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Software

Kazaa Says On Track to Be Most-Downloaded Program 347

Posted by timothy from the tradition-of-heritage dept.
Cody Watkins writes "Reuters has a story about Kazaa surpassing ICQ as the most downloaded piece of software (according to C|Net Download.com). 'As of late Thursday, the Kazaa Media Desktop application -- a file-sharing software that has drawn the wrath of the music industry by enabling its users to swap songs for free -- had been downloaded 229,150,955 times, as measured by Download.com.'"
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Kazaa Says On Track to Be Most-Downloaded Program More

Kazaa Says On Track to Be Most-Downloaded Program

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  • It may be the most downloaded program, but it's absolutely worthless to me. I'd rather use IRC and not worry as much about the quality of my downloads, and benjamin, if y'all can remember that big deal.
    • IRC is far better if you want to get a hold of some reallyh rare/unpopular stuff. The main problem with Kazaa and the like is that it mainly reflects the most pedestrian of tastes. Whereas IRC contains a lot more unusal content. As an example, when DalNet was still turning a blind eye to file transfers, I was able to acquire the entire first second and third seasons of Sliders. This program is as of yet currently unavailable in any format. However, I was able to download nearly all of the first three s
      • Exactly!! Yet I get modded down when I say it. Also what that article doesn't say is that counts all the revisions, and doesn't give a TRUE number of unique downloads. There have been so many revisions, and forced upgrades to the KaZaa system that their unique users is FAR less. Plus you also have to factor in repeat downloads (poor schmucks who downloaded bad stuff off of KaZaa and had to reformat/reinstall because of it) I found IRC well before P2P was in its beginning stages, and found it very easy to
        • Wonder how many downloads Kazaa Lite has?

          Kazaa is good in it's place. Recently I was trying to grab something on emule. It was stalled for days. Jumped onto Kazaa, and it was done in under 10 minutes.

          Kazaa is good for episodes of recent shows. The late lamented Firefly, you can find them ALL on there, something which I haven't seen on any other service.

          IRC is great if you're a "0-dAy w4rez d00d", but you have to deal with idiots running fservs with corrupted files, or fservs that boot you etc... IRC is t
      • ... whereas now that DALnet has been beaten to a blooody pulp, they are craking down on warez(ish) channels? I don't know because I no longer use it, but I think this fact helps to illustrate what is happening to IRC - this kind of stuff is, alas, disappearing from it. It wasn't written with the intention of being a file sharing medium, and it's not a very good one nowadays either.

  • Beat Gator huh? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by el-spectre ( 668104 )
    If one really wanted to be a jerk, you could send out HTML spam containing some JavaScript code and take the title in a coupla weeks...

    • Re:Beat Gator huh? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:06AM (#6045678) Journal
      " If one really wanted to be a jerk, you could send out HTML spam containing some JavaScript code and take the title in a coupla weeks"

      In other news kazaalite was beaten by the following program titled "Good evening, as you all know the royal family of Nigera is considered one of the wealthiest......."

  • Napster baaad, Kazaa wooorse (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ciryon ( 218518 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:44AM (#6045580) Journal
    Seriously, this is really bad news. I'm pretty sure that the extremely easy access to software for windows is one of the main reasons why so many use the crap instead of free/open source software.

    And there could be serious copy protections, but I get the feeling that many software companies WANT their software to be pirated (by home users) so the same people want to use say MS Office or Photoshop at their workplace.

    I call for better international laws against piracy, but I admit I've no idea how/if it would work.

    Ciryon

    • Re:Napster baaad, Kazaa wooorse (Score:5, Funny)

      by tedDancin ( 579948 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:49AM (#6045601)
      That's a good point. I think the only thing that (possibly) saves the big software companies is the following thought process:

      1. Hmm.. I'm going to use Kazaa to download Photoshop.
      2. Enters search terms.
      3. ???
      4. [Downloads pr0n]

    • Re:Napster baaad, Kazaa wooorse (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sdriver ( 126467 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:56AM (#6045633) Homepage
      "I call for better international laws against piracy, but I admit I've no idea how/if it would work."

      KaZaA is just a tool. Sure it's used by many (I'd say most) for downloading copyrighted works. But that doesn't mean we need to make new international laws to ban it. What's next? FTP? HTTP? If copyright holders (mostly the music industry and soon the movie) really want to stop this "theft", they need to take major steps in the right direction to fix the broken relationship they have with consumers.

      The music industry can start by not charging $24 for a crap-ass CD with one good song. If CD's were $5 a pop, I'd buy hundreds, not 1 to 5 a year. At least when I only spent $5 on a CD I wouldn't feel like a sucker when there is only one good song.
      • I recommend half.com. Yeah, it's owned by eBay, but you can get plenty of discs (used) really cheaply. I average paying four or five bucks a disc, which includes the $2.49 shipping charge. From one of my earlier posts...

        I recently got into Tori Amos. (Regardless of how you feel about her music, you do have to admit she's talented and original.) I picked up her latest CD a few months ago because it had 70 minutes of music and it cost me $10 new. I found myself really liking it, and willing to look at her
      • I am soooooooo tired of this argument. It comes up every time, and always gets modded +5 insightful. Let's be honest, all right? We like KaZaA (Lite) because it lets us download music, movies, pr0n, and software without paying for it. Yes, it's a tool, and I'm sure that there are people using it to download Phish and Pat Matheny concert bootlegs (which I'm told is legal). However, it's EXPRESS PURPOSE is a spyware delivery device. Sharman knows EXACTLY what people want to use it for, and they design i
    • Whether or not Kazaa is bad or not is irrelevent. The mad hordes have tasted P2P and apparently they savour the experience. Yes, it probably not good for the open software movement. However, it will change the business model of the entertainment industry eventually as people will refuse to pay 17 bucks for a cd with one or two good songs on it. P2P is a multi-headed hydra that is evolving along with the tactics of the evil RIAA and the BSA (boy scouts of america?) and the like. This has to be the most intel
    • What are you talking about?

      Kazaa is distributed free. It is not being pirated. So why are you talking about software being pirated and companies wanting it to be pirated?

      Do you know what Kazaa is?

      And do you know what kind of laws countries have against piracy? Or know the international IP conventions?

      • Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Phroggy ( 441 ) * <slashdot3@ p h roggy.com> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:05AM (#6045671) Homepage
        Kazaa is distributed free. It is not being pirated. So why are you talking about software being pirated and companies wanting it to be pirated?

        He's talking about people using Kazaa to download pirated software such as Photoshop. If people couldn't download Photoshop with Kazaa, they might use The Gimp instead, which would be bad for Adobe, because some of those people who pirate Photoshop at home wind up buying it at work. If they used The Gimp for free at home, maybe they'd use The Gimp at work too.

        (Yes, I know, The Gimp isn't as good as Photoshop and is completely unacceptable to some, but it may be good enough for most people.)

        • The problem with gimp (was Re:What?) (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Is not really the gui, which is quite ok once you explain what the thought behind is. The problem is more the missing cymk support which makes it totally unacceptable for professional graphic artists and professional graphics design. At least over here in europe, if you give a picture to a printing company either it is cymk or it is rejected, and for a reason!

          The missing cymk is the real problem behind a wide adoption of gimp, the rest is seconary. I'm pretty sure once that one is in the adoption of the pr
        • Do people really use Kazzaa for warez? Wow. I guess I'm behind the times...

        • Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by valisk ( 622262 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @06:14AM (#6046084) Homepage Journal
          For me its as simple as this,

          If I were to download Photoshop with Kazaa, spend time learning how to use it, and enhancing my job prospects I would quite likely end up joining a company who would buy a Photoshop license for me to use. So my Piracy would have directly resulted in economic gain for Adobe, why the hell they should be bothered about the everyday Joe dling it I don't know.

          I agree with you about Gimp, it's good but Photoshop is better and it's nic eto know that Codeweavers have made some updates in crossover so that Photoshop can now be run without having to buy a windoze license.

    • OSS and Windows (Score:5, Informative)

      by cjsnell ( 5825 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:12AM (#6045700) Journal
      But, you see, OSS for Windows is catching on! Some of the most popular programs on Sourceforge are win32. Everything that you need for spyware-free commercial-free RIAA-free music and video sharing is available there, on sf.net. Here's a sampling:

      CDEX [sourceforge.net] - a great MP3 ripper. Use with LAME [mp3dev.org] for great, free rips.

      eMule [emule-project.net] and DC++ [sourceforge.net] - very popular P2P clients

      BitTorrent [bitconjurer.org] - For large file sharing (movies, etc)

      VirtualDub [virtualdub.org] - for video format conversion (DiVX, VCD, etc)

      Audacity [sourceforge.net] - multi-track audio editor

      I could go on and on. Look at this list [sourceforge.net] and all the win32 apps there.
      • Bittorrent?? I cant figure out how the heck to make it work (actually cant be bothered once I look at the instructions).

        Here's the deal. I use Kazaa to download and watch episodes of Friends, West Wing and about 3 or 4 other TV shows which are not easily available here in Hong Kong. I've heard great things about bittorrent but their website and instructions turn me off. Their windows FAQ mentions setting up mime types in webservers and other stuff, which I really don't want to do.

        Until things get point an
        • I use Kazaa to download and watch episodes of Friends, West Wing and about 3 or 4 other TV shows which are not easily available here in Hong Kong.

          ??? In Hong Kong this week on TVB, Friends is on Sunday 8pm, [tvb.com] West Wing Thursday, 10:30 pm; [tvb.com] though both run almost a year later than their US showings. Of course, there's a lot of stuff that isn't -- the last series of B5, Buffie, Third Rock, ... not to mention hardly any UK stuff, aside from David Attenborough documentaries. But since you can get bootleg DVDs fr

        • Bittorrent?? I cant figure out how the heck to make it work (actually cant be bothered once I look at the instructions).

          Well, you just install it, which requires two clicks (sadly, it doesn't ask where you want to put it). Then, whenever you see a link on the web, saying something like 'here's matrix reloaded over bittorrent', you click it, enter the destination for the file, and wait for a while. There's your file! There's not much to figure out at all. Those instructions must be _really_ bad -- you woul

    • Re:Napster baaad, Kazaa wooorse (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cscx ( 541332 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:15AM (#6045713) Homepage
      And there could be serious copy protections, but I get the feeling that many software companies WANT their software to be pirated (by home users) so the same people want to use say MS Office or Photoshop at their workplace.

      Exactly. Why do you think Microsoft lets me and every other student at my university purchase just about every title of their software for $5? It's all psychological, my friend.

    • Seriously, this is really bad news. I'm pretty sure that the extremely easy access to software for windows is one of the main reasons why so many use the crap instead of free/open source software.

      A couple of months ago I started asking my friends at school (all comp sci, or comp or elec eng), "Why don't you use free software instead of that windows crap?" The most common response was somenthing along the lines of, "Sure it's free, I didn't pay a dime for it." (Most of my friends have pirated copies of

  • Value-added (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mattygfunk1 ( 596840 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:45AM (#6045583)
    Because of it's extreme popularity, I am surprised they have not attempted to provide more "value-added" services with the program. They have the attention of a lot of people when their program runs. This is a huge potential audience for further offerings and helps distance them to the whole "it is just for pirate music!" crap.

    Cheap reseller hosting [cheap-web-...ing.com.au] and individual accounts.

  • Kazaa is already dead (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:46AM (#6045586) Journal
    It is popular, but I believe it is stuck in its 'second generation P2P' model, namely closed-source, Windows-only, spyware advertising, worm-heaven.

    All products go through a life-cycle from pioneer, early-adopter, maturity, late-adopter. Kazaa is already in its late-adopter phase.

    Question: what are the early-adopter P2P products today? These will be the market leaders tomorrow, and they will be: open source, portable, secure against worms and attacks, silent.

    • Re:Kazaa is already dead (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:34AM (#6045779) Journal
      I prefer eMule to Kazaa. A SourceForge project and an excellent P2P application with much better functionality than Kazaa. It has pretty speedy update cycles too, they aim for about 1 to 3 weeks between updates and are so far keeping up with that goal well. It's of course free and completely void of spyware.

      http://www.emule-project.net/

      The current version, 0.28b, is much more mature than one might think from the version number. :)

      Ports of eMule (Windows application) are under development: lMule (Linux) and xMule (OSX). See their forums for more information.

  • eh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:47AM (#6045590)
    I thought that record belonged to Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson... [videomethod.com]

  • Only the highest on download.com (Score:5, Informative)

    by robla ( 4860 ) * on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:47AM (#6045591) Homepage Journal
    You'll note that the origin for this story is CNet, and that the metric that they are using is download.com (owned by CNet). Since Kazaa.com actually links straight to download.com, it's not surprising that they have the highest numbers on download.com.

    Over 335 million unique RealPlayer/RealOne Player registrations have been received by RealNetworks [realnetworks.com].

    Other software makers (who don't use download.com) probably also have numbers higher than Kazaa.

  • In related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DeadScreenSky ( 666442 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:48AM (#6045597)
    Cydoor and BDE could soon announce that they are still beating Kazaa for the title of "Most-Downloaded Program", since they are also installed with many non-Kazaa programs as well.

    (Memory a little hazy here! Fact nazis, prepare your guns!)
    Kind of like how Doom was the most downloaded program ever durings its era...except for the unzip program that they distributed with the installer.

    Anyways: Over 200 million spyware installations just from one program. That is a pretty scary thought, isn't it?

  • second most downloaded will be.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Catcher80 ( 639611 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .08rehctac.> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:50AM (#6045606) Journal
    Well damn! If Kazaa is the most downloaded, then AdAware will have to be the second most downloaded to get rid of all the spyware from Kazaa!!!

    Amazing, the most downloaded piece of software in history has spyware written all over it :)

    Or did c|net mean Kazaa LITE?

  • Actually (Score:2, Informative)

    by kilogram ( 520192 )
    Kazaa Says On Track to Be Most-Downloaded Program

    Actually, Kazaa Stays On Track...

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:50AM (#6045609)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Legal use? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by switched4OSX ( 668686 )
      Don't worry. RIAA will by a couple key politicians and eventually get a law passed outlawing P2P for any purpose. I agree, this is too bad, P2P has many legal uses.
    • I think the number of Kazaa download just tells us that there are more criminals than we think.

      It can't be that wrong if everybody's doing it. Here's one way to look at it. If a million people say that a chair is not in the middle of the floor, but only one person says that it is, that person is wrong or considered crazy, regardless if there really is a chair there. Today, billions of people share files with kazaa, irc, and other programs. For the purpose of this argument, we'll say they think it's ri

  • 229,150,955 times

    Considering that Kazaa does very little advertising, a large amount of this number probably represents people who have "sampled" the software at friend houses etc. and then got the program themselves.

    Of course the same thing also happens with people that sample music before buing it.

    Cheap web hosting [cheap-web-...ing.com.au] web hosting

  • Kazaa is less and less useful for me (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's good to get music, app software, and short videos, like episodes of TV shows. But it seems that for movies and games, everything is incorrectly labeled there. I'm not sure if it's a deliberate effort by the industry (but if it is, why would they still give you copyrighted stuff, albeit under a incorrect name) or stunts by pre=pubescent low-lifes who raise their participation level falsely through this deceit.

  • Nah.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tcak ( 513301 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:53AM (#6045622) Homepage Journal
    What about Macromedia Flash Player? As it runs on most web browsers, I believe that the number of downloads would be quite substantial, rivalling Kazaa. Consider the number of Flash-enabled sites out there.

    How about free web browsers? MSIE? Mozilla? Opera? Programs installed via Windows Update? Quicktime Player?

  • That 229M number is pointless (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stud9920 ( 236753 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:54AM (#6045629)
    Thousands of people use kazaalite, which is downloaded from dubious (as in more dubious than download.com) websites

    Thousands more use kazaa to download kazaa.

  • Kazaa Lite? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tankdilla ( 652987 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:55AM (#6045631) Homepage Journal
    They should also check with the folks at Kazaa Lite [kazaalite.nl], the Kazaa version without all those ads. Including this version they've probably already passed ICQ. Unless of course they already accounted for the lite version.

    • Re:Kazaa Lite? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by C.Maggard ( 635855 )
      I doubt they would acknowledge the lite version; since it's hacked to remove spyware and ads, they get no revenue from it, so why let people know about it?

  • Punishment (Score:5, Funny)

    by malia8888 ( 646496 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @03:57AM (#6045639)
    IMHO the poor souls who download Kazaa will find they may have brought something upon themselves they didn't expect. A few of our computer repair customers have shared files using this medium and their machine performance has gone to pure garbage. Kazaa lite is supposed to not have spyware--a hack of the original--per a google search. Kazaa claims they don't salt in spyware; however, our experience refutes that.

    Further, it is rumored that viruses or worms can be transmitted via sound files on Kazaa. I can't prove this in my humble capacity as a repairman. However, I would feel subjecting my computer to their site would be like sending the poor machine to a cyber orgy without condoms

    • Re:Punishment (Score:5, Informative)

      by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:34AM (#6045777) Journal
      "Further, it is rumored that viruses or worms can be transmitted via sound files on Kazaa"

      That is true. There are numerious buffer overflows within mpeg itself. With Windowsw2k unpatched I have clicked on porn only to have hidden code in the mpeg launch IE and god knows what. Most of it just directs me to their site full of full screen pop-ups that are impossible to close. Annoying and plain obnoxious. It is by the same porm spammer who hides the same advertisements for his site. I think his site is www.firstime.com. I do not remember. Do not go there unless you want 10 full screen pop-ups that even alt+f4 will not close thanks to nasty javascripts.

      Anyway my machine got hacked as well. It connected to port 666 which is irc doing god knows what. My guess is from the mpegs because I have a firewall.

      Anyway if your doing a new pc installation always patch WIndows first, before proceeding to anything else. This is common sense but I had no idea how insecure windows was until I saw this first hand. I do not believe slashdot antiMS hype. My old man without a firewall got hacked with 20 minutes after he got his dsl. He ran outlook unpatched. Amazing!

      I had to reformat my drive and start over after the kazaa-lite fiasco just to get rid of the virii. I am too cheap for an anti-virus checker.

      With Windows2k and media player fully patched the same mpegs do not launch IE or any extra code. My guess is the website owner used the buffer overflow to zombie my machine and direct my to his website hoping I would pay money for his lousy crap.

      • Re:Punishment (Score:2, Informative)

        by mattrix2k ( 632351 ) *
        I am too cheap for an anti-virus checker
        There is a (legal) free virus scanner [grisoft.com].

      • Re:Punishment (Score:5, Interesting)

        by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @05:14AM (#6045911)
        That is true. There are numerious buffer overflows within mpeg itself

        MPEG itself is a committee... but its true, no doubt there are exploitable problems in the various codecs.


        With Windowsw2k unpatched I have clicked on porn only to have hidden code in the mpeg launch IE and god knows what

        More likely it was simply a mislabelled .asf or .wmv, which, thanks to Microsoft's forward-looking concern for delivering what the consumer wants, are designed to be able to spawn browser windows (containing whatever). WMP will accept a mislabelled .asf or .wmv and play it anyway, spawning said browser windows from what you thought was a .mpg.

        • <i>There are numerious buffer overflows within mpeg itself</i>
          <br><br>
          <b>MPEG itself is a committee.</b>
          <br><br>
          They really should look at getting a better company to cater for their working lunches.
  • I wonder if this is in part due to the programs like trillian and the like that to the same job as ICQ but don't "rate" as a ICQ program download... watering down the poll?
  • I thought Madonna MP3s had the most downloads... Oh, most downloaded program, right.
    • If it were up to her, madonna mp3's would be programs.

      user: "Uh, why is this madonna song cursing at me and erasing my hard drive?"
  • Even though Kazaa may be in the last stretch before it loses its following because of spyware and the like, the off-shoot Kazaa Lite seems to be going strong and has a much better potential for taking Kazaa's place. Granted Kazaa in closed source and contains worms and spyware but Kazaa Lite being free of all that seems to be in the right niche to move in.

  • well... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mraymer ( 516227 ) <mraymer@nOsPaM.centurytel.net> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:05AM (#6045676) Homepage Journal
    That's nice and all, but isn't the number of connected users far more important than the number of downloads? I mean, the more users, the more files... and the more files, the more useful kazaa is to its users.

    The last time I checked, there were about 3 million users connected.

    Why is this number so much lower? Obviously people in different time zones probably sign on at different times, but even considering that, the number seems low when compared to what download.com is reporting.

    Is this a sign that perhaps a lot of people have trouble getting kazaa to work (firewalls, schools/ISPs blocking it, etc)?

  • what about multi p2p programs ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chrispy666 ( 519278 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:09AM (#6045691)
    mldonkey supports edonkey, bittorent, kazaa, overnet, napster, and probably other protocols that I forget, in one single program, that runs from the command line, on many platforms (linux x86, osx, bsd, even win32 !) as for GUI, you have a pletora of frontends. While this might not be a new p2p system, it's by far the most convenient way to download stuff from many different sources... mldonkeyworld [mldonkeyworld.com]

  • In related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:13AM (#6045703) Homepage Journal
    In related news, an RIAA spokesperson has announced that they will be filing suit against Sharman Networks Ltd. for contributory infringement over the Kazaa filesharing program. The damages are being calculated based on RIAA's estimates that each user downloaded 1000 songs using the Kazaa network, valued at $150,000 per song, and download.com's figures of 229,150,955 downloads for the program. The spokesperson refused to comment on the total damages sought, but Detroit Free Press columnist Heather Newman has estimated the amount to $34,350,000,000,000,000, or 34 million billion dollars, which, she assures us, is enough to buy all the music CDs every produced in the galaxy since the big bang several thousand times over.

    RIAA senior vice president for business and legal affairs Matthew Oppenheim has said: "Stealing is stealing. Piracy contributes to terrorism and eats away from the profits of the music industry, driving up costs for everyone." Industry analysts worry that in the future, software makers will not be the sole target of the behemoth's notoriously aggressive copyright defenses. Some have speculated that vendors of popular operating systems on which these software run may be next, and that hardware manufacturers may not be far behind. One of our anonymous correspondents wondered: "what happens if they decide to outlaw the internet?"

  • What about windows ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by theefer ( 467185 ) * on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:17AM (#6045725) Homepage
    I'd have thought windows would be the most downloaded program (in order to make Kazaa work for instance) ...

  • A resounding success for Spyware (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sh0rtie ( 455432 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:19AM (#6045736)

    As Kazaa comes bundled with multiple spyware programs this also gives you an idea of how many computers are infected with its programs, mind boggling really

    remember Kazaa is just a vehicle for this software as their revenue model is based on the user installing it, i feel sorry for all the support desks that are going to have to deal with all the problems it brings and the security implications when someone/thing exploits it, imagine how many corporate systems are infected and the implications that could bring for security in the workplace now that other private companies have direct access to their data bypassing firewalls etc (by using http port 80 to communicate) i mean Windows isnt exactly the most secure system around but these applications have made this so much worse and it can only be a matter of time until someone develops a *nix port of spyware.

    The sooner they are out of buisness the better for the user, but these numbers prove that it isnt going to happen unless virus companies decide to pull their fingers out and target these applications which are probably more destructive and intrusive than most viruses.

    According to the virus scanner companies stance , if you release a worm,virus etc with an EULA you are exempt from detection and are free to extract any information you like from the users/hosts system for financial gain
    (regardless of what laws exist to protect the users data in his/her country)

    luckily a few good [lavasoftusa.com] people have addressed [kolla.de] this problem but as their software isn't as widely known as the big boys (Symantec,Mcafee,Sophos etc) and doesn't come bundled as standard by pc manufacters (as a lot of virus protection does) i fear this situation can only get worse until the users computer becomes an un-usable device

  • No big migration to E*/Shareaza yet? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) * on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:24AM (#6045755)
    I was hoping by now, or at least the near future there would be a larger migration to software with open protocols like Emule or Shareaza using gnutella and whatever the edonkey protocol is called.

    I've found Shareaza to be almost as good as kazaa in regards to variety, but slower on the download end because of either the lack of a decent userbase or the protocols still need tweaking.

    I think we might be seeing, or already have seen, a big rift in content. RIAA/Mainstream stuff fills the Kazaa networks while less mainstream stuff is begining to appear on open protocol networks as people with a clue are migrating away from the spyware infested world of commercial P2P.

    Got a popular file? Put up a magnet/gnutella/ed2k link somewhere and tell people to download a non-commercial client if they want access to the "good stuff." Sure, there's no accounting for taste, but a little effort could undermine and help produce a mass divestment from Kazaa and the Sherman networks.

  • Running Kazaa on your Linux box (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:28AM (#6045766) Journal
    Just a tip for people; I run Kazaa on my Linux box: I installed win95 with Kazaa in the Bochs [sourceforge.net] virtual machine. I'm pretty sure it can't come out of the box :)
  • Danni Ashe claims to be the most downloaded woman [mostdownloadedwoman.com] with over a billion hits. Even if she's using those little American 'billions' (the ones you only need a thousand millions to make), that still leaves kazaa in the weeds at less than a third of her downloads.

  • scalability (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KingRamsis ( 595828 ) <kingramsis&gmail,com> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:37AM (#6045789)
    Kazaa is one of the most scalable software I ever seen, downloaded 229,150,955 times, assuming only 10% of the people are online at a time, that is 22 million online users searching its database... makes you wonder if their advertisment business can buy them all that bandwidth and equipment.

    I would love to have a look at their p2p protocol, actually i think it should become an RFC.
  • Most downloaded program?

    We're talking viruses here, aren't we?

    I'd say Rhinovirus. Sperm based genetic programming next. Readers of Snow Crash might suggest the Bible is a close third.

    Or are you one of those 1980ish, ascii encoded representation bigots?
  • That headline has been on my website [halo43.com] for 4 days.

  • The truth... (Score:5, Funny)

    by root 66 ( 72128 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @04:47AM (#6045835)
    That's only because people have to redownload it as they keep trashing their windows systems with Kazaa and all the spyware and malware it brings despite all the junk that people will actually download.

    Happy fortnighty format C: everyone.

    p.s.: Ad-Aware helps, too.
    • The spyware didn't bother me so much... I'm pretty boring.. most of my e-mail is done under pine so pretty immune from software minning from my win box, I guess a miner program could find out what websites I visit, even those are pretty tame. Mostly hardware related stuff, the newspaper, and once and a while that porn popup from hell cause I do a typo on the address. My major complaint was that the spyware degraded system peformance to such an extent that the product I wanted in the first place was render
  • Wonder if there are any reliable statistics showing which is the most downloaded mp3..
  • ....because the Kazaa installer craps out in WINE.


    An error occurred while launching the setup. (0x8000ffff)


    Among other errors in various other attempts. I guess you just can't install spyware in WINE.

  • And what this really means is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by hubbah ( 635375 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @05:34AM (#6045968) Homepage
    That pr0n and warez are the most popular downloads on the internet. In fact, for every download of Kazaa, there are are thousands of pr0n and warez downloads.

    And that tells you why people are clamoring for DSL and cable modems. Which, in turn, raises interesting questions about the market drivers of the broadband infrastructure in the US.

    "Pr0n, Warez Leading Drivers of Consumer Broadband Market"

    Now *that* would be an informative Reuters headline.

  • You forgot free (Score:5, Funny)

    by birdman666 ( 144812 ) <ericreid AT mac DOT com> on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @05:34AM (#6045972) Homepage
    The article and the claim state that Kazaa is on track to become the most downloaded free software ever, not the most downloaded piece of software ever. I think Microsoft bug fixes have that base covered.
  • (according to C|Net Download.com)

    That's Download.com.com to you.

  • Kazaa on track to most reported on program (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @06:31AM (#6046141)
    Slow news day?
  • Why are they downloading kazaa for, this is the worst peice of software ever, the amount of spyware, pop up software and underlying P2P stuff that you cant control is terrible..

    Be a geek and get control and use kazaa lite instead, its smaller, also free and if memory serves you can get that from download.com as well.

    This is what i use and i much prefer it.

  • Most Downloaded (Score:3, Interesting)

    by archetypeone ( 599370 ) on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @06:56AM (#6046228) Homepage
    equals Most Likely to be sued. I'm quite happy sticking to Gnutella.

  • Quicktime - most distributed licensed software (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adzoox ( 615327 ) * on Tuesday May 27, 2003 @07:10AM (#6046279) Journal
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Quicktime in all its iterations is the most widely distributed program, even surpassing Windows. (Because Windows has come with it built in since ME, right?) It's on all AOL discs since 4.0, it comes with MOST digital cameras, whenever there's a popular movie trailer it becomes the largest weekly download total. There were 7 million downloads for the trailer to Phantom Menace and 12 million for Attack Of The Clones. Every Apple computer sold since 1991 has had it as part of the base OS.

    I beleive I remember hearing at the Quicktime Live conference that the title statement was accurate.

    It is interesting to see all the records Quicktime has.

  • The first reason Kazaa destroys all the other file-sharing methods is that it has all the users. The number one rule of P2P: More users equal more files. Sounds simple but a lot of people miss the obviousness of it.
    Most Open-P2P services lose this battle immediately by not interoperating with each other. And every new Open-P2P implementation just further fragments the available user and file base into ever smaller fiefdoms. Not to mention the Open-P2P user base is not the average user, but the super user.
    The other place the Open-P2P implementations really miss the boat is in the default user setup. The default settings of Kazaa share all of the files a user downloads with other Kazaa users. It also defaults the user to allow unrestricted downloads at unlimited speed from his machine. Sure, these settings can be changed, but that's not the point. Kazaa caters to the least common denominator computer user, truth is, that's most users.
    But most Open-P2P implementations shoot themselves in the foot from the instant they are downloaded. They default the user to "not" share all downloaded files, then let them choose the transfer speeds. They also add in tons of "features" and settings that mystify the average user. Average users don't know from nodes and really don't want to know. They want to get files and not have to mess with settings. Kazaa works out of the box, while most Open-P2P implementations take a lot of wrangling just to get working. But the real key is that most users never change their default settings. So most Kazaa users share everything they download, thus there are always more files-per-user on Kazaa's system than any of the Open-P2P systems.
    Then there's IRC and the Newsgroups. IRC has been DDOS'd into irrelevance and even when it wasn't, sitting in file que's for days on end was not my idea of fun. Newsgroups are still with us, for now. But many ISP's offer very spotty service and as binary use grows, I suspect even our dear old newsgroups may come under heavy fire from the MPAA/RIAA.
    Bottom line, having tried all the various flavors and methods of file accumulation, Kazaa kicks everything else's ass. Using Kazaa-lite and a handful of Kazaa specific search and download enhancement utilities, there's almost nothing I can't find on the service. The Open-P2P providers aren't even close.
    The only way any Open-P2P will get close to Kazaa is by emulating it, then bettering it. If I were building an Open-P2P system to try and beat Kazaa, first I'd copy it, the back-end, the front-end, the "lack" of settings, everything. Then I'd concentrate on features designed to get around all forms of ISP restrictions and MPAA/RIAA manipulations. I'd implement things like port swapping, encryption, IP spoofing, tunneling, reputation systems, cloaking shared data to elude packet shapers and anything else I could think of. I'd make it all automatically activate when necessary and have all the college users overnight. All those college users with all that bandwidth would give the system the inertia it would need to succeed. Once you have inertia, you have the files, and when have the files, the users will come. And when the MPAA/RIAA really start moving against the ISP's and Kazaa, a system like this could take Kazaa's crown.

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