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Kazaa to be shut down?
darkpriest writes "According to this article on The Register, the file sharing software KazaA has been ordered to cease copyright infringment. They have two weeks to comply with the Judges ruling or face a penalty of $40,000 a day." CD: We've gotten a number of submissions about this, I had no idea Kazaa was this popular (must be all those a's in their name). I bet anyday that the RIAA will sue cisco for making routers that could be used to infringe.
Actually, according to download.com, kazaa and morpheus (which are the same program/network, really..) are the top two most downloaded programs.. Which makes me wonder if it's just Kazaa that was ordered to cease and desist, or does musiccity have to comply also? It's the same p2p network, with decentralized servers (I believe? I don't know all that much about their network), unlike napster's centrally controlled server farms.
I though KazAa was decentralized like Gnutella...
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
To explain why the RIAA can file suit against a Dutch filesharing system...
I mean, that second 'A' stands America, so what's their basis here?
Or is this the same kind of thing that got Dmitry?
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Would this also apply to Morpheus? IIRC, they use the same network.
Ceci n'est pas un post
What if they were to suddenly go opensource? Would that stop the RIAA's evil powers?
This will just keep happening.
Ok, maybe people will always want something for free, but the Internet file-sharing phenomenon is the single best argument for having simultaneous worldwide release of as many products as possible.
Now, to you North Americans, this isn't such a big issue, and you've probably never given it much thought. But to a native New Zealander and resident Australian like myself, who knows the pain of waiting a year or two to see episodes of Buffy (etc, etc, etc) that you could easily download for free, it is of paramount importance!
And another thing: a buddy of mine is a technical director on LOTR, and it's supposed to be a simultaneous worldwide release on December 19th. How is it then, that in Austalia, it's being released on December 26th? Was he wrong, or is the Australian Motion Picture League of Bastards screwing us again??
toeslikefingers.com - because
Sorry, chrisd, it is piracy unless you own the originals.
Let's see - the RIAA isn't endearing too many consumers in the US by suing everyone, so the plan is to go to other countries and start suing them too?
One has to wonder just what the ratio of RIAA lawyer bills + lobbyist *ahem* fees + the cost of bad press + cost of lost sales over this is as compared to how much they claim to have lost...
I for one will simply keep moving to a new service when they pop up. Failing that, there's always *some* news group, IRC, or whatever else we can concoct.... The more they try to filter, the more I can hide and transfer...
Just say no to the RIAA!
There is a little bit more information about it on cnet:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8022666.html? tag=mn_hd
although it does not contain too many facts beyond the actual case and the judgement.
I seem to recall the music industry railing pretty hard against being held responsible for artists' content. They just distribute content, they're not responsible for filtering it to make sure nothing bad is in there.
... unusual. Of course, thinking that our laws should have some kind of logic to them is a sure path to madness.
Of course, the difference is that music is protected speech, but from a logical standpoint, it's a pretty
-djere
"Where subtlety fails us, we must simply resort to cream pies."
http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10001-102-0-1 .html?tag=st.dl.10001.pop.10001-102-0-1
it has abou 1.5 million downloads every week .
vikas
download morpheus it's the exact same thing (When you hold your pointer over the icon in the tray right after it shows up while the system's booting it says Kazaa) www.musiccity.com
I seem to recall the music industry railing pretty hard against being held responsible for artists' content. They just distribute content, they're not responsible for filtering it to make sure nothing bad is in there.
... unusual. Of course, thinking that our laws should have some kind of logic to them is a sure path to madness.
Of course, the difference is that music is protected speech, but from a logical standpoint, it's a pretty
-djere
"Where subtlety fails us, we must simply resort to cream pies."
Xolox was probably my favorite, and now it has this message upon startup:
Dear XoloX-user,
Taking into account the latest law suits against p2p clients based on Fasttrack-technology (such as Kazaa), we
have decided to discontinue XoloX. As of the 1st of december, XoloX will be shut down and removed from
distribution sites. We hope everybody has enjoyed XoloX as long as it has been around and we want to use this
opportunity to thank everybody who made a contribution to its development. These last few days will give you
some time to finish your downloads and we advise you not to start new transfers. If you want to migrate to
another p2p client we advise you to visit the Zeropaid website (www.zeropaid.com) for orientation.
Thanks again and goodbye!
--Team XoloX--
Comments or suggestions? Please use info@xolox.nl
vikas
For those who didn't read the artikle, it's a Dutch court who ordered the Dutch company to cease & desist.
More to the point, Kazaa (the file sharing system) and FastTrack (the network (and libraries for accessing it)) are one and the same, so this should also affect Morpehus and Grokster (not to mention the buggy linux Kazaa client) !
This is bad bad news. Quick to the Kazaa before it goes away !
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
d'oh!!!
time to find a long distance friend with a VCR and UPN...
i suggest you offer to supply the tapes...
this is/can be referred to as networking...
"I bet anyday that the RIAA will sue cisco for making routers that could be used to infringe."
hey, now that's not a bad idea...
I believe Morpheus/Kazaa is a decentralized network. I could never find much information except hype on their tech, but I believe that if the client detects that you have good bandwidth and a decent computer, it will use your computer to process search requests.
There should be some central server that finds you nearby clients to connect too, but that could probably be replaced with unofficial underground ones. It would actually get better since if they shut down the official Morpheus servers there will be no more ads popping up. (Not like they can keep their ads going - anyone who uses Morpheus should be familiar with the message boxes it constantly pops up about not being able to connect to the ads server)
I wonder if it is just Kazaa or if it is to be Morpheus too. They are connected, when i do a search in Morpheus I come up with results like userfoo@MusicCity, userbar@Kazaa, and userbaz@???.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
The RIAA is very careful to only pick on groups that can't afford better lawyers than they can. I wish they would sue; Cisco might well succeed in creating some sort of binding precedent that would put a stop to all this nonsense. The RIAA will never do that, of course...
And the brethren went away edified.
"...revealed when a Recording Industry Ass. of America internal memo..."
Thats 'ass' in print folks....its Official!
Now seems like an opportune time to remind everybody that the FastTrack protocol was reverse-engineered some months ago by these guys (definitely a highly impressive RE feat, IMHO). gIFT is a fully functional, open source FastTrack implementation which happily coexisted with Kazaa and Morpheus until FastTrack decided to break it by further obfuscating their protocol. Which is a shame, because in doing so they make the FastTrack protocol reliant on centrally run servers to obtain a cryptographic key... this is all covered in detail on the gIFT website. Long story short, Kazaa can go down in flames for all I care, even though I use it almost every day. gIFT is in the public domain and here to stay. It's not ever going to be taken away from us. It works like a charm. It's decentralized. And it's just waiting to load up on content so it can gain that critical mass of users needed for widespread acceptance. Kind of a chicken or the egg problem, I suppose. So my advice to everyone is to start running gIFT and develop OpenFT network. This sounds like bluster but it's true for the time being: gIFT is the be-all-end-all of P2P filesharing.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
They were when they started (Morpheous and Kazaa both use the FastTrack network). But they moved to a system where you must log on to a central server before you can join the network. Take a look at the giFT project for more info (they were an open source client before the network closed).
giFT Project
They are also working on a new version of the network they call OpenFT.
----- The problem with browsing at +5 is that everyone thinks you're being redundant
I don't think any of the MusicCity protocol clients are decentralized. Or are our peers serving up those ADs? There was file sharing prior to Napster and friends --- anyone remember the days of searching Audiogalaxy for ftp sites, or, IRC? The problem with all the current crop of 'solutions' out there are that they're huge targets (Morpheus/Kazaa), don't work very well (gnutella), are good ideas but fail to work even a quarter of the time (Freenet) or are absolute utter crap (Mojonation). Any system designed specifically for file sharing will *have* to be a target to the idiots who don't comprehend that the genie's out of the bag. Notice that they're not tackling file trading on IRC, or, heck, even usenet as hard? I wonder what's going to happen when there's a nice convenient client that does chat (100% legit use), IMs (100% legit use) AND allows one to search for files of any type, without advertising and central servers? Certainly something I'd love to code if I could figure out, and something that would be near impossible to 'take down'. (Yes, the devil is in the details, but it is feasible, if you think about it.) Surely at some point there will be a p2p client not operated by any company (read: target), and even the RIAA and friends would eventually have to admit the futility of shutting down millions of nodes... especially when you can't identify easily which people are just chatting and which are actually trading files.
We can face anything... except for bunnies.
The hard part about this is that the FT stack was designed to be distributed, like Gnutella.
There is not central server, like there was with Napster.
It's all peer->peer->Superpeer, where the SuperClient helps to route things, solving the scaling problems of Gnutella.
So there isn't a Server to shut down.
A least, there never USED to be.
When GiFT came out, Kazaa and Morpheus switched to authorizing people through a centralized sever, before accessing the peer->peer network.
Coincidentally, shortly after they implemented this filter, they were sued.
Let's look who's been sued over this.
Napster, Imesh, Kazaa post-auth server
Who hasn't been sued
Bearshare, Limewire, Kazaa pre-auth server, GiFT, Freenet, WinMX
It seems that the RIAA knows that they don't have a chance of shutting down a network that doesn't use a central server, so they aren't trying.
You may also have a stronger legal case that way. In the napster hearings, one of the key points was that napsters servers let it happen. Napster had control.
I think that what we're learning from this is if you never touch the packets yourself, just release the client and hope for the best, you're in much safer waters.
Colin
Colin Davis
All i can say is on download. com it says this
"Downloads: 32,685,599" Well i guess it is pretty popular huh slashdot???
And by the way, for those that are modding this... I do not work for WinMX in any capacity, nor do I have any financial or personal stake in it. I'm just trying to help the people that looked at this article and thought, "Well, damn. What's left for me to go to now that doesn't suck?".
PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
My university apparently decided to block access to FastTrak clients. A quick tip for others afflicted with the same problem, find a program called Proxy Hunter and scan other .edu's for unsecured proxies. That's how I get on now. I know that makes me an asshole but a) I want my MP3s, dammit and b) it's partly the fault of whoever is silly enough to leave an open proxy server sitting on their network.
We'll make a few more snide comments on slashdot, the RIAA lawyers will lobby a bit more to congress, and we'll slip further down. slashdot pisses me off because there's so much whining and so little action.
I'm not sad about this. Frankly, I don't know if US Fair Use principles extend to the EU, but this type of stuff is the worst enemy of legitimate sharing of materials. The bottom line is that when you set up an enterprise to make a profit from the wholesale transfer of copyrighted material, you're gonna get hit. I know that some people are going to scream "it's just software". Bullshit. These folks are running an companies based on copyright violation, plain and simple. They get what they deserve.
Lest anyone think I'm sympathetic with the current system, everyone in the Net community already knows how to fix this: roll yer own. Trade amogst yourselves, break the encoding, distribute free of charge. It may take a while, but if the technically literate help the clueless to make fair use of materials, then eventually the IP hardcore types will lose.
Why don't we just sue every ISP, every internet backbone, every modem manucaturer, etc....Hell, let's sue ELECTRICITY.
I bet anyday that the RIAA will sue cisco for making routers that could be used to infringe.
In other news, the RIAA has filed lawsuits against Intel, AMD, and Motorola, alleging that processors produced by the aforementioned companies are being used to decode illegal pirated music.
SIGFEH
Last I heard, not only were the giFT folks made an open sourced version of fasttrack (used by both kazaa and morpheus), but also, they were developing openFT, which is compeletely independent of kazaa, so if it were to go down, then we could still use it. there'd be no way to block it either, and it works much better (as in more reliably) than gnutella.
note that a few days after kazaa blocked giFT, they were sued by the RIAA. this was because they switched to a partially centralized network from a network that had previously only used central servers for authentication (which giFT had never used).
This is the decision of a Dutch court. Now, whether or not they're being paid off by RIAA interests is another matter entirely.
Corrupt courts? I must be kidding, right? If only...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Fast-track (Kazar, Morpheus, Grokster) apparently use some sort of P2P 'supernode' setup, where clients on computers with large bandwidth (like on-campus student networks) act as 'supernode', ie they act as servers, transparently to the user/s.
Also Xolox uses the Gnutella network, so each client behaves like a transparent server.
Because of that, you log on right now & even though Xolox says that they have shutdown because of the legal situation, the app still searches/downloads/uploads files perfectly well via the Gnutella network.
So as far as my take on this is concerned, all these law suites can do is stop new revisions of these apps - they can't stop people using these apps even if the licensies/distributers of those apps shutdown.
Although the RIAA doesn't want to admit it, downloading MP3s has become commonplace anymore. MP3s get mentioned on TV, Radio, and everywhere else. For each service that they shut down, 2 more will come up to take their place. And for each one that goes down, the next one learns from their mistakes.
They can keep their legal team as busy as they want, but they will never put a real end to it.
its not server dependent.
Apparent those fastrak apps (Kazar, Grokster, Morpheus) transparently setup 'supernodes' on the client computers that have large bandwith & storage (like on-campus student networks). So the Apps should still work even if all the companies associated with Fast-track shutdown.
Look at Xolox, a Napster like Gnutella client. You open the app & it tells you that Xolox has for legal reasons shutdown, but you can still search/download/upload just as well as ever.
I assume the same thing will happen with those Fastrack apps.
So it seems all that will happen if 'fastrack' is shutdown is that new revisions of Morpheus, Kazar & Grokster won't be avaliable.
I've used Kazaa a good bit in the past couple months. It sucks that it is gonna die, but I kind of expected it. One thing you got to watch is there are a lot of virus-infected files on there and the Kazaa software has no built-in scanners.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
what a statement, yet cowardly posted. Sorry but you're a wimp. If you wanna state a strong opinion about something, at least give people a chance to reply to your email address and tell you why you're wrong.
Maybe you should become a dictator or something something.
For all of you that already get a ton of junkmail, Kazaa is cool. But it only contributes to the problem of more spam because of it's bundled spyware. I've gotten rid of it with Ad-aware and when I've reinstalled it because I wanted to DL something that I couldn't find on normal mp3 engines, I've noticed a considerable lag time in switching apps as well as all of my email accounts getting more personalized spam. For the meantime, I'm done with Kazaa and have switched over to morpheus. It's the same thing, w/o the spam. Protect your right to privacy and don't let companies scan your surfing habits so they can sell you more stuff you don't need anyway.
I don't like the copyright cartel anymore than most people here; in fact I probably hate them a lot more than most people do. But I also hate having spyware installed on my system without my knowledge. Like Kazaa does with Cydoor. So to all the guys at Kazaa, you can't see it, but at this very instant I'm giving you the big middle finger.
The RIAA and MPAA sure are asses!
AC comments get piped to
:)
Just a thought...
Hyperom.com
Let's have the Chinese make a Napster-like software. The RIAA won't be able to do much :)
Basically - KaZaA is ordered itself to stop infringing on arfists their right withing two weeks. It is not said that they are actually doing so - but if they are - they better not do it two weeks from now.
But at the same time - the dutch version of the RIAA (well not quite comparable - the legal framing is way different) is ordered to sit down with KaZaA withing two days to reach agreement as to how to legally offer music.
So the sword cuts two ways. While it is by no means clear yet -if- kazaa actually has stepped on the artist rights in any way.
Also note that Buma/Stemra is quite in a different leage that the RIAA, has a lot more legal shackles and govt. oversight - and typically chargers very reasonable fees - for end users in the fractions of dollars per song. And is very cognant of fair use. The netherlands is rift with things like public libraries which rent out popular music.
Heh... I'm not going to put my email up so that some criminal high school students and Europeans can email me hah! There's no debating my opinion because it's right!! And I'm an idiot... I lost my login and don't really care.
"I had no idea Kazaa was this popular (must be all those a's in their name)."
Proof That A's Don't Determine Popularity
Kazaa = 3 A's.
RIAA + MPAA = 4 A's.
Still, Kazaa is more popular than RIAA and MPAA together.
This post is XHTML 1.0 compliant!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
FT used to work w/o central servers - and presumably, the OLDER clients would work just fine, even without their parent companies.
SO WHO HAS OLD VERSIONS OF THE SOFTWARE?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
One thing I never did figure out was why K, M & G all look the same (bar different icons). What's up with that?? As far as I'm concerned, the RIAA can kill as many clients as they like. There will always be more (and better) P2P apps cropping up. Kinda like natural selection.
Anyhoo, here are some old Slashdot posts on the subject:
RIAA Looks To Stop KaZaA, Morpheus & Grokster
File Sharing: Decentralizing, Open-Source Fasttrack
-TheCrunch
.sig .freud
My life is one big siesta in which I'm dreaming I wished my life was one big siesta.
From what I have seen, eDonkey2000 is a much better P2P that allows anyone to setup a central server... not only that, but a central server uses very little bandwidth. You can serve 100 clients on a MODEM for pete's sake. There is very little minute-to-minute traffic when using eDonkey2000, unlike Gnutella based clients.
eDonkey is quite stable. All it needs to really succeed is shorter connection timeouts and some automatic retry functionality... in particular, you have to manually expand a search, and it takes some time.
Vote eDonkey for P2P president!
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I had no idea Kazaa was this popular
It's good to see Slashdot editors keep up with technology. FWIW, the FastTrack network (through the Kazaa and Morpheus clients) has consistently been the single largest bandwidth user amongst colleges and universities for the past few months.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I said this before Napster was shut down, and I will say it again. Its obvious that there is a demand for file sharing networks. The whole ideology of the internet from its inception is the free exchange of data. Yes, swapping copyrighted material is arguably a Bad Thing(TM), but its quite obvious that its never going to stop.
In the case of (illegal) digital music distribution, its been happening since before the advent of the MP3 format. It used to be that you had to find FTP sites to get your music fix. For some reason those FTP sites became scarce and hard to find, then Napster appeared and flourished for some time. Other sharing services like Audiogalaxy sprung up before the demise of Napster, and now those services are being threatened as well.
Keep in mind that we're currently in the 3rd generation of sharing services. Its quite clear to me that the demand still exists, and will continue to be met as long as it exists.
In short, the most the RIAA can hope to do is cause minor disturbances every couple years. At this point the RIAA still has some level of control, or at least the ability to shut these services down. What they fail to realize though, is that as long as they keep forcing the issue, more advanced solutions are going to manifest themselves. The envelope will eventually be pushed enough that the RIAA will no longer have any control over unauthorized distribution methodss (Think along the lines of decentralized P2P networks that actually work WELL).
Fortunately (at least in the US), the RIAA has a new weapon. Now that the US government has passed "anti-terrorism" laws that effectively negate our constitutional rights (privacy, freedom of speech), the RIAA can just claim these decentralized networks are groups of anarchistic indidivudals with the intent of undermining the well-being of the United States Government. Would anyone really be surprised?
I do have a sort-of off-topic question though, since I didn't pay enough attention in Civics class: If there exists a law that blatantly contradicts the constitution, is that law actually valid? If the new anti-terrorism legistlation effectively invades my privacy and puts my freedom of speech (and press) in jeopardy, would that not directly contradict the constitution? Its my understanding as a US Citizen that the Constitution is what gives the government its power, so I see this kind of legislation as the government biting the hand that feeds it, in more ways than one. How in the hell is illegally (in my mind) monitoring my computer any different than the government requring me to wear a microphone and vidcam so they can monitor all of my daily life? Perhaps I'm grossly misunderstanding current anti-terrorism legislation, and if so, please enlighten me.
Some famous US forefather said that anyone willing to sacrifice liberty for safety deserves neither (paraphrased, I know). I agree with that.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
The register points to this article on webwereld.nl . Since i am not aware of any automated translaters:
Rechter: KaZaA over twee weken dicht
judge:Kaza must close in 2 weeks
This is the remarkable outcome of a "kort geding" (court where outcome is in a short time) between kazaA and music right organisation "Buma/Stemra". If kazaa does not comply they must pay 100.00 guildens (~45.000 euro) a day with a max of 2 Million guildens. This outcome can end the Kazaa, that is one of the biggest music exchane services since the departure of napster.
The judge also dertermined that BUMA/stemra must meet with Kazaa to negotiate a contract where Kaaza can legaly offer misc via the internet. Accoridng to kazaa there was already a oral agreement with the buma/stemra the they canceled the engotioations.
Loyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm sees the judgement as a vicotry , in spite of the closing threat. "it is fantastic that they have to negotioate with us again. That means we still have enough time to make an agreement."
...
about the passage in the verdict about the "auteursrecht" [copy right? ] he is less to speak. "in the verdict is that kazaa breachtes the copyright. This is nonsense. The users are responsible for this. With the same argument one could close the suppliers of video recorders"
. . . appeal. . .
according to Alberdingk Thijm the verdict only has consequense for the software. This means that the network where also morpheur and grokster make use of stay 'open'. Poeple who already have installed kazaa soule be able to continue with using the network.
.
.
.
Buma/stemra did not react. "we do that when we studied the verdict"
[sorry for speliing errors and parts left out]
> To explain why the RIAA can file suit against a > Dutch filesharing system... It's not the RIAA, it's a dutch organization, BUMA/STEMRA. It's kind of like the dutch counterpart for RIAA, but BUMA/STEMRA claims to also represent music composers and the like. They have a site but it's in dutch and that stumps the fish.
On a sidenote, local news has it that Kazaa is more than willing to transform itself into a subscription service (as in non-free) but not that eager to be the first to do it (causing everybody to flock to gnutella I guess.)
cheers
pyz
well, let's see if you can find an online store where I can purchase and instantly download the most popular music online.
See, their's no legal alternative. So what is RIAA complaining about?
Peace out.
(Hey, it's only Karma!)
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
What a couple of us (anonymous geeky types trying to read what's left of the First Admendment through the brown stains (ref: Brian Dalton, Ohio)) have been tossing around is a p2p system that would be totally encrypted, and provide a one stop place for all your networking needs. ::smirks widely:: Right, AOL. ::shudders::
But, seriously. A good majority of people online
are soccer moms who don't know why they should use encryption, don't think they're doing anything wrong (and thus have nothing to hide),
and can barely navigate. (IE is "the web").
A nice gui (multi-platform, of course, and done
in qt or wxwindows) that does the encryption
behind the scenes for their chatting and instant messaging would be a *huge* hit. I just removed
Earthlink from a neighbours system. Their software is HIDEOUS! She put it on there because
she wanted things "all in one place". (As an aside, I called Earthlink's tech support while I was there, and asked why the smtp server address they gave her wasn't working. After I was told that smtp stood for "send mail to people", I rather quickly hung up. Turned out that they'd
bought out the ISP she was using, but that
she needed to use the old isps hostnames, as
earthlink hadn't gotten around to providing customers from her area with access. She lives
5 miles away but it's long distance for me
to call her. Rah!)
Where was I? Oh, right. Soccer moms. Anyway, the key to any p2p system surviving is *normal* users. Despite the numbers, all existing file share systems seem to be people with lots of time on their hands, or very technically inclined. The people who log in for a couple hours to chat with grandma, or little neice Susie, or check the latest news bulletins AREN'T using them. And if they're not using them, when the systems are shut down, you aren't getting the mainstream mass media outcry. This again goes to legitimacy. It can't be tacked on to IRC, because IRC already has enough kludges added and needs to be respectfully laid to rest. You *cannot* have a "content publishing system" that's true p2p and have it *be useable* without the industry clowns attacking it. (Look at Freenet, and tell me how long it takes you to find a key of something interesting, much less to download it. The fact that I'm actually going to have to buy the O'Reilly book on p2p should say something. Wait, I buy all the O'Reilly books. But if I didn't... :-) )
I think the best solution is to build (sigh, yet ANOTHER) protocol (open) based on the best aspects of the open protocols that exist, and
make a single client/server multiplatform application that everyone can use, and the government can tear its hair out over because
it's not as easy as harrassing an ISP to read what everyone's saying.
This isn't as grandiose as you might think, and people far smarter than me have even done some parts of it. No one, though, has put it all together. I won't keep rambling on details, but, check out Mojonation: For the file sharing end, it addresses a lot of issues that haven't been before (mojo/leech consequences, ratings, etc). However, it's an utter piece of shit --- requires a web browser (expects IE? Yech!), is abysmally slow to publish, and, in my experience, impossible to download on. And, again, just file sharing.
This is probably longer than it needed to be, but, as you might have guessed, something I'm really interested in. I have no idea how it would be possible to have a p2p without central servers (elitist hubs in IRC talk) and yet provide reliable delivery. Even a quasi-p2p network with NO commercial entities involved, and as much anonymity thrown in as possible would be better than what's going on now.
Again, reiterating my first post, if a million people are all chatting encrypted, and there's no way to see who's doing what, there's just no way to shut it down. Maybe I'm still naive, but I don't think we're past the point where we can grasp unto what freedoms we have left and hold on tight...
We can face anything... except for bunnies.
This makes no sense. Everyone should have downloaded everything they need by now.
OpenNap! :)
... really.
... you can finish the rest.
The RIAA (well, in this case their Dutch counterparts BUMA/STEMRA, actually) are fighting a losing battle, as they probably know very well. At least, they should know this from looking at recent events surrounding napster.
First, there's a thing called GNUtella. Doesn't work very well, but it works, but, well, it doesn't work very well. Then, for a while (how long did Napster actually last? A few months or so?) something comes along that does the same as GNUtella, but it's much easier to use. So everyone switches over, because, well, freedom and decentralization are nice ideas and all, but ease of use is nice too. For a few months, everyone uses the ultra friendly Napster thing 'till the RIAA takes note and sues Napster. Exit Napster. Tons of internet (l)users have, however, by now learnt of the joys of P2P filesharing, so they go to GNUtella, which may suck, but it's still better than nothing.
Along comes FastTrack (KaZaa/Morpheus/Grokster). It's really easy to use, so everyone and their mom installs it. For a few months, users are happy. Then the RIAA takes note, orders FastTrack shutdown
This will keep happening until the RIAA finally gives up. Since that's rather unlikely, the cycle "sucky Gnutella -> nice GUI app -> nice GUI app shut down -> sucky Gnutella" will continue forever.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
I ask this question as a hypothetical, and while I understand that gnuella is still an option, freenet is still progressing, but if there NEEDS to be a centralized server what is stopping people from getting bandwidth to a country that does not support copyrights and running a United States company to support them, say a napster like company that wouldn't sell out, to be the front to sell advertisements (like that ever works but do you have a better suggestion?).
They couldn't be aiding criminal activity if it's not illegal in their home country right?
Adding Kazaa to the list of progs that got hit bye RIAA makes me think all this happens because there is somebody to get hit.
:(
I think there IS a way to avoid this happening again, unless till the government bans any kind of file sharing through law.
What if we take an open-source distributed file-sharing client and just keep renaming it every time they come against it. Since it's free, it doesn't cost a thing to rename it, while it'll cost RIAA a ton of money in lawyer fees.
Isn't that feasable ?
__________
Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace!
I hope all Kaaza goes all the way to hell and never come back. Them and their "top text" virus. Screw these bastards for installing a backdoor ad software in my system.
eTrade SUCKS
I think they went to the throttling method to make people say "Oh, it's just slow today." This keeps them from looking from alternatives-when napster got blocked, everyone just switched to gnutella. Colin Winters
Moves the servers abroad & repoint the DNS servers. That would f#ck 'em.
eDonkey is just a front end to an FTP search engine.
Check out gnapster, an excellent gnome napster client, or the excellent gtk-gnutella, the most efficient gnutella client for Win or Linux.
Shuting down the company made no difference on the functionality of the app.
You can still search/upload/download fine.
That's the great thing about P2P,
If it wasn't for fastrack altering their software to make one logon, to block out the open source reversed engineered Fastrack client, GIFT (which btw also does transparent 'supernode' serving on clients with good bandwidth & storage, just like the legit Fastrack apps themselves), then those fastrack apps would be immune from being made dysfunctional by having their corporate creators shutdown
That was true, until they required a key to be retrieved from their authentication server for use (to shut out giFT). Their program is no longer truly decentralized.
I have read a few posts and quickly came to a conclusion that has reverberated through my thoughts before: If I were designing a file sharing program/ protocol I would, 1) make every client independent of any server. I would accomplish this by endowing each client with a capability to remeber the ip and port adresses of clients it has encountered through out it's life, similar to a personal DNS. Each client upon download would wave a *special gift* The special gift would be an updatable list, (it exchanges information with every client it talks to), of domains to "randomly" search looking for other clients. once it has found one client it says "Hi, I'm here, you're there, let's exchange adress books and tell others who we know that each of us is around, just incase they havent reached their quota of friendly online machines." So the programs share all info. They share info like "if we ping 24.19.XXX.XXX we are sure to find cable modems and hence people like us who can help us branch out and find new friends". Every one does this and they have an ever changing comunity. They follow the gnuetella idea of asking all clients they are in communication with if they have a file and those clients in- turn ask their buddies until either no-one has what you are looking for or some one initiated a transfer, and if multiple people have that file they follow the Packet Chain Protocol, http://www.pcpnetworks.com, format and every one sends it to everyone who is asking and it is extra efficient so the bandwidth cops don't come knocking. The way I think of it is, if I look at a stary night and imagine each star as a node on the net, mathmematiclly speaking, and as long as there are about 365 different options [I'm tired and think of the birthday problem] I have a better then fifty percent chance of finding another node running my program who has they same odds of finding another program to buid it's community with. -- a 4-d line is only a sphere.
I was like refering to this ninja.
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Imagine this:
A government mandated ban (due to a court ruling for the RIAA or an equally greedy bunch) on TCP traffic containing a certain protocol (FastTrack, for example) in order to "save the artists from copyright violations."
It's possible in today's world. And then he may just get what he wanted: a lawsuit against Cisco for not hardwiring the ban into their routers.
Do you like German cars?
The FastTrack network has a very scalable two-level structure. Every computer on the network is initially a 'node', however nodes with significant bandwidth are promoted to 'supernode' status.
The KaZaa/Morpheus servers handle logging in and refer the node to a supernode, where the node sends its list of files it wants to share. These super-nodes store these lists, and search queries are forwarded to the supernodes.
A supernode also gives the lists of some of the clients its connected to, so if the supernode disappears nodes can talk to other nodes about supernodes without getting kicked off the network.
So, effectively the network is controlled by the supernodes, which can be just ordinary PCs with reasonable bandwidth. The KaZaa servers only handle the logging in pretty much, so I doubt the FastTrack network could ever technically be shut down. Unfortunately the FastTrack protocol is very proprietary, and uses some closed-source algorithms. It would be good to see someone create an open-source 'equivalent' of the p2p protocol with the excellent features of FastTrack.
Anyway that's just my understanding of the FastTrack network, correct me if I'm wrong.
I didnt even know ye olde Kazaa werrrre arrround. arrrrrrrh. - A music Pirate
I've enjoyed kazaa for the last few weeks, but lately the performance has been very slow. Just yesterday, it said it had errors and shut down. Perhaps the problem is local to my machine, but I wouldn't be surprised if some central network has been shut down in response to the lawsuit. The performance in the last week has been horrible.
I've really enjoyed those Hindi mp3's! But if you download any adult stuff, that is 9 times out of 10 what others will be borrowing from you.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Since I've seen a lot of negative posts in response to 'Yawn', I give all the people who didn't look good enough this information:
t co giFT && cd giFT && ./autogen.sh && make && su -c 'make install'
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.gift.sf.net:/cvsroot/gif
You can run 'giFT' after that. Drop into the #gift channel on OPN to get the necessary IP's to connect.
Yes, it does work, but no, it isn't finished yet.
does ppp stand for point to point protocal? does p2p stand for point to point protocal? Is the internet not a filesharing network? (ie a network (a collection of computers) that shares files (transfers files around)? Why has the riaa not just forced the whole internet to shutdown in the US under the dmca or whatever? or is that the whole point and am i just stupid?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I disagree with you that gIFT is is a viable alternative to Kazaa because it hasn't implemented the super node aspect of Kazaa. Basically, it's only useful for connecting to existing FastTrack networks, not forcreating entirely new independent networks.
However, I have no doubt that either gIFT or another open source alternative file sharing network will duplicate or surpass the functionality Kazaa currently provides. This will be especially true if FastTrack is shut down. Just look at download.com's Macintosh section. Because Kazaa has not been ported to the Macintosh, two versions of the open source gnutella clone are ranked one and two.
Clearly, there is a huge appetite for file sharing software that will no doubt be met by talented open source programmer perhaps even operating anonymously. While it may seem like this would provide cover from RIAA and other organization lawsuits, I believe it won't. gnutella, gIFT and all other file sharing tools rely on centralized servers for at least the distribution of their software. The RIAA could easily threaten suits against Limeware, sourceforge.net, and any other entity hosting file sharing tools or even linking to them. The latest deCSS court decisions banning linking prove this to be the case.
Sig goes here
is not so bad. Everyone that uses Kazaa should submit a $5 paypal payment to them once a week or so. That should cover the fine with plenty left over to fund development!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But since the network protocol behind FastTrack is encrypted, how are they going to prove that anything illegal is actually happening without breaking the DMCA?
At most, they have evidence, but no proof.
IANAL. Obviously it can't be that simple, so please enlighten me.
A more complete and better(?) translation of the webwereld.nl article.
Judge: KaZaA must close in two weeks
Thursday, 29 November 2001 - KaZaA must stop making copyright infringements of music artists in two weeks with, a judge decided today.
That's the remarkable outcome of summary proceedings between KaZaA and Buma/Stemra [Dutch RIAA]. If KaZaA ignores the decision they are forced to pay 100,000 Dutch guilders per day, with a maximum of 2 million guilders [1 NLG = about 0.40 USD]. The verdict can mean the end of KaZaA, the largest peer to peer network after Napster.
The judge also decided Buma/Stemra must negotiate with KaZaA within two days about a treaty that will allow KaZaA to legally 'distribute' music. According to KaZaA there already was an oral agreement with Buma/Stemra when Buma/Stemra canceled negotiations at the last moment.
VictoryKaZaA's lawyer, Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm sees the verdict as a victory, despite the threat of KaZaA being forced to close. "It's of course really nice that Buma/Stemra has to negotiate with us again. That means we still have enough time to make an agreement.
Whether Buma/Stemra and KaZaA will be able to make an agreement within two weeks, Alberdingk Thijm can't say. "I find it difficult to estimate"
But Alberdingk Thijm isn't happy about the passage in the verdict about copyright infringement. "The passage says that KaZaA itself makes copyright infrigments. That's of course nonsense. The users of KaZaA are responsible for that. You could also close down companies that make VCR's with that argument."
Appeal"You can only have a point when you say KaZaA gives users the possibility to break copyrights, the same argument used against Napster. I have the feeling the judge bungled that part of the verdict", says Alberdingk Thijm.
Thus KaZaA is thinking to appeal against that part of the verdict. "But before we make a decision we'll have to study the verdict again, calmly."
According to Alberdingk Thijm the verdict only has consequences for KaZaA's software. That means the network the company uses [FastTrack], which is also used by Morpheus (MusicCity) and Grokster, will stay 'open'.
People who already installed KaZaA on their computer, would still be able to use the network. KaZaA doesn't use central servers [they do! but it's still 'optional'] as Napster did, so stopping the service is difficult.
Buma/Stemra doesn't want to comment the verdict yet. "We will do that after wes tudied the verdict thoroughly", as George Knops of Buma/Stemra says.
Copyright (c) 2001 - WebWereld / Maarten Reijnders
Translation by Eelco Lempsink
It sounds like they were their own worst enamies.
Anyway if GIFT works the same way as fast track; then, I assume, if enough people download/install/run GIFT then all those GIFT running systems will creat their own fastrack like P2P network.
Really as long as the GIFT people can get a good user base then they don't need to log into the fastrack network anyway.
So what's the problem? We should all start using Gift, does gift have to log into to Fastrack to work? can GIFTers form their own network?
Informative; it will just be lost amongst the 0's otherwise.
Installing Kazaa compromises your comp. Spyware, anyone? Can you say Gator? To hell with Kazaa.
Ja ja, jouw vertaling is echt beter. Maar ik had niet zoveel tijd.
leuk_he
not only in there no legal alternative but the RIAA doesn't want one either, they want a music monopoly. we licensed fasttracks technology and wrote our own client from scratch (not releasing now since they filed suit against musiccity, waiting to see how it turns out).. we've contacted RIAAs musicnet service about licensing content, recieved no reply, contacted ARIA about licensing (australia), no reply.. they don't wanna know about it, they're happy in their own little world ripping people off with CDs.. they bitch and moan about copyright infringement, and won't even let anyone try do it legally either, the competition consumer comission needs to step in at some point.
Come on people. Realize who this story is coming from. They have even less credibility than macosrumors.com.
Get a freakin grip. If this story was true, other news sites would be carrying it too.
and NO, slashdot does NOT count.
Joseph?
Last, remember that Kazaa and their ilk are *not* truly p2p networks - the software they run *does* require that the program check in with Kazaa occasionally. Sure, Joe Hacker can bypass that, but good luck running this p2p network when 98 of every 100 people are off of it because they aren't hackers.
Put code into the next release to disable FTP?
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO
(posting AC because I'm too lazy to look up my pwd)
But I was wondering... What does RIAA stand for? I thought it was "Recording Industry..." something. The only thing I can come up with is "Recording Industry A$$holes of America". That works... :)
________________________________________________
suwain_2
What happened to Dutch free love and drugs and all that? If certain narcotics are really legal in the Netherlands (or is that just a rumor?), pirated music pales in comparison.
the poster was making was that just because something is illegal doesn't mean that it's immoral, on a kin to capturing ships and killing the crew. Hell, according to Lego, using the word "legos" is an infringement of their intellectual "property" -- and they specifically mention how you are allowed to describe their product: '"lego blocks" is legal, "legos" is illegal'. A lot of us think that these IP laws have gone too far, have been rammed down our throats without our consent or representation. And just as the US govt. does when the world court rules against it, we just decide to snub our nose at the media cartels. We're not pirates. We don't bribe our congressmen, we don't sink oil tankers or sail ships to intl. waters before illegally dumping them in the sea, we're not even price fixing monopolies. No need to start slurring our reps over some file sharing.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Kazaa is a system [as far as I gather] much akin to gnutella. If that is correct what is wrong with it being shut down?
Let's see, you have commerical music on your computer, you didn't pay for it, tell me again why this isn't illegal?
Who gave you the right to steal other peoples work and claim "its allright because I say so". Who cares that you have a "digital" copy and you didn't steal physical material. You're enjoying someone elses work without payment that is stealing.
If you like the music/movies you have on your computer so much, why not pay for copies so the people who made them can pay their staff and all. For example, MGM may be a multi-billion dollar company, but the joe-blow working for $40K certainly would like to keep his job. So while you guys pirate stuff the big giants (like MGM, RIAA, and all the other studios) still make their billions of dollars at an expense of laying off their staff!
I say down with all file sharing systems. They're just wrong and detract from the proper open spirit nature of the internet. Yes we should share information, but only that which we rightfully obtain!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
who thinks this is reasonable? A company has a business plan:
1. create system that facilitates illegal sharing of content
2. load it with spyware to cash in
Nobody uses kazaa for legal downloading, well very few do. I don't think its right for a company to profit by providing a system that blatantly encourages illegal activity.
If it was for free it would be a different story - then we are creating a system that subverts capitalism, which will lead to a downfall of American society either through excessive controls/monitoring to prevent anti-capitalist measures, or through the degradation of IP rights. But its not, they are leveraging fraud for their own money greed motives, so they have to play by the rules of the capitalist market place they live in. They got what they deserve.
It is my understand that Kazaa/Fastrack switched to central user authentication recently in an attempt to knock out non-licensed clients (like the open source Linux client that can be found on sourceforge). As far as I am concerned this is where they make their mistake as they received a law suit shortly after this switch. I would hope that Xolox would consider development again after a suitable cooling-off period as I think you have an excellent client. It may still be true that a truely P2P system like Gnutella is exempt from legal troubles since no copyright material comes into Xolox's possession. The client is a tool and like many tools, it can be used for good or evil. (On the assumption that copyright infringment is "evil". grin.)
The problem with decentralization is that it's slower. KaZaA took off because the searches completed faster and involved more nodes, and were therefore more useful.
Eventually - with enough bandwidth - you'll be able to do reasonably quick searches with decentralized systems. However, with the demise of AtHome we're not moving in the right direction...
Just like with napster, Kazaa et al, make a program that is a vehicle for "whatever behaviour" the individual uses it for. Correct?
In my mind, it seems as if "infringment" is aking to DUI/some other flagrant violation.
Now, when accidents/infringments occurs...instead of punishing the offenders, the RIMPASS's(thanks register) go after the "auto/program" makers.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
What's more, they 'd only have to hold on 20 days, cause the maximum penalty is set to 2 million Dutch guilders (http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/9357.phtml)
...
So, if there's someone with some 800.000 spare dollars to spend, you can make a lot of people happy
It would be good to see someone create an open-source 'equivalent' of the p2p protocol with the excellent features of FastTrack.
Try OpenFT / giFT.
Maybe now more people will get onto LimeWire and I can finally get the Plastik People of the Universe songs I've been looking for...
Judging by your signature, I would think you live in Canada.
The Space channel shows Enterprise on Sunday nights at 8 and I think CityTV shows it Friday nights
--
Canadians.... The other other other white meat
It allows even the most simpleton layperson to easily commit copyright infringement & piracy, almost as though it was created primarily for that purpose. MS should be sued by the RIAA.
Yeah, that law is still valid... HOWEVER, if someone is prosecuted under that law, their defense could be that the law is unconstitutional. In that case, the various levels of courts have to agree/disagree until it reaches the Supreme Court and could be overturned.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
Actually, the problems with Australian distribution of LOTR involve New Line's status as a quasi-independent sub-studio under the AOL/TW umbrella. New Line films are distributed by Warner in the USA, but need other distributors internationally; the Australian one isn't affiliated with AOL/TW, and therefore really sets its own release schedule.
As a fan of many foreign media, however, I agree, there needs to be better coordination between international distributors. Look at how long it's taken the Evangelion movies to be released in the States. Manga Entertainment, which is distributing them here, has probably lost some money to the fansubbers who have leapt into the breach. It's in the content makers' interest, and the fans' to keep the stream constant and consistent worldwide (provided, of course, that everyone's fair use et al. is protected).
Did anyone notice that they refer to RIAA as "the recording industry ass. of america." That's a great name, very much underlines what RIAA is: "ass."
Hey, I work in a submarine, and I was jammin out to this Brazilian music, and wasn't really doing my job...
Suddenly my commanding officer comes up and slaps me on the back, and my headphones fall off, and the music spills out in the submarine. Now I try and play it cool, and I'm like, "Polkadots and moonbeams, sarge!" but it's obvious the guy is mad.
So he takes off hit hat, and he tells me, "Listen soldier, we're in a mission-critical submarine API. We run NT on a per-seat license, and we can't have Brazilian music leaking all over the place. SO MOP IT UP! ON THE DOUBLE!" And then I mopped it, my shame and resentment balling up in my stomach like a fist. Would you care for a receipt (yes/no?)
I am a sentient ATM.
Cisco... Routers... Infringe... Don't give them ideas dude... Soon they will be after the internet in general. /satterth
Being called a dork on Slashdot must be like being called the retard in special ed.
Isn't this a little like telling the gun manufactures to make sure that thier guns aren't used to kill people......Or car manufacturers to make sure that cars can't carry drugs.
Is there some way to classify the RIAA, MPIAA, and other groups as terrorsts?
As silly as this may sound, I'm *still* using Napster, version v2b7, (but hexed to read ver. 1.0), on an almost daily basis. Mainly for chats, but for "other" things, too. You just have to know who to connect to... (*cough - Napigator - *cough).
P.S. Hilary Rosen can kiss my ass.
GiFT isn't a full Fasttrack implementation. It doesn't impliment supernodes, uploads or many other necessary elements; it was built *only* to log into the preexisting network and download files.
OpenFT, on the other hand, has a chance of working when finished.
In the meantime, I'm using eDonkey2000.
they dont realize it, but Darwin-like effects are happening here. no matter what the RIAA does, they cant stop these applications from evolving into something they cant sue. :-) they might kill a few, and Kazaaa will probably go down, but someone else will take their place. you cant stop people on the internet from sharing stuff with one another. can you stop two kids from sharing candy with one-another in the lunchroom?
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
kazaa along w/morpheus are the two major causes of bandwidth problems at my university, sad to sat but either one or both of these programs getting shut down will do wonders for my university's network... btw, wondering how many people are running either of these progs on your network? run a scan on port 1214, you wouldn't believe some of the things people download... looking at all of the things people at my univ. have downloaded, i have seen few if any legal things downloaded so i do feel that there is cause for kazaa to be sued
But i am Dutch.
So i say, they eventualy will start discussing if its the company's fault or that of the users putting up the stuff for download. Another thing i dont think that it will go so fast and our Laws arent really setup of for internet stuff anyways, so i dont think they will shut it down in the near future.
Quazion.
Here's the way I see things going down. Kazaa talks to Buma/Sterma about moving to a pay service. Buma/Sterma says thats great, and we're really interested, but you'll have to prove that you can control the network and prevent open source clients from connecting so we can be sure you'll be able to implement DRM. So Kazaa adds in the central servers and encryption. Buma/Sterma instantally calls off talks and calls the lawyers.
As a musician who would love for everyone to hear his music for free, I find it very offensive that the best distribution methods for getting my music out there are getting shut down.
The Music Industry wants to control distribution of music at my expense to that they can peddle their 2 new bands per week.
I'll never have a contract with these guys, and I wouldn't want them if I understand the terms correctly.
But there are plenty of musicians who would give their music away for free. And I mean successful ones. There is no good way to _prove_ that a file is legal. The infrastructure has obsoleted the record industry for the small-time musician. But these thousands(millions) of musicians will be silenced to allow the record industry to sell their ever-shrinking selection of new music. We really listen to what is advertised, do we not?
rhadc
Sure there's a legal alternative.
.mp3s they want under whatever terms they care for (well, other than stuff that won't hold like demanding seven years of indentured servitude from your next child).
Convince a band that there is a sufficient market to justify not signing exclusive contracts, and that it can handle distribution online. Artists are well within their rights to sign away distribution rights to just about anybody they damn well choose, as long as they don't sign mutually exclusive contracts... or to insist on autonomy and run a small e-commerce site where they can provide all the
Commerce is based on consent, after all. What you're asking for is simply a childish "Me! Me! MEEEEE!" system where you should get everything that you want, all the time.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
From the article:
... was revealed when a Recording Industry Ass. of America internal memo was leaked ...
Recording Industry Ass of America. I like that.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Need an internet file-sharing utility (let's call it "KaZaak" for sake of this argument) that needs absolutely NO central servers, not even for d/l'ing KaZaak. Not even for a database of those KaZaaks that happen to have files to share.
Want to d/l KaZaak? Simply do a Google search (or other search engine) for KaZaak. Bound to turn up something. Hopefully not a lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement (which, when considering the option to view a cached page, surprises me that this hasn't happened already).
Once you find KaZaak, when you d/l it, it d/l's the database of the KaZaak you d/l'd it from. This lets you contact other KaZaaks in search of the file you are looking for.
Basically, it needs to be made bullet-proof... if bombs (or lawsuits) fall on the parent servers, the service keeps operating. If 90% of the clients are taken out by thugs in pinstripe suits, the service keeps operating. If only two are left... the service keeps operating... and can grow again.
Remember, all you need is two to tango.
In retrospect, I think I know what the failing of previous file-sharing programs is. They mention that you can share "music." Instead, they should say you can share "files containing digitized representations of analog waveforms."
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Speed is a problem, but not necessarily insoluble. Centralized systems have inherent vulnerability problems that probably are not soluble.
And this is not restricted to computer programs. Centralized points of control tend to be grabbed by control freaks. (They are the ones most interested in control.) To avoid this, design systems that do not possess this property. It's more difficult, but it sure is safer!
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...support GNUtella instead. Noone can shut down that network, short of shutting down millions of users.
I wonder if the shortening of Association was innocent, or they are showing their dislike of the RIAA :)
According to a report on Dutch Web site WebWereld, the IFPI has been told to resume talks with KaZaA about the formation of a legal music-sharing service.
was completely ignored in the slashdot article as well as by all the postings I've read so far. Right now everyone is just talking about how "they can't shut it down" and "we need an open source version so that they can't shut it down" or "we need to switch to Gnutella because they can't shut that down". Whatever happened to the talk of "I would pay $1 for a song if I could download it"? Has everyone settled for simply getting everything for free without compensating the artists? (before you go rant about the evil recordcompanies who get all the money, you might want to reread this article)
As long as people are pirating music/movies/software, there will be lawsuits like this. As long as people in some way shape or form profit from this pirating (by providing a client or network on which they sell advertising space for example), there will be lawsuits like this. If you want to legally download music without paying for it, stick to artists who give away their music for free, or move to a country without copyright laws. Otherwise, you're gonna have to start getting used to some kind of "micropayment" system, and lawsuits and verdicts such as the one against Napster or Kazaa are just the first step towards that.
While I'm at it, I'll try to counter some often-heard arguments, before someone brings them up again:
"it's just a filesharing program, it can be used to legally share files as well, they shouldn't be allowed to shut it down"
Please take a moment to log on to the network, and realise that the vast majority of files shared are copyrighted music and movies. Say what you will, but these networks exist principally for the purpose of sharing copyrighted material. If you only care about the legal material, then you should be happy about the filtering measures that Napster had to put in place, since they don't affect your use of the network.
I wouldn't mind paying the artists directly
I'm sure the artists wouldn't mind either, but they chose to sign deals with recordcompanies instead, and so you'll have to abide by their rules. On the bright side, both recordcompanies and artists are starting to get clues, and before long you will be able to buy individual songs online for a nominal fee.
We don't have to abide by their rules, they can't stop us!
You're right, they can't. But they can try. And occasionally there will be an "innocent" victim who gets turned into an example for the rest of the world. You can't eradicate burglary either, but you still lock your house when you leave, right?
Way to give the RIAA the idea they could start sueing companies like cisco, and perhaps the isp's, the manufacturers of ethernet cables, NIC's, etc. etc. ahh f**k the RIAA.
sigh i'd like to sue their ass.
oh won't somebody think of the children?
-simpsons
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
Daniel
http://people.cinn.ca/daniel/
Found this on the "web browser" tab of Morpheus that no one ever looks at because there is no pirated music or movies on it.....it's in PDF, but it is a response to this lawsuit.
It's dated Nov. 6.....has this suit been going on that long?
Anyway, sorry it's in PDF. If this gets modded up, somone should probably mirror it.
"Morality and law alike are determined by the weight of the people. If enough people think that file sharing is a moral thing to do, then it will become so."
Paraphrased: "Morality and law alike are determined by the weight of the people. If enough people think that murder and rape is the moral thing to do, then it will become so."
I think that clearly makes my point, and a point that needs to be made: there are constant, unchanging right and wrongs, whatever the masses want to say or do. I think it is interesting to watch "morality is the will of the masses" advocators try to justify their actions. Since they are relativists, why do they need to defend their actions? Because they are trying to say they adhere to a standard...when they deny constant standards.
Now, I agree that the "current entertainment business model" has problems, but do we really want a total collapse? No more blockbuster movies, no pop stars (hmmm...), mega rock bands, advertised everywhere, MTV would have trouble dealing with indie artists with no money for videos, because they are indie, no million-seller records...everyone d/ls their mp3s instead...at least in a world i see. Talk to me, let me know what you think.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
"3, Funny"? wow
That is not correct!
Kazaa was in negotiation with BUMA/Stemra about a services where users would pay for the music.
However, the day AFTER the RIAA sued Kazaa BUMA decided to stop all negotiations with Kazaa. Probably the RIAA told them to. That's why BUMA can now be forced to talk with Kazaa again.
The authorities in the Netherlands (and the rest of europe) are affraid the music industry is shutting down Kazaa (and others) in order to be the only one able to sell music trough the internet. (We all know the RIAA isn't like that;)
Well, it's popular with managers at my company. A while back I was reviewing the firewall logs and noticed an huge number of attempted connects out to Kazaa.com on port 1214. When I checked the IP, I found it to be that of a high-level manager! I sent him a nice note pointing out that he really shouldn't be running that on the corporate network, and it wasn't going to work anyway, since the firewall blocks it.
The attempts just disappeared a few days later. He never even acknowledged my note.
*chuckle*
Milalwi
None of the money that you pay for a CD goes directly to the musicians. (Unless, of course, you listen to indie bands, like sensible people.)
Indie bands, or any other bands that write their own music such as Metallica. Out of every CD you buy, 75 cents goes to mechanical royalties for the underlying musical work; songwriters typically split them about evenly with their publishers. That's $38,000 directly into the pockets of the songwriters from a CD that sells a hundred thousand units; not a bad deal, especially without all the "advance" bullsh**.
Will I retire or break 10K?
dunno what they're sharing, we can't block them...
h _f ilesharing_verdict_dc_1.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011130/wr/tec
"Hell, they smoke pot in that country so you might as well expect a sensible outcome from this..."
That so far is one of the wisest comments I've read here for a while.
If I download a music file and Carnivore grabs a copy is it violating the DMCA?
I'm tired of connecting to my ISP and getting KAZAA probed continously for days afterwards by idiots who don't understand that the dynamic IP address has been reassigned.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Yup, unfortunately. It depends on where the jurisdiction of the law is, but it requires some court (usually the Supreme Court) to overturn it before its actually invalid.
According to the United States Constitution, section 6.2, "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme law of the land." Unconstitutional statutes are not "laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof." Furthermore, "the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Thus, as a matter of law, any judge (not just the Supremes) must reject any unconstitutional statute or regulation.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Morpheus flat out refuses to run if I've got softice going. The code is conventional anti-ice, but should one of the checks fail it gets even more difficult to open until I reboot. Somehow a program tampering with my memory makes me nervous.
IRC networks are something that, I assure, won't be shut down any time soon at all. looking for music? pr0n? TV episodes? turn to the warez networks, like EFNet (irc.prison.net, irc.arcti.ca to name a few) and DALnet (astro.ga.us.dal.net, sniper.tx.us.dal.net). Works well.
:-D
Good alternative
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
If kazaa is gonna go down why not make it opensource and let other people run the servers?
rou're rery r33t!
That should be "you ah bery r33t". Don't try to fake the accent if you don't know how to, buddy.
Actions like these might have worked on a centralized network like Napster's... But not on the dynamically de-centralized Kazaa/Morpheus network. C'mon RIAA, get real. For one thing Kazaa doesn't host the files, they just provide a transfer protocol, also is it just me or do our (USA) copyright laws allow duplication of copyrighted material as long as it's only for PERSONAL USAGE!!! That's right... As long as you aren't selling copies for profit COPY AWAY!!! RIAA go piss up a rope, you're wasting your time.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011130/wr/tech_f ilesharing_verdict_dc_1.html
Lets all go down to the hahhrbah and throw our CD's into the wahhtah.
...
Or maybe we should wait 'till they're all copy "protectected".
what if we made a lending library of CDs. You physically purchase cd's. You store them in a physical location. People get library cards. They come borrow the CDs. Just like the Government Libraries. Apply for Non-Profit status even.
What people do with the CD's isn't your concern, so long as they return them before the due date. It's slower than napster, and more expensive, but it would work. We could get a shitload of local chapters. We'd be allowed to backup our collection.
oh wait, I know why. some asshole at the RIAA would come after the maintainer/president/whatever of each library and check his personal machine for illegal copies of the library's CDs. Then they'd systematically go after each of the patrons. hmm...well shit.
we could always attack the RIAA physically. As in a war. If every time a transnational global comglomerate evil empire that owned everything did something really wrong they had to deal with a gang of thugs looting their office and torching the place they'd think twice before making their decisions. IT MUST be known that I DON'T think this attack on KAZAA warrants a violent reaction. so what would? how about if the SSSCA is passed. If the SSSCA comes back and GOD forbid, becomes law, we should all rally like if it was Rodney King all over again. We should attack the HQ of RIAA, MPAA, et. al. we should start looting CDs and burn them in the streets ( to show that it isn't the cds at stake, but our rights) we should burn the f-in buildings down to the ground. No people should be killed by us, but we should be prepared to get killed by police, cause you know that will happen. we should fight certain CEO's who sponsor anti-constitutional laws, even if it means physically kicking the crap out of them. We should be ready to take arms against a corporate run government. we should prepare our global counterparts. TransNational corps have more power than any state. Sony is bigger than America. Microsoft is too (we can watch this happen as we speak). So is EXXON..Hell EXXON is America, thanks dubya. AOL is bigger than the UK. France is only slightly more powerful than Cisco (some would argue against this..and would be right). What I am getting at is that corporations OWN the GOVS of ALL the WORLD. The PEOPLE - you, me, - must be ready for the day when we will have to fight AOL, RIAA, MPAA, SONY DISNEY, ETC to reclaim our governments. Due to their strengths being money, lawyers, power we are losing on their terms. We will have to fight on OUR TERMS according to OUR STRENGTHS. We have NUMBERS. We have able bodies. We will one day have less to lose by fighting than we will have to lose by not fighting, and those corps that think they are above ALL the LAWS of ALL the WORLD, they will be in for a shock.
Then again they could take away all our guns. all of our freedoms. lock away those who speak with words like the ones I have used. We won't be able to organize. we won't be able to rally. we will be SLAVES.
Which is all they really want anyway.
FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!
A thought experiment, I will show how with 1000 clients, friendly nodes (Fn), each searching the _whole_ Internet for another Fn, The first circut (one Fn finds another) is approxamitly 70 minutes. Axioms: 1) Their are a maximum of 255^4, ~(4.22)10^9, nodes (Mn) on the net. (i.e. XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX many nodes). We are using IPv4. 2) There are a total of 10000 friendly nodes (Fn), computers possessing the server software, in existence. 3) Every (Fn) has a listening port (Lp), say 6243. (Lp) only relays one type of message to the server, "Hello, if you're like me open up a TCP to my (Rp). Let's exchange adress books". NOTE: has a life cycle of, insert arbatrary number here, seconds if not replied to. 4)Each (Fn) retains an adress book of adresses to other known (Fn)s with a time stamp that says how long it has been since this adress entry was active relative to me. Each entry in this adress book is valid untill it has been over 120hrs of operation since last contact. This insures that the Friendly nodes will not cluster and become asocial to out-side (Fn)s they will always be on the look out for a new friend. 5) Only 10% of the servers are running at any moment. 6) all nodes begin with an empty adress book -- Experiment begins -- 1000 Fns initialize for the first time at the same instant. When a (Fn) is activated it "searches" for other (Fn)s by randomly picking an IP adress and sending a UDP, ping, to (Lp) with a message of the only type (Lp) understands. When a (Fn) randomly picks a node that happens to be friendly that friendly node will reply just as the message told it to: it connects to Since there are a maximum of ~(4.22)10^9 nodes on the net, and 1000 of those nodes, at any moment, are friendly. Every (Fn) has a one in [ (4.22)10^9(Mn) / 1000(Fn) ], or [1/(4.22)10^6], chance of randomly picking an active friendly node. If every active (Fn) attempted one connection per second, or (1 minute / 60 attempts), the total amount of time to create the *first* circut in this network is ( [1/(4.22)10^6] * (1 minute/ 60 attempts) * (1 / 1000 Fn) ) = 70 minutes. Once a F. node finds another they exchanges all the information they have, (i.e. they say to eachother "here is a list of nodes that have been active durring the past 120 hrs of opperation", [when Fns are inactive they don't count the time]. Every Fn continues to search until it has setup comminucation, is actively connected, with an arbetrary, 400, number of other (Fn)s. When the maximum number of sought connections is reached each node halts it's search and only waits/ listens for nodes wanting to enter a social network. In the case that a Fn at seek capacity is contacted it replys to the random port sent in the hello message in a typical way except they hold connection only long enough to exchange information, or they stay connected, either works. On a side note: the listening port could be 80 or another commonly used port so that people who paranoingly (spelling?) monitor their firewall logs and freak out when they get random/ wierd, pings, wouldn't freak out. --Matt
I'd open the source to the existing software, allow support for 'napigator' style server selections; then counter-sue the RIAA for their letter that was sent out a month ago saying "we must shut down such compeditors as Morpheus and Kazaa" under an antitrust lawsuit; claiming they are using the US court system to shut down their compeditors and maintian their monopoly.
:P No-one's going to take away my decentralized movie network :)
.. or just link eDonkey off their website
...so we need a way to stop them from "automatically upgrading" our software so they can disable it. I'm clueless--is there something perhaps in the registry (win) that I can change??
Yeah - the RIAA should be eternally grateful. They'd never have found Kazaa without you!
First of all, we want to be able to hear the music in the first place.
So what choices does that give you?
as usual, the majik#8 holds the answer you seek:
8. Walk into your local Future Shop (or Best Buy whatever) and find a cd you'd like to try. Swipe the cd's barcode under a schweet galaxy gizmo located every 10 feet, slap on the headphones, and listen to the cd. In it's entirety. In CD quality.
Once in a blue moon a product I've never heard about jumps into existance and really shocks me. This is one of them. I was truely impressed with this device. This is the first creative step I've seen the industry take in today's "mp3 world".
Here's a Yahoo article I found about it.
It looks like they are trying to crack down on all of the illegal media / software distribution by private users... I bet there has been some significant money paid to make this happen. This is like taking away the Internet from us. KaZaA is just a communication software, and enables for exchange of information, only faster and more convenient than the raw Internet itself. If kazaa or morpheus goes down I'm gonna have to switch to something more secure and private like CryptoHeaven http://www.CryptoHeaven.com . With their security and encryption, I bet no one will track what exactly I'm sending anyway.
This is an alternative, and rather much more private solution than KaZaa. However with a slightly different purpose. The difference is that it allows for creation of PRIVATE communities to exchange data, not OPEN communities. Good choice neverless.
link