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Stealware: Kazaa et al Stealing Link Commissions
Posted by
chrisd
on Fri Sep 27, 2002 08:28 AM
from the creeps-creepily-creeping-into-your-pocket dept.
from the creeps-creepily-creeping-into-your-pocket dept.
goombah99 writes "We all heard about spyware, well now Kazaa, Morpheus and LimeWire are sneaking a new type of nastiness onto your computer, software that - without you even knowing it - redirects commissions for online purchases you make from other vendors you make back to them. For example, if you buy a CD from an affiliate of Amazon.com, say some charity, the software fools Amazon into crediting the commission to Morpheus, not the charity! The story quotes a LimeWire Developer who admits 'While I agree that this is really a
bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users.' The insidious part is the stealware
program remains even if you delete the original P2P software. And you supposedly gave your permission when you clicked through the EULA."
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Stealware: Kazaa et al Stealing Link Commissions
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Fer Chrissake, it's FRAUD! (Score:5, Funny)
"While I agree that slapping my wife around isn't very nice, it does get me my dinner on time."
"While I agree that insider trading is against SEC rules, how else am I going to get the 2nd Aston-Martin?"
Re:Fer Chrissake, it's FRAUD! (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF! This is funny it's serious and the poster is right this is dam right illegal, people are being defrauded and the government(s) should step in and shut these people down.
Do they not have any morals? How can they do this sort of thing and sleep at night?? You're STEALING money from charities FFS.
Dancing with the devil (Score:5, Insightful)
Not much different of an attitude from the RIAA.
Re:Dancing with the devil (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dancing with the devil (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, if this keeps up, the RIAA isn't going to need that pro-hacking bill; hacktivists are going to get so fed up with Kazaa that they take them down on their own.
Seriously, the more I deal with the computer and related industries, the more disgusted I become. I miss the days when people basically did what they want, and were mostly harmless. And I'm only 22.
Re:Dancing with the devil (Score:5, Insightful)
C//
Re:Fer Chrissake, it's FRAUD! (Score:5, Interesting)
1.) You -=knew=- that the charity was not going to get the commission if you didn't buy it through their site
2.) You, the purchasing party, made that decision on your own. No one made it for you.
3.) All of the money involved was your own, and (again) it was your choice.
With this theftware, the situation is different. EULAs are paper tigers in court and we all know it. Even if they weren't, I'm not entirely sure tha this kind of scheme is legal in the first place, as there appears no way to cancel the contract once the software is uninstalled.
These companies are not putting up the money to buy the CD, they are taking it out of someone elses pockets. By any definition that is theft, particularly if you can demonstrate the irrelevancy of the EULA.
Victimless crime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Victimless crime? (Score:4, Informative)
Their diversion of cash does hurt the customer.
Many co-op preschools in my area, in order to be able to charge less tuition money, permit parents to agree to engage in a certain amount of fundraising. Among the options available is to sign up for Schoolpop [schoolpop.com], at which point the school gets a quite generous cut of commissions for purchases on Amazon and similar sites.
However, if the KaZaa folks steal the commissions, the parent is liable, since the parent must raise some minimum amount (yes, Schoolpop provides the data to the school so the school knows who's raised the money for them). In cases like this, which are quite common, the KaZaa folks and their hitchhikers are directly stealing from their users, as well as from schools and charities.
Re:Victimless crime? (Score:5, Funny)
-- Nelson, The Simpsons
Of course this isn't shoplifting but it's still funny
Re:Fer Chrissake, it's FRAUD! (Score:5, Informative)
s178BA - Obtaining money by deception - 5 years
s178BB - Obtaining money etc by false or misleading statements (it doesn't require the statement to be in writing, false claim as to referrer will definitely count) - 5 years
s180 - Causing payment etc by false pretence etc (the false referrer will count here too) - 5 years
This could be prosecuted under any one of these.
Amazon won't stand for this (Score:4, Interesting)
The broader picture (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Way beyond the pale (Score:4, Insightful)
Want to prosecute P2P systems? Get in line...
Re:Way beyond the pale (Score:4, Interesting)
So this would be a perfect example of how a P2P network can be used for good, and as a marketing tool. Interesting to note that this artist didn't seem to mind the notion that the legion of Kazaa users they probably just created might then go and pirate all their songs, but given that ICP charged some $100 to get in to this packed conference and convention, they've obviously found some alternative revenue sources.
The problem with the "it has legitimate uses!" argument is that there aren't enough examples like this to offset the illegal ones. Note to artists: don't webcast your concerts - no one can watch them anyway with server overload and no one wants to watch U2 in RealMedia anyway. Do this sort of thing instead.
Crap like this is going to Kill P2P (Score:3, Interesting)
These guys are their own worst enemy. The RIAA doesn't need to do anything. These companies will end up destroying themselves. This is not the type of PR these guys need.
Sean D.
Re:Crap like this is going to Kill P2P (Score:4, Insightful)
Kazaa, Morpheus et. al. are a simple concept: try to take advantage of people's enourmous predisposition to violate copyright laws via digital technology to skim some cash by any means whatsoever. It's a rotten business model and a rotten way to behave and it isn't much of a surprise that the rotten people responsible for it are as dishonest to their users as they are about what their software is really used for ("now don't use this to illegally copy protected media, kids, wink wink nod nod").
Re:just great... (HOW TO REMOVE) (Score:5, Informative)
A Software Cleanup
Computer users who want to remove shopping software from their machines can do so in a few steps. Instructions for removing three of the most common programs:
BUYERSPORT - The shopping software with Morpheus:
Click the Start button.
Click on Find.
Click on Find Files or Folders.
Type in mbho.dll. Click on find now. When the file appears in the directory window, drag mbho.dll into the trash.
LIMESHOP - The software with LimeWire:
Click the Start button.
Click on Settings.
Click Control Panel.
Double-click Add/Remove Programs.
Click LimeShop.
Click Add/Remove.
SAVENOW - The software used by Kazaa:
Click on Start.
Click Settings.
Click on Control Panel.
Double-click on Add/Remove Programs.
Click SaveNow.
Click on Add/Remove.
Moral issues anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's part of it, it does affect the users - money that they may have WANTED to go to a particular affiliate is now going to these guys. Yay.
The other part is what about the affiliate contract? doesn't this violate it?
Re:Moral issues anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Kazaa Lite (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Kazaa Lite (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok so you are saying to not do it yourself but to endorse the community around it. If the community grows (whether from "Lite" users or not), it will be good for the Kazaa company. Do you really want to support a company that is twisting the internet in such an underhanded way? At first I was like you. They put in some spyware and they said that they would take it out (which as far as I am aware, they never did) and so I downloaded the Lite and thought 'mostly harmless'. Yet now they are showing thier true colors. The Kazaa company thinks that any underhanded way they can possibly make money is fair game in bussiness and war. I don't want to support a company with no moral standard and embraces such a corporate culture. I want the whole kazaa p2p to whither and die and to be never heard of from again.
Re:Kazaa Lite (Score:5, Funny)
The price of freedom. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm uneffected by this because i'm a happy WinMX user. I've never had a problem whatsoever, unlike AudioGalaxy and Bearshare (this is awhile ago) that deleted some of my system files, thus making me have to reformat!
Now how is this not stealing? (Score:3, Interesting)
What would happen if I walked into a car dealership, bargained a nice proce for my new Kia, and told the salesperson that instead of him getting a commission, I'm going to take that money as a rebate? Wouldn't that be stealing, or am I missing something here?
Re:Now how is this not stealing? (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference: if the software tricks Amazon into awarding affiliate sales commission to Morpheus instead of the intended recipient, the intended recipient has lost money that they would definitely have received.
When you download "See My Boobies One More Time", Britney and her record company are only being deprived of income if you would have bought the album without the P2P service. In fact, with P2P you might check out more of the album, like it, and wind up buying it when you wouldn't have done so if your only exposure was the two overplayed songs on the radio.
To sum it up, what Kazaa, etc are doing takes the money away every time. The P2P user isn't always a true financial loss to the RIAA.
Note that I'm not saying this makes copyright infringement ok, I'm saying it's a "lesser evil" than the fraud being perpetrated on Amazon affiliates.
What's Next? (Score:3, Funny)
"We do think this is stealing, but they are stealing music anyways so it can't be wrong? Plus it pays our salaries."
Self Limiting? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Last week, Amazon cut off affiliate payments to Morpheus, one site that employs the shopping software, said an online executive. Coldwater Creek, an online clothing store, has also blocked Morpheus."
Whats all the fussin' and a-feudin' about? (Score:4, Funny)
I mean for crissakes - EULA is an ACRONYMN!
People *still* use that crap? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:People *still* use that crap? (Score:4, Insightful)
There has to be some way to allow users to use other clients, and still access the huge resource of files, similar to what winmx (www.winmx.com) did when napster was still around, and had a unified interface to napster, opennap, and it's own network. Now that nap and opennap have died off, it's own winmx network seem to be flurishing.
Just Hold On a Darn Minute Here... (Score:5, Funny)
Humor folks, enjoy it. =)
If they're an affiliate,how many CDs did they sell (Score:5, Interesting)
i miss napster ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Gnucleus (Score:5, Informative)
Unbelievable (Score:4, Insightful)
Like so many claims surround P2P, this claim is utterly unbelievable: how do you build a program that hijacks sales and NOT know you're doing this ?
I just hope Amazon and whomever is affected by this sues their asses off.
You can beat them. (Score:5, Informative)
Using AdAware to delete cydoor.dll will likely leave your P2P client not working. That's where the dummy cydoor.dll [cexx.org] comes in. It allows the client to start without providing any of the unwanted cydoor functionality.
For more info on spyware and scumware in general, check out the quite wonderful Counterexploitation [cexx.org] site...
Hope this helps...
Re:You can beat them, but they make it HARD (Score:4, Interesting)
I used my brother's computer the other day to show him how to crossfade tracks in Nero. Anyway I went to search something at Google and upon hitting search button was redirected to some shady search engine site for my results. The best part is that it lists the same shady porn/hacker links no matter what you search for (albeit in different order each time). So I tried Yahoo Excite and other sites, same hijacking. "That's it I'm downloading AdAware to fix this!" I go to www.lavasoft.com and wouldn't you know the bastardware re-directed me to the same friggin search engine site.
OK, now I go into Control Panel and removed at least 10 apps that I never heard of (suprised that they even show up in there) each time confronted with scary/threatening warnings about how removing this software will damage my computer or break my software etc. I installed Ad-Aware, Kazaa-lite and cleaned it up.
I assume these bastard-apps came bundled with the plethora of naked girl screensavers, dancing strippers etc. he installed. (He's 14 what do you expect)
Easy solution (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if the big online retailers actually care about affiliate programs or not. If they do, then stealware is intolerable. Otherwise, the programs are useless.
KaZaa Admits to Stealing Candy from Sick Children (Score:5, Funny)
"We knew it was wrong," said one vice-president, "but we had to keep the free snacks flowing for the programmers, or else we were screwed. We couldn't stop -- they'd all jump ship."
The executives insisted they had done nothing wrong. "Those kids are sick! What the hell are they getting candy for, anyway?" he asked rhetorically. "We left them instant cous-cous and bean soup. They've got it pretty good, if you ask me."
FSF founder and computer guru Richard Stallman was unavailable for comment. "He's out redirecting CDNow affiliate refferals to pay for his movie rental late charges," said an anonymous source close to the programmer.
I guess Amazon will be changing their contract... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I guess Amazon will be changing their contract. (Score:4, Informative)
you may not: [..] read, intercept, record, redirect, interpret, or fill in the contents of any electronic form or other materials submitted to us by any person or entity;
This should be enough to boot any account from amazon that has transactions coming from altering affiliate links. I'm starting to wonder how much my site 'lost' due to things like this.
Kazaa (Score:4, Interesting)
The very fact that it WAS spyware has kept me from using, even since they had supposedly gotten rid of it. Of course, I am a fairly paranoid individual. I see this as a good thing, however.
There are plenty of alternatives out there that are not spyware and don't go screwing with things they shouldn't be.
Furthurnet.com (Score:5, Informative)
Furthurnet.com is a system where fans of bands which allow bootlegging of live concerts post full sets from those shows.
Pros:
*Free, no ads, no spyware, nothin
*Legal - music is only by bands who approve
*New stuff - you can get stuff no on CD's yet
*Live stuff - could be a plus or minus depending on the artist, but its a new perspective.
Cons:
*Bigger - they're recorded in a non-lossy format shn, so a full concert is anywhere between 200-600 meg
*Recording quality not as good - depending on the band, the recorder and show, the acoustics and equipment aren't as good as live CD's and certainly not as clean as studio.
*Fewer artists
I just discovered this a few days ago looking for Jack Johnson stuff. I love it. Take a look. Its on Win and linux (maybe Mac too, not sure)
Once again....use a virtual machine (Score:5, Interesting)
File sharing companies are, at the very best, a dubious bunch. Experience has shown tht they will try to screw up your machine in some way.
So...let them. They'll find some way of doing it eventually anyway. The trick? Just make sure the 'machine' is a virtual machine. I personally use Virtual PC for Windows [connectix.com], but VMWare [vmware.com] would do just as well.
Make a blank virtual machine, install your P2P clients on it and take a back-up of that file. Then use that machine for nothing but P2P. The result? Spyware is useless, because there's nothing happening to actually spy on. The machine gets too spyware-ridden? No problem - delete the current machine and restore from that fresh backup you took.
Cheers,
Ian
Ok (Score:3, Insightful)
You may have given somebody permission as far as your browser goes but that doesn't give you the right to change a link on a persons website... You can agree all day long but it isn't *your* link nor is it *your* commission being stolen.
I find this rather repulsive but I have to admit this is rather ingenious ( in an evil scientist kind of way ). However, the fact that a user accepts it in the EULA doesn't remove the fact that they don't have a contract with the website owner giving them permission to do this.
Use vmware (Score:3, Informative)
It's against the affiliate agreement for amazon. (Score:5, Informative)
Section 5, at the end:
In addition, you may not: [snip] (b) read, intercept, record, redirect, interpret, or fill in the contents of any electronic form or other materials submitted to us by any person or entity;
Shocked! (Score:5, Funny)
hey, nice idea (Score:5, Funny)
Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Has to be said... (Score:3, Funny)
and bonus points to anyone who pictures the artwork with that caption from the old D&D books (Dungeon Master's Guide?) when they hear that phrase
Just use winMX (Score:3, Informative)
It's a much better client than morpheus/kazaa, its network size has passed the threshold to be useful.
Doesn't matter for students, really... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've gotten quite a workout on my legs from running up and down the stairs getting to each computer in a 7 story building, though.
But seriously - I've gone so far as to do a free-pizza-if-you-come-here-and-listen-to-me presentation on how KaZaa is bad, and I'll still see KaZaa on every desktop I touch (except mine, of course).
So stop paying the commissions! (Score:4, Insightful)
Further, they should warn the user when one of those firms attempts to get a commission for the sale. Included in the warning should be links to pages that show how to remove the software that is attempting to hijack the commissions.
Finally (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice!
The idiot Kirk did create my favorite juxatposition of quotes: So now he is threatening to sue people who quote him? He is a complete ass.
The stupidest thing out of all of this. The merchants who go with them see an increase in affiliate sales - sure, because they are paying affiliate comissions now even if someone just typed the site name into the browser! These companies do not drive traffic or promote the companies, they leave that to webmasters, they just step in at the last minute and grab the sale. In the long run this seriously impacts merchants and causes them to see a lower return on their affiliate programs, and then as affiliates leave since their commissions are being taken, the merchant is left with nothing.
The ad networks love this because they are paid a % on each comission. So what do they care? Comission Junction has gone from trusted third party, to scam that will do anything not illegal. I guess the idea of being ethical is beyond them? Phww.. Surprise, they are an idealab company.
Chet
Are they idiots? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do they believe that the user's agreement makes this legal? An agreement between two parties cannot, as a general rule, relinquish the rights of a third party. This is almost certainly felony fraud, earning the players 5-10 in the clink. I hope the players have good attorneys. As soon as the victims (hint: not the user) hear about this and file a complaint, charges will be filed. They're not going to be civil charges, and it's not going to be judge Judy.
Some people are really stupid about the internet! "Oh, this is the internet, therefore if I do something unethical, they must not have passed a law against that yet." Not so. God. DUMB!!!!!
C//
Re:Reprehensible (Score:4, Interesting)
In a truly civilized world these bastards would die a very prolonged, extremely painful public death.