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.

Comments

Until we get universal television stations...

[bonoboy]

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??

eyepatch department?

[Have Blue]

Sorry, chrisd, it is piracy unless you own the originals.

Re:eyepatch department?

[Accelerated Joe]

Sorry, chrisd, it is piracy unless you own the originals.

In this one specific area, I definitely agree with Richard Stallman. Piracy is a marketing word, with many connotations. I wish the community would use terms more like "unauthorized copying" or "illegal copies". Even plagiarism sounds better than piracy, semantically. The english language can in its current form duplicate many of the worst features of doublespeak.

Re:eyepatch department?

[WildBeast]

Find them a website which allows them to purchase music and download them instantly online in MP3 or WMA format and I'm sure many will stop the piracy.

Unfortunately, you won't be able to, the RIAA doesn't want to give us that much convenience.

Re:eyepatch department?

[Rogerborg]

• If you're going to pirate something, at least admit to yourself that you're ripping off someone

And there's the problem. To you, it's utterly clear that this is "ripping off", by which I assume you mean theft, that I am depriving someone of something which they have or to which you think they are absolutely entitled. You believe that I should see it this way, and that I am merely fooling myself, or pretending to fool myself otherwise.

The problem is, you're wrong on all counts. You're wrong that I'm fooling myself, and you're wrong that it's theft. I'll just assert that latter one, because that's all you did. It's clearly obvious to me that if the copyright owner (a music company, not an artist) failed to persuade me to pay the amount that they demand for access to the work on their terms, then they've already lost the sale, and so there's nothing left for me to deprive them of.

So you can sit there wagging your finger sternly and saying "This is right, this is wrong, that's the way it's always been, that's the way it always will be" while a new generation of music listeners sniggers quietly behind their hands - or laughs out loud at you - and gets on with doing what people have really always done, which is to redefine both morality and legality by the weight of their actions and opinions.

Re:eyepatch department?

[blibbleblobble]

Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as "piracy." In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnaping and murdering the people on them.

If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word "piracy" to describe it...

Quoted from

Re:eyepatch department?

[elflord]

And there's the problem. To you, it's utterly clear that this is "ripping off", by which I assume you mean theft, that I am depriving someone of something which they have or to which you think they are absolutely entitled. You believe that I should see it this way, and that I am merely fooling myself, or pretending to fool myself otherwise.

The real issue here is, how should authors of creative works be compensated ? The advocates of Napster appear to believe that they are entitled to free entertainment, and that no-one is morally obliged to compensate authors whose works they benefit from. Authors, they believe, should work without compensation. However, most of these leeches would fiercely object if their employer decided that they shouldn't be compensated for their labor.

The problem is, you're wrong on all counts. You're wrong that I'm fooling myself, and you're wrong that it's theft. I'll just assert that latter one, because that's all you did.

No he didn't. You asserted it on his behalf.

while a new generation of music listeners sniggers quietly behind their hands - or laughs out loud at you - and gets on with doing what people have really always done, which is to redefine both morality and legality by the weight of their actions and opinions.

No, they are defining "morality" by retroactively inventing half-assed rationalisations for immoral actions, and they're not the first people to do it.

Time to move on...

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Not decentralized?

[DarkZero]

It's mostly decentralized (I believe there are some moderately large servers hosted by the program's creators that handle a lot of traffic), but they're identifiable. As long as there's someone for the RIAA to tell, "Stop making new versions of this program, and try to get rid of what's already there or you'll go to jail/be fined into poverty!", these services can be stopped. What we really need is for someone to make a P2P program anonymously and then get it to download.com or something without EVER letting their name be known. When that happens (coupled with a decentralized network, of course), we'll have a truly immortal form of P2P.

Cisco is too big for the bully

[CaptainCarrot]

From chrisd: I bet anyday that the RIAA will sue cisco for making routers that could be used to infringe.

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...

Re:Cisco is too big for the bully

[NearlyHeadless]

From chrisd: I bet anyday that the RIAA will sue cisco for making routers that could be used to infringe.

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...

What crap! The law makes the distinction all the time between things whose main use is illegal and things that incidentally can be used for breaking the law. Laws against selling burglary tools have not been used to prosecute Ace Hardware.

All the cases Slashdot has covered--DeCSS, Napster, Sklyarov, KazaA, the one in Korea--are programs designed primarily to enable mass copyright infringement, even though they also have non-infringing uses. Get over this straw man argument that next they'll be coming after Cisco and FTP. It's nonsense.

Good riddance to spyware

[Sarcasmooo!]

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.

2 am, it's time for a rambly ranting.

[StormySky]

IRC is very problematic, though. First off, there are many different IRC networks, which adds to hassle for the casual user in knowing which to connect to (though, it is nice to spice things up a bit for those trying to destroy it...) and a requirement to create the same kind of Napster (--) OpenNapster proxies that came about shortly before its demise. Next, we again have very large centralized servers. I was going to toss up a DAL server on a T1 about a year ago, and, after reading the peering process, canned the idea. Further, IRC is a horribly inefficient protocol, and we've not even gotten into exploit issues, netsplits, and all the other joys we know and love. :) File *transfer* works just fine in DCC, but for the functionality of stuff like Morpheus, it wouldn't make sense just to tack it on.

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...

am I the only person?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Good!

[AndroidCat]

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.