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?

[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?

[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.

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.