be good to see someone create an open-source 'equivalent' of the p2p protocol with the excellent features of FastTrack.
Anyway that's just my understanding of the FastTrack network, correct me if I'm wrong.
OpenFT is what you seek! (Score:5, Informative)
Try OpenFT / giFT [sourceforge.net].
Re:Some background on the FT network (Score:4, Interesting)
Ironically this modification of the gnutella protocol was introduced about a year ago by Clip2 when they introduced their Reflector. FastTrack made the observation that this sort of enhancement should be an organizing principle for the entire network rather than a marginal enhancement. It helps to minimize network traffic while extending network visibility horizon by orders of magnitude (by the ratio of nodes : supernodes).
Even as these events transpire the various gnutella clients are in the process of implementing the two layer structure in a very public presentation and review of the needed protocol modifications. Simultaneously we are in the process of adding full file hash values in order to improve the quality of files that can be found and downloaded over gnutella. When hash information has been successfully deployed on the gnutella network we will also be able to implement swarm downloads.
It is a slower process to have a public protocol evolve to respond to empirical results for a variety of clients. But in the end it might be a more robust method.
How the FastTrack P2P stack works (with pictures) (Score:4, Informative)
Until we get universal television stations... (Score:5, Insightful)
This will just keep happening.
Ok, maybe people will always want something for free, but the Internet file-sharing phenomenon is the single best argument for having simultaneous worldwide release of as many products as possible.
Now, to you North Americans, this isn't such a big issue, and you've probably never given it much thought. But to a native New Zealander and resident Australian like myself, who knows the pain of waiting a year or two to see episodes of Buffy (etc, etc, etc) that you could easily download for free, it is of paramount importance!
And another thing: a buddy of mine is a technical director on LOTR, and it's supposed to be a simultaneous worldwide release on December 19th. How is it then, that in Austalia, it's being released on December 26th? Was he wrong, or is the Australian Motion Picture League of Bastards screwing us again??
Re:Until we get universal television stations... (Score:5, Funny)
That sucks! By the time you get to see it on the 26th, you'll have been exposed to a week's worth of spoilers from the internet, so you'll already know that Sauron Did It.
Re:Until we get universal television stations... (Score:4, Interesting)
What you are effectivly arging for would be a consumer/retailer "globalisation". Which would also do away with the concept of "grey imports", things such as DVD region coding and other ways in which large multinationals attempt to divide up the market (when it suits them.)
Now, to you North Americans, this isn't such a big issue, and you've probably never given it much thought. But to a native New Zealander and resident Australian like myself, who knows the pain of waiting a year or two to see episodes of Buffy (etc, etc, etc) that you could easily download for free, it is of paramount importance!
There appear to be two issues here. The first is an apparent requirement for the first showing to be in North America in many cases (more often the US than Canada dispite a lot of programme production taking place in Canada.) The other is that series are shown in an utterly strange sequence in North America. Such that if every series started showing at the same time worldwide it would be people from the US and Canada who would be clammering to download episodes they wouldn't get to see for a while on TV. Or youd have the rest of the world being showr series North American style which viewers in the rest of the world simply will not accept.
Effectivly we have a case of trying to make new technology emulate the limitations of the old way of doing things. Because the industry does not want to reconsider their business models.
eyepatch department? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not according to my dictionary. (Score:5, Funny)
PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
Re:eyepatch department? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this one specific area, I definitely agree with Richard Stallman. Piracy is a marketing word, with many connotations. I wish the community would use terms more like "unauthorized copying" or "illegal copies". Even plagiarism sounds better than piracy, semantically. The english language can in its current form duplicate many of the worst features of doublespeak.
Re:eyepatch department? (Score:4, Insightful)
And there's the problem. To you, it's utterly clear that this is "ripping off", by which I assume you mean theft, that I am depriving someone of something which they have or to which you think they are absolutely entitled. You believe that I should see it this way, and that I am merely fooling myself, or pretending to fool myself otherwise.
The problem is, you're wrong on all counts. You're wrong that I'm fooling myself, and you're wrong that it's theft. I'll just assert that latter one, because that's all you did. It's clearly obvious to me that if the copyright owner (a music company, not an artist) failed to persuade me to pay the amount that they demand for access to the work on their terms, then they've already lost the sale, and so there's nothing left for me to deprive them of.
So you can sit there wagging your finger sternly and saying "This is right, this is wrong, that's the way it's always been, that's the way it always will be" while a new generation of music listeners sniggers quietly behind their hands - or laughs out loud at you - and gets on with doing what people have really always done, which is to redefine both morality and legality by the weight of their actions and opinions.
Re:eyepatch department? (Score:4, Insightful)
The real issue here is, how should authors of creative works be compensated ? The advocates of Napster appear to believe that they are entitled to free entertainment, and that no-one is morally obliged to compensate authors whose works they benefit from. Authors, they believe, should work without compensation. However, most of these leeches would fiercely object if their employer decided that they shouldn't be compensated for their labor.
The problem is, you're wrong on all counts. You're wrong that I'm fooling myself, and you're wrong that it's theft. I'll just assert that latter one, because that's all you did.
No he didn't. You asserted it on his behalf.
while a new generation of music listeners sniggers quietly behind their hands - or laughs out loud at you - and gets on with doing what people have really always done, which is to redefine both morality and legality by the weight of their actions and opinions.
No, they are defining "morality" by retroactively inventing half-assed rationalisations for immoral actions, and they're not the first people to do it.
Re:eyepatch department? (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, I'll take the bait.
People don't want easy accessible music; they want free music.
Of course we do. Who wouldn't want free stuff?
But there's more to it than that. A lot more.
First of all, we want to be able to hear the music in the first place. Have you tried listening to commercial radio lately? For how long? The simple fact is that if we want to hear something that's been mentioned by a friend (either in "real life" or online), we can't get it from the radio. Radio doesn't play anything that anyone would ever recommend to anyone else. It's simply a marketing arm of the record companies trying to increase sales of the Pop-Star-of-The-Month.
Let's say I tell you how much I loved Tori Amos [thedent.com]'s third album Boys For Pele. Are you going to rush to the store and buy it based on that recommendation? Probably not. You'll at least want to hear it for yourself first.
So what choices does that give you?
Which of these have the greatest likelihood of letting you hear the music? Probably the last two. Which have the greatest likelihood of leading to a monetary transaction between you and the artist? Well, none of them, so let me rephrase. Which of them have the greatest chance of getting you to send money to the record company who, in theory, passes money on to the artist? Probably #5: if you buy a CD from the store, all you have to do to "make a purchase" is keep it instead of returning it. But #6 is also good: if you like that Ogg file you downloaded, you might decide to buy a CD.
You sure as hell aren't going to be enriching the artist or the record company if you follow any of the first 3 models. And #4 is potluck, and your odds have gotten worse over time. #7 will depend on whether you got a cassette copy from your friend, or a burned CD, or whether you just borrowed his CD with the intention of returning it. If you got a burned CD copy, you may just keep that instead of buying your own.
So by my reckoning, downloading "pirate" music is at least the second-best money-making promotional model there is (or possibly the best) for the type of music that isn't played on commercial radio and MTV.
And that's at least 99% of all the music in the world.
If you're going to pirate something, at least admit to yourself that you're ripping off someone, not a victimized consumer standing up his rights.
If you're going to troll slashdot users, at least admit to yourself that you're a tool of the record companies and their hired public relations psychologists. And that you're helping them rip off 99% of the musicians in the world by systematically destroying all but the 1% who achieve "Star" status and therefore simply die poor instead of flat broke.
If you'd rather help artists, then donate money directly to them [fairtunes.com], or buy CDs straight from the artists instead of through the record companies (for the artists who are able to do that).
Re:eyepatch department? (Score:5, Informative)
more info... (Score:4, Informative)
There is a little bit more information about it on cnet:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8022666.html? tag=mn_hd [cnet.com]
although it does not contain too many facts beyond the actual case and the judgement.
Distributors aren't responsible for content, no?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, the difference is that music is protected speech, but from a logical standpoint, it's a pretty
-djere
"Where subtlety fails us, we must simply resort to cream pies."
I't s a Dutch court making the order.. (Score:5, Informative)
More to the point, Kazaa (the file sharing system) and FastTrack (the network (and libraries for accessing it)) are one and the same, so this should also affect Morpehus and Grokster (not to mention the buggy linux Kazaa client) !
This is bad bad news. Quick to the Kazaa before it goes away !
Cisco is too big for the bully (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA is very careful to only pick on groups that can't afford better lawyers than they can. I wish they would sue; Cisco might well succeed in creating some sort of binding precedent that would put a stop to all this nonsense. The RIAA will never do that, of course...
Re:Cisco is too big for the bully (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cisco is too big for the bully (Score:5, Informative)
DeCSS? Explicitly developed to enable playing DVDs on Open Source computers with DVD drives. It's hardly practical to share full-length movies over networks or even to store them locally on hard drives -- although you should note that the latter use is not infringing. I for one can't think of a single use for DeCSS that's infringing under the traditional doctrine of fair use, given the current practical technological limitations. It may well be in violation of the DMCA, but that's a seriously broken law that undermines rights that consumers of intellectual property have enjoyed for a very long time. The DMCA isn't Norweigian law, anyway.
Skylarov? His product is entirely legal in the country where he wrote it. In fact, without his company's product it's Adobe's software that's illegal. It's against the law to erect technological barriers to fair use in Russia, but that's what Adobe's so-called encryption does. It's his company that ought to have been held accountable for marketing the product in the US where it was illegal; Skylarov himself as an employee had nothing to do with that. If he's guilty of anything, it's of demonstrating that Adobe's claims about the security of their encryption scheme was a total crock. Embarrassing corporations isn't illegal -- yet.
Peer-to-peer networks? All of them run on top of the Internet, which, in the event you haven't noticed, is one vast peer-to-peer network designed for freely sharing information. None of the other indexing schemes for available information, such as Gopher or even some web pages, are not fundamentally different from networks like Gnutella.
Yawn. (Score:4, Informative)
Not decentralized... (Score:3, Interesting)
Centralized Servers == Bad (Score:5, Informative)
There is not central server, like there was with Napster.
It's all peer->peer->Superpeer, where the SuperClient helps to route things, solving the scaling problems of Gnutella.
So there isn't a Server to shut down.
A least, there never USED to be.
When GiFT came out, Kazaa and Morpheus switched to authorizing people through a centralized sever, before accessing the peer->peer network.
Coincidentally, shortly after they implemented this filter, they were sued.
Let's look who's been sued over this.
Napster, Imesh, Kazaa post-auth server
Who hasn't been sued
Bearshare, Limewire, Kazaa pre-auth server, GiFT, Freenet, WinMX
It seems that the RIAA knows that they don't have a chance of shutting down a network that doesn't use a central server, so they aren't trying.
You may also have a stronger legal case that way. In the napster hearings, one of the key points was that napsters servers let it happen. Napster had control.
I think that what we're learning from this is if you never touch the packets yourself, just release the client and hope for the best, you're in much safer waters.
Colin
Re:Centralized Servers == Bad (Score:4, Interesting)
I find publishing networks like Freenet and Mojo Nation interesting as well. They are not as functional as Gnutella or FastTrack networks currently, but they are very interesting. Freenet gets a lot of press, but in my opinion Mojo Nation is much more functional currently, and has had more development put into it. If you are interested in P2P networks, you should download Mojo Nation to see how much crazy stuff they have already put into it. Mojo Nation is the most functional publishing network I've seen thus far, and it's quite interesting. It's more for techies interested in the possibilities of P2P however, for functionality, stick with Gnutella.
WinMX (Score:5, Informative)
And by the way, for those that are modding this... I do not work for WinMX in any capacity, nor do I have any financial or personal stake in it. I'm just trying to help the people that looked at this article and thought, "Well, damn. What's left for me to go to now that doesn't suck?".
openFT an alternative? (Score:5, Interesting)
note that a few days after kazaa blocked giFT, they were sued by the RIAA. this was because they switched to a partially centralized network from a network that had previously only used central servers for authentication (which giFT had never used).
Good riddance to spyware (Score:5, Insightful)
Multiple A Logic (Score:3, Funny)
"I had no idea Kazaa was this popular (must be all those a's in their name)."
Proof That A's Don't Determine Popularity
Kazaa = 3 A's.
RIAA + MPAA = 4 A's.
Still, Kazaa is more popular than RIAA and MPAA together.
This post is XHTML 1.0 compliant!
Slashdot editors live under rocks? (Score:3, Informative)
It's good to see Slashdot editors keep up with technology. FWIW, the FastTrack network (through the Kazaa and Morpheus clients) has consistently been the single largest bandwidth user amongst colleges and universities for the past few months.
webwereld.nl (Score:5, Informative)
Rechter: KaZaA over twee weken dicht
judge:Kaza must close in 2 weeks
This is the remarkable outcome of a "kort geding" (court where outcome is in a short time) between kazaA and music right organisation "Buma/Stemra". If kazaa does not comply they must pay 100.00 guildens (~45.000 euro) a day with a max of 2 Million guildens. This outcome can end the Kazaa, that is one of the biggest music exchane services since the departure of napster.
The judge also dertermined that BUMA/stemra must meet with Kazaa to negotiate a contract where Kaaza can legaly offer misc via the internet. Accoridng to kazaa there was already a oral agreement with the buma/stemra the they canceled the engotioations.
Loyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm sees the judgement as a vicotry , in spite of the closing threat. "it is fantastic that they have to negotioate with us again. That means we still have enough time to make an agreement."
...
about the passage in the verdict about the "auteursrecht" [copy right? ] he is less to speak. "in the verdict is that kazaa breachtes the copyright. This is nonsense. The users are responsible for this. With the same argument one could close the suppliers of video recorders"
. . . appeal. . .
according to Alberdingk Thijm the verdict only has consequense for the software. This means that the network where also morpheur and grokster make use of stay 'open'. Poeple who already have installed kazaa soule be able to continue with using the network.
.
.
.
Buma/stemra did not react. "we do that when we studied the verdict"
[sorry for speliing errors and parts left out]
It's no big deal ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The RIAA (well, in this case their Dutch counterparts BUMA/STEMRA, actually) are fighting a losing battle, as they probably know very well. At least, they should know this from looking at recent events surrounding napster.
First, there's a thing called GNUtella. Doesn't work very well, but it works, but, well, it doesn't work very well. Then, for a while (how long did Napster actually last? A few months or so?) something comes along that does the same as GNUtella, but it's much easier to use. So everyone switches over, because, well, freedom and decentralization are nice ideas and all, but ease of use is nice too. For a few months, everyone uses the ultra friendly Napster thing 'till the RIAA takes note and sues Napster. Exit Napster. Tons of internet (l)users have, however, by now learnt of the joys of P2P filesharing, so they go to GNUtella, which may suck, but it's still better than nothing.
Along comes FastTrack (KaZaa/Morpheus/Grokster). It's really easy to use, so everyone and their mom installs it. For a few months, users are happy. Then the RIAA takes note, orders FastTrack shutdown
This will keep happening until the RIAA finally gives up. Since that's rather unlikely, the cycle "sucky Gnutella -> nice GUI app -> nice GUI app shut down -> sucky Gnutella" will continue forever.
ARRRRRRRR (Score:3, Funny)
Its what you get for supporting a closed network.. (Score:3, Interesting)
use IRC =) (Score:3, Informative)
Good alternative