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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 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."
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.
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).
Explain to me what the difference is. You can use search engines to find copyrighted work to download from FTP's and websites. The only difference I see is that P2P programs are designed to funnel those people who want to share media and information on the internet into one place. Maybe you're just trolling, because it's rediculous to suggest that any of these programs were designed for copyright infringement. None of them come with programs for cracking copy-protections, or links to warez and cracking sites. Many could have that information automatically pop-up on a browser in the program, and they don't. What's nonsense is the way that programs like these, that have very substantial, legit uses, are being shutdown as an excuse for fighting 'pirates'. The end result is just to give the industry control of online sharing of media. Think about it; since you apparently haven't done enough of that. Any P2P program that pops up is going to immediately have users who share the mainstream popular media that the industry claims to be protecting. There are 500,000 people who have the latest Britney Spears album on mp3. No one who ever used Napster or Kazaa needed it to find music and video owned by the RIAA/MPAA. What those popular programs provided, was so much goddamn quantity that you could spend the whole day listening to garage bands and obscure music you heard in a commercial when you were 5 years old. Without these programs, artists who try to use the internet to spread their work become victims of an 'anti-piracy' war, and it's not a coincidence. Because now, P2P programs will stay small and obscure (grow and get sued), and we return to the pre-internet status-quo where you either do business with the RIAA or you don't do business.
> 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
... 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/
Yes - Fasttrack (Kazaa/Morpheus) has centralized servers which require authentication, which means it's easy to shut down, like Napster was. Gnutella (Bearshare, Limewire) has no such centralization/authentication, which makes it near impossible to shut down. It's protocol is published, so anyone can write an open source or commerical application to access Gnutella. Gnutella server/clients (servents) are popular - Bearshare and Limewire are the 10th and 11th most popular downloads on Download.com, and both have been on the top 50 list for longer than Kazaa or Morpheus. Gnutella developers have been working together and seperately to solve problems such as automatically getting high-speed hosts into the center of the network, preventing too much freeloading, allowing multi-sourced downloading and so forth. They have already had success in all of these areas. The protocol is published, and there are many excellent Gnutella server/clients that are open sourced (Limewire, Gnucleus, gnut etc.)
I find publishing networks like Freenet and Mojo Nation interesting as well. They are not as functional as Gnutella or FastTrack networks currently, but they are very interesting. Freenet gets a lot of press, but in my opinion Mojo Nation is much more functional currently, and has had more development put into it. If you are interested in P2P networks, you should download Mojo Nation to see how much crazy stuff they have already put into it. Mojo Nation is the most functional publishing network I've seen thus far, and it's quite interesting. It's more for techies interested in the possibilities of P2P however, for functionality, stick with Gnutella.
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.
What you are effectivly arging for would be a consumer/retailer "globalisation". Which would also do away with the concept of "grey imports", things such as DVD region coding and other ways in which large multinationals attempt to divide up the market (when it suits them.)
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!
There appear to be two issues here. The first is an apparent requirement for the first showing to be in North America in many cases (more often the US than Canada dispite a lot of programme production taking place in Canada.) The other is that series are shown in an utterly strange sequence in North America. Such that if every series started showing at the same time worldwide it would be people from the US and Canada who would be clammering to download episodes they wouldn't get to see for a while on TV. Or youd have the rest of the world being showr series North American style which viewers in the rest of the world simply will not accept.
Effectivly we have a case of trying to make new technology emulate the limitations of the old way of doing things. Because the industry does not want to reconsider their business models.
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.
OK, I'll take the bait.
People don't want easy accessible music; they want free music.
Of course we do. Who wouldn't want free stuff?
But there's more to it than that. A lot more.
First of all, we want to be able to hear the music in the first place. Have you tried listening to commercial radio lately? For how long? The simple fact is that if we want to hear something that's been mentioned by a friend (either in "real life" or online), we can't get it from the radio. Radio doesn't play anything that anyone would ever recommend to anyone else. It's simply a marketing arm of the record companies trying to increase sales of the Pop-Star-of-The-Month.
Let's say I tell you how much I loved Tori Amos's third album Boys For Pele. Are you going to rush to the store and buy it based on that recommendation? Probably not. You'll at least want to hear it for yourself first.
So what choices does that give you?
Which of these have the greatest likelihood of letting you hear the music? Probably the last two. Which have the greatest likelihood of leading to a monetary transaction between you and the artist? Well, none of them, so let me rephrase. Which of them have the greatest chance of getting you to send money to the record company who, in theory, passes money on to the artist? Probably #5: if you buy a CD from the store, all you have to do to "make a purchase" is keep it instead of returning it. But #6 is also good: if you like that Ogg file you downloaded, you might decide to buy a CD.
You sure as hell aren't going to be enriching the artist or the record company if you follow any of the first 3 models. And #4 is potluck, and your odds have gotten worse over time. #7 will depend on whether you got a cassette copy from your friend, or a burned CD, or whether you just borrowed his CD with the intention of returning it. If you got a burned CD copy, you may just keep that instead of buying your own.
So by my reckoning, downloading "pirate" music is at least the second-best money-making promotional model there is (or possibly the best) for the type of music that isn't played on commercial radio and MTV.
And that's at least 99% of all the music in the world.
If you're going to pirate something, at least admit to yourself that you're ripping off someone, not a victimized consumer standing up his rights.
If you're going to troll slashdot users, at least admit to yourself that you're a tool of the record companies and their hired public relations psychologists. And that you're helping them rip off 99% of the musicians in the world by systematically destroying all but the 1% who achieve "Star" status and therefore simply die poor instead of flat broke.
If you'd rather help artists, then donate money directly to them, or buy CDs straight from the artists instead of through the record companies (for the artists who are able to do that).
The open protocol equivalent of the FastTrack network is Gnutella. From all appearences the FastTrack network uses a slightly modified gnutella protocol. It is tricky to pin down exactly what improves the FastTrack experience but I would say it is the two-tiered network where only the supernodes have the responsibility of routing most packet traffic.
Ironically this modification of the gnutella protocol was introduced about a year ago by Clip2 when they introduced their Reflector. FastTrack made the observation that this sort of enhancement should be an organizing principle for the entire network rather than a marginal enhancement. It helps to minimize network traffic while extending network visibility horizon by orders of magnitude (by the ratio of nodes : supernodes).
Even as these events transpire the various gnutella clients are in the process of implementing the two layer structure in a very public presentation and review of the needed protocol modifications. Simultaneously we are in the process of adding full file hash values in order to improve the quality of files that can be found and downloaded over gnutella. When hash information has been successfully deployed on the gnutella network we will also be able to implement swarm downloads.
It is a slower process to have a public protocol evolve to respond to empirical results for a variety of clients. But in the end it might be a more robust method.
...support GNUtella instead. Noone can shut down that network, short of shutting down millions of users.