Kazaa Continues to Evolve

Zephy writes "The New York Times (free registration etc.. ) has an article about a new partnership between Kazaa, and Tiscali, the European internet access provider. Seems that Kazaa will carry ads for Tiscali's broadband services in return for a cash 'bounty' when a user signs up for broadband. To quote the article, 'This gives legitimacy to KaZaA.' Also, Cnet has an article about the new Kazaa version which has features designed to help users avoid corrupt or wrong files such as those spread around p2p by the MP/RIAA."

Don't download it!

[Mr_Silver]

Obvious point for some, but still I'll make it.

Wait until Kazaa Lite is released before you go downloading it. Unfortunately www.kazaalite.com doesn't work any more but doa2.host.sk [doa2.host.sk] (which is where www.k-lite.tk points to) does.

At the moment they only have 1.7.2 up there, but give them a chance and check back next week.

What about the other wrong labels?

[Corvaith]

The one time I tried Kazaa, I didn't drop it because of the ads or any of that junk. I don't like it, but that's life. I dropped it, in the end, because every time I tried to download /anything/, it seemed like, the labels were wrong. The filename said one thing, the label said something else, and the thing itself was usually some third thing. I don't /think/ that the MP/RIAA has been masking Eminem as the Indigo Girls claiming to be Ani Difranco, but... I suppose I could be wrong.

Re:I take it from the summary...

[milesbparty]

I've never tried Kazaa, but try Ad-Aware by LavaSoft [lavasoftusa.com] to clean up the spyware. It's always worked well for me on software like Bearshare.

Re:I take it from the summary...

[lordkuri]

FYI... if you use Ad-Aware to remove the spyware components of Kazaa, it kills the program.

-LK

Re:I take it from the summary...

[NineNine]

No need to wait. The lite version has been out for quite some time... http://www.kazaalite.com

Re:Don't download it!

[Schnapple]

How do you know they didn't put another "home-made" spyware into Kazaa Lite?

The way you know is this - you fire up Ad-Aware [lavasoftusa.com], the NAV of Spyware, and you check. Check before and after you install it.

The deal is this - "real" Kazaa has spyware. Remove spyware and Kazaa refuses to run/work. Kazaa Lite is a hacked Kazaa that uses an empty file instead of the Spyware DLL Kazaa uses. When you install Kazaa Lite it tells you to let a particular file slip past Ad-Aware, as Ad-Aware will think it is a spyware file but really it's an empty useless file (pop it into Notepad to verify).

If Kazaa Lite "pulled a Gator" and just replaced Kazaa's spyware with its own then Ad-Aware would catch it. Is it possible that Kazaa Lite could just replace the spyware DLL with its own? Yeah, it's possible, and if that possibility scares you off then file sharing is not for you.

Re:Don't download it!

[thallgren]

I doubt AdAware can detect a home-made spyware. That was my point. They could do it and get quite a lot of money before someone discovered it.

Regards, Tommy

Two words.........

[Ride-My-Rocket]

"KaZaA" and "Lite". http://www.kazaalite.com/

Re:Don't download it!

[kasparov]

Do you know how many geeks you file sharing? Guess how many of us download and install software, open a network sniffer, and watch the traffic that goes by... I guarantee that you'd have verification that Kazaa Lite included spyware within an hour of them adding it.

Re:KAZZA LITE

[beebware]

Pssst: http://www.fasttrackmovies.com [fasttrackmovies.com] may be able to help you there.... Have a read (and, hopefully contribute) to the forum [ezboard.com] as well..

Re:The clock is ticking

[Bamfsog]

The difference between FedEx and the Kazaa/Napster networks is that the MAJORITY of the file sharing network's content is a problem. Their primary business and attraction to end users is the illegal content.

There was an article in the news the other day about a guy selling weed at KFC, and slipping it into the orders. The majority of the business being done was still tasty chicken, so KFC wasn't the problem. If they had removed 90% of their menu and replaced it with Weed, then they would be shutdown.

Don't use Kazaa, try Edonkey

[Jacek Poplawski]

I think Kazaa will die like Napster or AudioGalaxy did. Don't use Kazaa. Please try edonkey2000 network. It's free, it's available not only for Windows, and you don't need to watch any commercials.

official (closed source) client: edonkey2000 [edonkey2000.com]
free (GPL) client: mldonkey [nongnu.org]
free, Windows-only client: emule [sourceforge.net]
ShareReactor community: ShareReactor [sharereactor.com]