Kazaa Continues to Evolve 280
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."
Finally (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Finally (Score:3, Interesting)
The clock is ticking (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:3, Funny)
Whine all you want, but it is justifying theft, one way or the other, to think that it is ok to have services such as Kazaa.
I hate RIAA as much as the next guy, and I am not too happy about MPAA either, but then again, I am not happy about a lot of things really, but that doesn't make me some kind of moral superhero for the people...
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2, Insightful)
Not for "the people," no. But when you uncritically parrot the sentiments of our economic masters, who decree that one must never share one's music, then you become their hero. Or stooge, as it were.
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2, Interesting)
Who's music? Your music? Music that you wrote and recorded?
You may want to share music files, but don't be mistaken: it's *not* your music unless you're the artist that made it. If you buy the CD, then you own a little round piece of plastic, but you still don't own the music.
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2, Troll)
I can alter it, change the way I listen to it, edit it, time shift or media shift it in any fashion I want. What I can't do is provide it to others for free, or resell it. Beyond that it is my MUSIC, and if the RIAA thinks differently they are STUPID. I treat a CD I bought just like a book I bought.
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you're not on the right topic-- The topic is regarding sharing files (ie. infringing on the copyright), not your rights concerning personal usage.
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2)
Not your music (Score:2)
You have the right to own and listen to your copy, though. You also have a few other specifically granted rights. But you do not hold the copyright on the music, which is the mark of ownership of that music.
You do own the raw CD, and you could melt it and then do whatever you like with the raw materials...but you do not have ownership of the data that comes pre-recorded on the CD.
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2)
You can read them aloud, make a copy of them, chop them out of the book and make bomb threats with them (which would make it a real crime), set them on fire, write an article about them and quote selected portions. You can resell the book, because you own it -- the publishing company does not own it, and has no rights to it. Period. Tho they are currently trying.
About ten years back, RIAA tried to shut down CD resale shops. They failed. About the same time, they tried to to shut down digitial audio tape. Blank CD's. About fifteen years before that, they tried to make casette tapes illegal. The screamed that the music industry would collapse if copies were possible. They were wrong.
The movie industry tried to outlaw video tapes. Video tape machines. CD-burners, I think, were a target. Failed, failed, failed.
I understand the book publishing conglmerates are trying to use the wonderful new intellectual property theory so successfully used by audiovideo corporations to shut down book resales.
I can only attribute the new successes of these conglmerates to annihilate 200+ years of property owners' collective rights to their purchases to a new quasi-religious belief in the supremecy of corporate rights uber alles... the old adage "the business of America is Business" raised to biblical power.
If these extremely radical rewriting of national -- hell, international -- laws get the heartfelt support of just about every business-connected American, our future will be sealed books with embossed licenses.
The idea behind copyright was to encourage artists to create works to benefit mankind -- not to make a profit for all eternity. They were granted a limited time to pursue benefit of their monopoly, at the end of which they were to surrender the property to the commons. This system has worked wonderfully for two centuries, providing the world with incredible insights and art not previously seen in such volume.
And now, incredibly, a radical movement of corporate takeover of content is throwing our laws out the window. I'm astounded "conservatives" swallow this horse#$*& with such glee. This is radical political thought more violent to the collective spirit of man than the old dartboards of Communism and Socialism.
Intellectual Property is a notion cooked up in the early 20th century, and is anathema to the intent of the writers of the U.S. Constitution. Those writers decided to promote arts for the benefits of all. IP is for the benefits of those who can afford a printing press, a bleacher of lawyers, and the shackling of content creation for their own selfish purposes.
Knowledge is not property. Ideas are not property. In essence, the Constitution provides a clear declaration of a granted license to businesses to control the right of distribution -- for a limited time. It does NOT say that the artists OWN the works. Does NOT. It was assumed that ownership of an insubstantial thing as an idea was ridiculous and unenforcible. But they get to print and control printings by others to make a profit. For a couple of decades.
Interestingly enough, it took 120-130? years for American courts to recognize copyrights of other nations' artists. We stole like hell from anyone else.
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:4, Insightful)
We should shut down FedEx too. Last I heard, they had delivered lots of illegal things to sketchy people. Clearly we must ensure that people are on tigbht-fitting technological leashes so they don't have to think or act accountable for their actions. Welcome to utopia, where, if you can physically do it, it must be okay! Never think about the consequences of your individual actions again!
Would you be the first to turn in your friends and family, or are the people that made the tools responsible for bending and warping their puny little minds into acts of wonton piracy?
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:4, Interesting)
2: FedEx and other true "Common Carriers" have no way to tell that the contents of one wrapped package are illegal--and if they do (i.e., it's got a "do not export" label on the outside and is being shipped to Iraq), they've probably allready been sued to stop & check.
VCR recorders were declared legal because a significant legal use was declared--and then followed through on. What's the significant legal use of KaZaa, again?
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2, Interesting)
Until it is shown that most people pirate content that they either already own, have owned, or purchase legally in the future, there's not much one can say to that. This would really be the "smoking gun" - getting a statistic that really spells out what percentage of KaZaa downloads are listened too "illegaly" (in that once its listened too, the listener should either own the song , purchase it in the future, or decide s/he doesnt like the song and never listen to it again). I really have my suspicions that the number is not nearly as high as the RIAA is trying to spin it to.
I don't have much sympathy for the RIAA tho. Yes, the rules are in their favour, but they are really abusing the system to stymie any possibility of competitors in the online music distribution industry. Its an industry that should already exist, but the RIAA's tactics just delay the maturation of the industry for us consumers.
All of this belies this simple fact, a fact that many others here have echoed: were it not for Napster, the RIAA would have *less* money in its pockets thanks to the music I discovered that I wanted to buy. It's as simple as that.
Piracy? (Score:2)
Riiight.
Also, purchasing in the future does not make pirating the song legal. It also makes sense not to have that make it legal -- to some degree, you decrease the value of the song by listening to it, since the best time is the first time. Also, the artist/company does not have your money in the meantime, and cannot be using the money to produce more goods or earn interest.
It doesn't matter what you're doing is even in the RIAA or even artists' best interests -- it's still illegal.
Now, whether you're concerned over whether what you do is a crime is your own concern...
Re:Piracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Many songs take _more_ than one listening in order for you to appreciate the value (in fact, most, unless you're really lacking in any appreciation for music.)
What you're proposing is perposterous. By your logic, we should prevent friends from hearing the album we just bought because they should buy it themselves. Think about what you're saying. Do you really owe studios a buck when you watch a movie at a friends house? You've just decreased the value of the product! No
You sound like the reason you buy a CD is to listen to a song once. The poor pop music industry sure makes it feel that way, doesn't it? People forget that you buy albums because you want to hear the song many times. If you listen to something once, what you want is the radio to play it, or to go over to your friends house to hear it (uhoh, call the police!)
You have to be kidding me that you really consider that when you go over to a friends house to check out a new album, you're decreasing the value of the product. I suppose that should be illegal too?
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2)
1. Porn. Lots of it. All you can ever want. Much of it put there by the people who own it to promote their websites.
2. mp3s that you legally own. I dunno about you, but I am picky about what I listen to. I own the CD to just about every song that I possess in mp3 format. (bootlegs not withstanding) I just like them in a portable, network-transportable format. Many people such as myself do the same.
3. Distribution of free and open source software. Can't get into Redhat's FTP site? None of the mirrors giving you a good connection? Pull the ISO off of Kazaa.
Yes, there is a hotbed of illegal activity there, but there's just as much legal activity. Just like Vegas. (but without so many hookers.)
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:3, Funny)
Arrr, me eye spots another trade ship from the orient! Ready the cannons, and pull hard to starboard! Wonton soup for everyone who lives through it boys, and if luck be with us, we'll score some crab rangoons and general tso's chicken!
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2, Interesting)
Fasttrack is proprietary, so any guess may be correct. However, they do describe their network as formed from regular nodes and 'supernodes' that act as directory services for the regular nodes. Registration is used to find the initial supernode(s), but after that it is p2p (and supernodes can appear/disappear).
So, perhaps you could shut it down by demanding kazaa tells you about all the supernodes it knows about, and following the links. That will not get everyone, since links are transitory by nature in p2p, and so being exhaustive would be impossible. Alternatively, you could demand kazaa release all the registrant names, and use those as a starting point. But not everyone will have registered (you can find your way onto the network without registering), not everyone will have been entirely truthful when they did register (credit cards will help, but not guarantee), and besides that's a lot more work.
Alternatively, you could force ISPs to filter out Kazaa traffic. This works poorly; ISPs will not filter their traffic for just anyone (and there are costs/tradeoffs involved), and people would just hide the traffic some other way anyway.
So, there is no 100% way in a technical sense. Of course there are lots of imperfect solutions, and there may be a balanced level of enforcement that would keep it out of the mainstream---the answer could be yes in a pragmatic sense.
Fasttrack can be shut down (Score:2)
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2)
I'm as anti-RIAA as the next guy, but legality-wise, what is the difference between Napster and Kazaa? Not technically-wise, legality-wise. Both allow the trading of music on a massive scale without the artists' and record companies' consent. Personally I think the the record companies rape the artists and the consumer, but that's not the issue. Kazaa and Napster promote priacy. For me personally it also promoted buying a crapload more albums, but I know and am fully aware that was I was doing was stealing (in the sense of getting something I didn't pay for. I realize that stealing also implies depriving someone of the original possession which is not the case here, but I digress...).
psxndc
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2)
It's the Internet which allows it. Kazaa merely facilitates it. And of course, it's the participants who perform it.*
Napster was deemed illegal because it was considered to be an active participant in the filesharing process. The case against Kazaa is somewhat harder to make.
(*And it's me who italicizes it.)
Re:The clock is ticking (Score:2)
Observation (Score:4, Insightful)
'This gives legitimacy to KaZaA' means the same things as 'This paints a big bulls-eye on KaZaA's back for Rosen & Valenti to shoot at.'
How does this give legitimacy? (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds legit to me. (end sarcasm)
Legitimacy, arrrrr (Score:5, Funny)
Don't download it! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Don't download it! (Score:2)
w00t, it's already there... (Score:2)
It's there. Here's the link [doa2.host.sk]
(note: I hope they survive the slashdotting)
Re:Don't download it! (Score:3, Informative)
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! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't download it! (Score:3)
Re:Don't download it! (Score:2)
Between antivirus companies and people like me who obsessively watch network traffic when they're bored, anything shady would have been caught a while ago.
wow (Score:3, Interesting)
"Under the deal, KaZaA's owner, Sharman Networks Ltd., will advertise high-speed Internet access provided by Tiscali, an Italian Internet provider, to its tens of millions of European users. In return Tiscali, which serves around seven million customers in 15 countries, will pay Sharman a "bounty" for each KaZaA user who signs up for its high-speed access service."
Seems like an OK move for both companies, but I think there are so few people that actually look at and consider banner ads that it won't do much good. On the plus side, Kazaa gets another partner.
It does seem a bit funny that a high speed ISP would partner up with a file-sharing company that eats up all their bandwidth. While some ISPs are figuring out how to ban them, others are joining with them. I hope they have a lot of bandwidth to spare.
Re:wow (Score:2)
File sharing is just about the only way they can sell high-speed connections. There are practically no content providers for high-bandwidth content. It is nice to have web pages download slightly faster, but for most users the difference is not worth the extra cost. Personally I went for ADSL because the alternative around here is to pay by the minute. I want to be on always, the bandwidth is secondary.
Tiscali is one of the nicer ISP's, at least here in Denmark. They do not mind sharing of connections or running servers.
Incidentally, I find it sad that we are calling ADSL high-speed.
Self Moderation (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder how long till this system is also exploited to give poor ratings to the real files. Maybe some other alternatives to self moderation [slashdot.org] can be used.
What about the other wrong labels? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about the other wrong labels? (Score:2)
Re:What about the other wrong labels? (Score:2)
Did you even read the article? (Score:2)
Now go away, you over-moderated troll!
Rating System (Score:5, Insightful)
saturating KaZaa with false files to simply rate good files negatively? That
way, they don't even have to flood the network, all they have to do is stomp on
a file at a time and nobody is going to download it to see if it's good or not.
Is the rating system simply going to make it easier for companies to steer
people away from good files?
SealBeater
Re:Rating System (Score:2, Interesting)
to one. Since there are millions of Kazaa users.
It would be hard for the MPAA proxies to simulate
being millions of users.
Re:Rating System (Score:2)
That's just flat-out poor logic.
For any given file, only a small percentage of the total Kazaa users will download it. Of those who download it, even fewer will rate it. There won't be millions of votes for any song on Kazaa unless someone rigs up an automated voting script.
Re:Rating System (Score:2)
Re:Rating System (Score:2)
Ian
Tiscali == Full of FTP Abusers (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, you may think, hey, free warez, porn, and movies ... but I'll bet you don't work for a site with a few hundred technically bright but security-dumb scientists. These folks like open FTP because it makes it easy to collaborate and share data, but they don't like having their disks fill up with blowjob MPEGs.
So if Tiscali can get its warezers and pr0nsters running Kazaa and shoving spyware onto each other's systems all day, maybe they will go away and leave my users' port 21 alone.
Re:Tiscali == Full of FTP Abusers (Score:2)
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/home/ftp/pub/blowjob.mpg bs=1024 count=100000
HH
Re:Tiscali == Full of FTP Abusers (Score:2)
Re:Tiscali == Full of FTP Ab..isn't this illegal? (Score:2)
What, portscanning? In the U.S. at least, some courts have ruled it legal, whereas some courts have considered it an element of computer crime. I don't know what the case is in Italy.
Sure. Now, tell me how you'll secure this protocol from forgery -- so that when Joe Hacktivist gets pissed off at CNN kowtowing to Red China again, he can't just tell the world that CNN is scanning him and get them cut off the Net.
Think also of the sheer quantity of processing that is involved in maintaining routing tables now, and how fucked-up the Net gets when routers do stupid things or when rogue ISPs (like Above.net [exim.org]) propagate fraudulent routes as a mechanism of censorship.
I'll be glad when kazaa dies.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nooooo... (Score:2)
I'd be out of business if it weren't for KaZaa and WebShots... (well, not really, but I'd be out of _easy_ jobs).
Don't worry, I always tell my users not to use these programs after I've cleaned up their messes.
Re:Nooooo... (Score:2)
I'm curious to know what you think of Andromeda... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm just curious if you would consider my software Andromeda [turnstyle.com] more friendly for your network. It's not like the main P2P networks insofar as you can't really use it as a mass anonymous downloader.
However, you can use it to stream your collection over a local network and/or over the Internet. Basically, it bulds a complete streaming web site from a collection of MP3 files. PHP and ASP versions are available.
There's no spyware, it doesn't need to talk 'outside' of your network, and it transfers over http so there typically aren't firewall hassles.
Best, -Scott
Re:I'll be glad when kazaa dies.. (Score:2)
That's assuming the user was intelligent enough to keep their CD. Since about 50% of the machines I work on have pirated windows, and worse yet, they didn't even keep the CD-R their brother/niece/friend installed it from, and the dough-heads didn't copy the cabs to the HD, I can't always fix it the "easy" way.
Remember, there's (may even be more!):
- Win 95 original
- Win 95 B
- Win 95 OSR2
- Win 95 OSR2.1
- Win 98
- Win 98 SE
- Win ME
- WinNT 4
- Win2k Professional
- Win2k Server
- Win2k Advanced Server
- WinXP Home Edition
- WinXP Professional
Too much stuff to lug about, not to mention it would be illegal for me to have many of those...
Interesting developments (Score:5, Interesting)
There are several interesting developments here. For one thing, Tiscali allies with Kazaa - a natural step for them, because after all, they want to sell bandwidth, and why would people need a lot of bandwidth, if there weren't any applications like Kazaa?
Then in the second article, one of the things that's mentioned is that they partner with a music company for which Kazaa is actually the only way it distributes its music. This may be good for Kazaa's legal case, after all Napster seemed to lose mostly because they couldn't show that their networks were used legitimately at all.
On the other hand, I wonder what the judge will think of the new feature against 'bogus music and video files', that are inserted by the record companies to make the network useless. Almost all of those files will make themselves look like songs that are actually illegal to trade, so making a feature to stop them, however useful and natural to make, could be seen as actively helping to download copyrighted stuff.
But I can't really see them winning the case in the US anyway, after Napster.
Re:Interesting developments (Score:2)
Not at all. The WYSIWYG feature merely make sure that the user is in fact downloading what they think they are downloading. That would also prevent a ten-year-old from downloading the "Donald Duck gets a blowjob" mp3 when he/she in fact was looking for Britney Spears.
Re:Interesting developments (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is there are much better ways to distribute legal stuff than Kazaa. A rootless peer to peer setup involves enormous networking overhead (over 1/2 the packets) that you wouldn't have with the standard download systems. I think almost all anonymous peer-to-peer file shares are going to face this problem; if what was being distributed was legal you wouldn't go to this much trouble.
I think the best thing for Kazaa would be to get political stuff of an extremely non mainstream nature: everything from KKK literature to communist party literature to anarchist stuff to taliban philosophy to Turner diaries traffic to taiwanese indepence writings
Tiscali? Arggh (Score:2)
That's all well and good... (Score:2)
How odd that an ISP wants warez kiddies (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they trying to round up all the kiddies on their network, driving bandwidth costs down?
Re:How odd that an ISP wants warez kiddies (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of the people I know who p2p (I don't out of sheer laziness, but then again, I've stopped buying music due to the crappiness of product right now) were not bandwidth guzzling warez monkeys but just wanted a recording of a top 40 song that they could have taped off the radio twice an hour anyhow.
So maybe Tiscali sees p2p as broadband's killer app, and has taken a more objective analysis of how their bandwidth will be affect by this partnership rather than just assuming that they'll only attract the types who throttle the pipe.
How to buy great music (Score:2)
1. Browse the reviews for stuff that looks interesting.
2. Jump online and find samplers
3. If samplers are good after about three listens, buy the disc.
I've avoided quite a few downers by following this procedure.
Re:How to buy great music (Score:2)
First impressions (Score:4, Insightful)
seems to me that kazaa could be trying to set it's self up as a media delivery system when palladium and all the copyright protection is implemented.
KaZaa != freedom (Score:2)
Re:KaZaa != freedom (Score:2)
Legitimacy? (Score:2, Insightful)
"more sources needed" (Score:2)
I was hoping with less and less P2P services, people would flock to a common one, hence boosting the available tracks out there.
Bad BroadBand; Good Cycling Team (Score:2)
Oh, GREAT! (Score:2)
I can't wait for the first time I can't Meta-Moderate because we've been Googled!
By the way, does anyone know if this will solve the slashdot-effect-site-caching issue?
Typo in article (Score:2)
Kazaa users are often called pirates, right? In that case, I think they mean booty.
Arr!
Great a way to get rid of the virii infested asf's (Score:2)
Another obnixous one is abunch of stupid kids singing to a midi file playing and they disguise their mp3's with names like Metallica-for-whomthebell-tools or Nirvanna-come-as-you-are-accoustic-rare.
What is wrong with these downloaders? If you guys get burned, please do us all a favor and just delete the bad movie and mp3 files?
Don't use Kazaa, try Edonkey (Score:4, Informative)
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]
How 'bout...... (Score:2)
Please?
(There is a serious lack of P2P software on OS X, all help is appreciated)
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:2, Informative)
-LK
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:4, Interesting)
IIRC, Kazaa needs Cydoor to run. Fortunately, there's a dummy Cydoor DLL [cexx.org] available. (Can't say that I've used Kazaa or Kazaa Lite in a while, though...I started running Shareaza [shareaza.com] recently, which is spyware-free, ad-free, and works with a true decentralized network [wego.com].)
Two words......... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:2)
When you start it up, it says something to the point of "Hey, you agreed to run this spyware. I'm taking my ball and going home". The sofware just exits at that point.
I don't know of a way to get around it other than installing KaZaa on a crappy laptop I don't use (200Mhz) and only turning it on when I download stuff.
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:2)
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:2)
DennyK
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:2)
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:2)
DennyK
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:2)
Re:I take it from the summary... (Score:2)
Re:how does this give legimacy(sp)?? (Score:2)
Let the pissing contest begin! Down with the RIAA!
Re:What? (Score:2)
The RIAA wanted Kazaa dead before, but now they have to deal with a company with money. Different ball game for RIAA, don't you think?
Re:What? (Score:2)
You can do that without kazaa, and infact downloading stuff off of kazaa is not fair use at all.. its one thing to steal music, its another to try and justify it as legal. If you really want fair use, you are entitled to it, but you have to make the copies yourself instead of downloading them.
Re:Legitimacy? (Score:2)
Here's a good test I've developed to tell if a company is legit. Does it bundle spyware with the software? If yes, its most likely not legit and will be sued out of existance sometime soon. Does it facilitate transfering music and video on a peer to peer level, if yes its most likely not legit and will be sued out of existance.. With kazaa, both are true so it'll be gone soon.
Re:Legitimacy? (Score:2)
Illegal music.
Why am I the only one I know who is terrified that possessing and listening to music can be illegal?
Re:Why kazaa? (Score:2)
Re:Why kazaa? (Score:2)
Re:Why kazaa? (Score:2)
Re:Why kazaa? (Score:2)
Re:KAZZA LITE (Score:2, Informative)
Re:KAZZA LITE (Score:2)
Me? I blame Disney.
Re:Linking to NYTimes though Google (Score:2)
Why should