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

Popularity

[spectral]

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.

openFT an alternative?

[fault0]

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).

It's no big deal ...

[uebernewby]

... really.

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 ... you can finish the rest.

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.

Re:eyepatch department?

[Greg W.]

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?

1. Turn on the local alternative radio station and wait for them to play Tori. Hah! The last time I heard anything I'd describe as "alternative" on the radio was about 5 years ago. There aren't any "alternative" format stations in Cleveland now. There's one station that plays Limp Bizkit rap/metal, but nothing that plays "adult alternative" like Tori or REM. Nothing.
2. Turn on MTV and wait for them to play Tori. A-HAHAHA! See above. And below.
3. Turn on M2. What M2? Where is it on my cable channel list? Oh yeah, it's not there. If MTV wanted me to hear music, they'd play some fucking music instead of "reality shows". They wouldn't have moved all the music to a different channel that nobody actually gets. They'd just play music on MTV, and then put all the crap TV on the other station. But that's not what they want to do -- they don't want to play music any more. They want to show crap, because they think crap generates more money for them. Maybe it does -- but it's sure as hell not my money that they're pulling in.
4. Find samples on CDNOW or some other online vendor. This is sometimes feasible, but your chances of getting a sample of decent length (e.g., a whole song) are pretty low. The samples also tend to be low quality recordings. But the worst problem here is that they tend to be shackled in one or more ways. They may require you to submit an email address so they can spam you. Or they may require you to turn on Javascript and cookies. Or they may disallow access from non-Microsoft web browsers. Or they may release samples only in Microsoft/Real media formats (Real Audio, WMA, etc.). So you can't play them on Linux, even if you can download them in the first place, which is problematic.
5. You could buy a CD, listen to it a few times, and then return it to the store. Most stores don't let you do this. And even if you did, you're costing the store money for your own convenience. It's basically dishonest, and real people will be hurt by your actions. That makes it wrong.
6. You could find a copy of the song on an independent promotional site (what you're calling "pirate") and download it and listen to it. The problem here is that you might not find the song, and you might not be able to get it quickly (independent music promoters tend to have low-bandwidth upstream Internet links, like cable modems) or reliably (cable modems, dial-up). The ripping or the encoding (or both) might be flawed, or low-quality.
7. You could find a friend in meatspace who has the CD, and ask him or her to let you borrow it, or to make a copy for you. This has the obvious drawback that it only works if you happen to know someone who has the CD.

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).