KaZaa Suspends Downloads

chill writes: "'Download Temporarily Suspended -- Download of the KaZaA Media Desktop software is temporarily and voluntarily suspended pending Dutch court decision on January 31. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please check back at www.kazaa.com for more information.' --- Both the Linux and Windows client downloads are offline. I wonder what the judge thinks this will do to the tens, if not hundreds of thousands who already have the software?"

Comments

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[negativekarmanow tm]

Repost? Now that would be -1 : redundant, wouldn't it? I'd hate to loose my newly acquired karma again.

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[jgerman]

Ummm if you are going to present finding based on statistics you need to post your methods and data. I could easily post a similar post that proves the opposite of your conclusions with no difficulty because you back nothing up. I'm not saying that you are right or wrong, but I'd like to see the data that you drew your conclusions from. But to address some of your points:

I have written both normal and troll posts, 1st posts, etc., both logged in and anonymously, and I have found these rather shocking results:

Statistics based only on your posts are definitely not enough. For starters, maybe you experienced more modding down because you don't post anything interesting, even when you mean to. Your assumption that there are concrete objective categories for modding is without merit. The distinction between troll and normal posts is a judgment call, if it were not the moderation system would not be needed.

even when it's not a particularly interesting or clever post [slashdot.org]. There are a LOT more +5 posts than +3 or +4.

Again, this is a judgement call, apparently it was interesting to enough people to get it modded up.

Digging deep into the history of slashdot, I found this poll [slashdot.org], which clearly indicates the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today. 'nuff said.

I didn't even bother to check the results of this poll, anyone who points to a web poll as statistical evidence should have all of his conclusions immediately called into question, even if they appear to be solid, which your do not. Trying to prove anything by an easily stuffable poll is ridiculous. But for arguments sake let's say that each vote represents the opinion of one and only one person. Still the poll's accuracy is highly questionable. In fact if I were to predict the outcome of such a poll ahead of time I would have guessed that the greatest number would vote against the moderation system. Why? Because those that post anonymously or having nothing to say would have more reason to vote (negatively) since they are the ones constantly being modded down.

Of course as off topic as your post and my resultant response (damn I'll take two karma hits in one day) were I do commend you for trying.

As one final thought let me leave you with this, I disagree with the action of modding (not the fact that it exists) for the most part. But you need to remember that most likely the majority of the readers of slashdot are the young and the internet, that's a natural result of popularity and a sure reason to expect the lowest common denominator.

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone who gets to moderate quite freqently lately (hence, posting anonymously now).

> The last few months I have been doing some research into the trolling phenomenon

It would have been good to provide some specifics (how many posts, of which type, etc.)

> More moderator points are being used to mod posts down than up.

That's because it's a lot easier and quicker to spot trolls, firsts posts, links to goatse and assorted other crap, so more of them will get moderated. No big surprise there. Time may be a factor (see below)

>Furthermore, when modding a post up, every moderator seems to follow previous moderators in their choices

That's an interesting one, probably a case of (unconscious?) karma whoring on the part of moderators. This may be an area where tweaking with the point system may prevent this herd mentality, so I hope Taco or whomever is reading this thread.

> Logged in people are modded down faster than anonymous cowards.

I don't think there's any conspiracy against ACs or individual posters. This probably happens because moderators often may browse at 1 instead of -1, instructions to the contrary notwithstanding. That means you won't see the ACs at all; no conspiracy theory necessary to explain this, just that the moderator can't or won't browse at 0 or -1.

For some reason my turn to moderate has come up an unusually large number of times in the past two months or so. I tend to do moderation at work but not during work hours (first thing in the morning, or in the late afternoon). If I happen to be having a busy day at work (which is most of the time) I may decide to browse at a higher level to be done more quickly, on the theory that it's better to do some moderation than none at all.

For the same reason (lack of time, the mod points about to expire, etc.) it takes a lot less time to moderate down a first post, troll, etc. than to wade through 300+ messages looking for some good ones. So if you're busy (or tired of reading junk) it's the most expedient thing to do.

>Once you have a karma of -4 or -5, your posts have a score of -1 by default. When this is the case, no-one bothers to mod you down anymore

See above.

>A lot of the modded down posts are actually quite clever

Meta-moderation is supposed to help on this, but the feedback loop probably takes too long and furthermore you are right that overall there tend to be clear biases in the Slashdot population.

That's not an argument for not having a moderation system, though.

Rather, I think that the moderation system should perhaps distinguish moderations done to opposing or unpopular viewpoints (the odd pro-MS or anti-Linux post that's not a flamebait), and up the rewards for the moderators who do them.

So, of the two things I agree with you, they could be translated into proposals such as:

• Re: the herd mentality. If a post receives multiple "up" moderations and later gets meta-moderated favorably, the bonus karma is to be divided amongst the moderators in question. What seems to be happening now is that they all get 1 point, and what I propose is that they all get 1 / N points.
  
• Encourage diversity of viewpoints by adding another category: "good contrarian argument", or some such. If favorably meta-moderated, give an extra karma bonus to the moderator(s) in question.
  

One interesting (encouragning?) thing is that your message got modded up. Good thing, IMHO.

How about this

[krow]

Here is an idea. I am not sure if you have a valid point or not but you are definetly off topic. If you have something that is important, go create a discussion topic so you have a place to talk about it?
That way you won't have to worry about the offtopic moderations to your post.

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[ArnoldYabenson]

While online polls in general are not to be trusted, and even a poll that prevents stuffing by reuiring login reflects a self-selecting sample, the fact that /. had such a poll is a nod toward democracy that lacks any follow-through. If the results were anti-moderation, obviously some further investigation and discussion is called for.

Whenever a new version of Slashcode is made available, there are lots of suggestions for ways to improve moderation options, but I don't recall ever seeing any substantive discussion of the topic with participation of the real powers behind /.

In short, the poll does not have to be accurate to be significant. What it signifies is subject to interpretation.

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to /.'s vision of "Freedom of Speach". The freedom is controlled by the elite few that have the only *real* power. Now doesn't that sound familier?

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I mostly don't get involved in these debates. But this is just FUCKED UP. You will never make me believe that all those -1 Off-topic mods where done by earnest moderators.

Prove: normally there would be more variety (off-topic, troll, redundant, what not).

I'm convinced that someone did abuse their power to mod this entire thread down. And I don't like it. See, I think the moderating system works pretty well as it is (it's not perfect, but what is). HOWEVER, if someone that has the power to do so silences an entire thread, that's just pathetic.

In fact, I would ask anyone that does not agree with this behaviour to report this as abuse to Rob Malda (aka CmdrTaco). In other words: email the guy. Don't forget to add a link to the original thread: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26315&cid=2850 660

I can't find where now, but somewhere he asks us to report abuse.

[dead_puppy]

Oracle Breakable? perhaps...
Slashcode Breakable? that's a given.

My complaint to CmdrTaco and his response.

[corky6921]

I complained about the very same thing to CmdrTaco in an email a while ago. He responded on 8/30/01. Below is the text of my email as well as his reply.

My email:
I
> enjoy the site because of the moderation system, where users can post
> comments and only the most informative or best comments can get read.
> In other words, I don't have to waste my time sorting through 75-100
> awful comments to find the few true gems.
>
> I've noticed recently (in fact, since the upgrade) that the moderation
> system seems to have gone downhill. First, a lot of good insightful
> comments don't get moderated, and the few comments that do get
> moderated seem to have been modded down as "offtopic" or something
> similar. I know you say in your moderation guidelines to try to mod up
> instead of down, so I don't think the moderation system itself is at
> fault. Rather, it seems that there are very few moderators actually
> perusing the stories!
>
> For instance, there was an article today about AMD. With 150 comments
> posted, there were NONE moderated above 2. With 175 posted, there was
> ONE moderated to a 3. Something is seriously wrong here. If the
> comments aren't being moderated, this is no better than the imbecile
> flamewars on fc or ZDNet.

CmdrTaco's reply:
I think part of it is that I'm out of town and not moderating much ;)
-----
My comments:
I only find something wrong with this if the editors of Slashdot aren't doing their job. I believe that part of the job of owning a community site is listening to that community. It's very similar to running a company -- if you don't listen to your target market, they will leave for a company that does.

However, this thread, and moreover the fact that this entire thread has been moderated to -1, says that someone at Slashdot is not listening. That endangers the very idea of being the self-appointed king of a community -- that you listen to your constituents. At this point, Slashdot has become ridiculed for everything from its UI to CmdrTaco's grammar to Jon Katz to the asinine comments posted without moderation possibilities to submitted articles. (Witness the war today about CmdrTaco's comment regarding the cheating system used at a university.)

The fact is that Slashdot needs to change. Personally, I have several ideas about how it can change for the better, ranging from more moderation points in the system to the abolishment of the "Offtopic" moderation. (Can you imagine if you were at a dinner party and the conversation drifted to something besides the "assigned" topic and you complained about it? This is the same type of thing.)

On a slightly unrelated note, I believe the 50-karma point cap should be abolished because it doesn't encourage people to post good comments after hitting 50 karma. Furthermore, I believe karma should be milked for all it is worth, and that people should be praised for high karma -- even to the point of putting a "Top Karma Whores" box on the front page listing the 5-10 people in the system with the biggest karma (ala FuckedCompany's scoring system.) Why not? Positive karma means you have posted what is viewed as a good comment. Why not make it a contest? People love competition.

The way to solve all of this, of course, is to simply make a Slashdot discussion forum, and have user input not only discussed but actively implemented. The whole point of open source is that anyone can contribute. It's sad to see that one of the biggest open-source-proponent websites can't encourage the same level of participation.

Re:My complaint to CmdrTaco and his response.

[mother_superius]

yeah, like the editors will do that.
They've already bitchslapped everything down to -1.

Re:Larry Ellison

[pmc]

Larry Ellison is a braggart and a blowhard. However, his words do contain a kernal of truth, and must be interpreted with moderation to get the true message. When he says "unbreakable" he means "less breakable". When he says "100 times faster" he means slightly faster.

Unfortuately, when he says National-ID card, he means it.

Editor: I'll take a 3-point karma hit too

[cje]

Count me in.

I find this clandestine mass-robomoderation to be thoroughly distasteful. I'm not going to yell "censorship", as so many others have; after all, it is your site and you are free to do what you like. However, it is entirely hypocritical to claim that /. is an open, free and user-moderated forum out of one side of your mouth, while instantly nuking entire threads to get rid of discussions that you (apparently) don't like. The parent post may be off-topic, but the last time I checked, user moderators have an "Offtopic" option and could have marked it as such if they desired. (Many, in fact, did so; many did not.)

If you're going to be doing this type of thing, the least you could do is have the cajones to come clean about it. Explain that editors may, on occasion, wipe out threads that they find undesirable; explain that this nullifies the expressed wishes of the existing moderators, and explain that people should attempt to preserve their karma by avoiding discussions that could potentially invoke the ire of a /. editor. This is beginning to happen with some regularity; your credibility would be helped if you would at least come clean. None of this namby-pampy fiddly-fuck "um, we don't do that sort of thing."

I've been reading /. for a long time; I liked it, and in general I still do like it. But IMHO the editors would do well to let the moderators do their jobs. Moderating and meta-moderating is not exactly the easiest or most enjoyable task in the world, you know. It takes time and effort to find insightful comments to moderate up. It takes time and effort to pour through people's moderations and judge them on their merits. And frankly, it does piss me off a little that these efforts are being overshadowed by skriptz that will handily dispose of all "subversive" comments in a manner that is not subject to metamoderation.

There's my $0.02. I could check the "No Score +1 Bonus", but I won't. I think three karma points is worth it, when there is a point to be made. I hope I've made one.

Re:Editor: I'll take a 3-point karma hit too

[pmc]

Ah - more karma to burn. Do I care? Not really.

Anyway, much to my surprise, the moderation is not robomoderation. Some human being is, almost unbelievably, doing these by hand. What a sad person - hi there Mr Sad! (waves).

The question that we should be asking is "Who is Mr Sad?".

For the first time in my life I understand the trolls.

Re:Editor: I'll take a 3-point karma hit too

[Anonymous Coward]

Some human being is, almost unbelievably, doing these by hand. What a sad person - hi there Mr Sad! (waves).

Mr. Sad's name is Jamie McCarthy, and he calls modslapping threads "grunt work" in this post:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24252&cid=2641 410

For the first time in my life I understand the trolls.

Welcome to our frustrated, pissed off, disenfranchised little world. We can teach you more about Slashcode and how the system really works than anyone else; but at a price. Prepare to be bitchslapped, modslapped, IP banned, $rtbl'd, and lose all your moderation priveleges. We offer knowledge at a cost.

Blue or red?

Re:Larry Ellison

[nusuth]

Ofcourse a database can only be "less breakable" not unbreakable and I'm willing to excuse the term. But 3 buffer overflows, discovered in a short amount of time does not sound very "less breakable" to me either. Neither "100 times faster" sounds like 1.5-3 times faster according to Oracle's own adds (IIRC they were comparing with an IBM database.) I don't think we have to be so forgiving about his BS. It is not much different than MS, really, each new version of windows DO add something, and IS faster on some tasks when they claim releases are "unlocking the full potential of PC." It is a matter of degree, but yours seem to be a bit too forgiving.

Oh, that, and the parent thread. Reading it may illimunate what may possibly happen if government can track all your actions and act without any wisdom and respect for different ideas.

Brutal

[xX_sticky_Xx]

I've been reading /. for well over a year now and have never seen such a petty, small-minded display of chicanery on the part of the editors like this. This thread is a disgrace to a site that claims to be an open and user moderated forum. I know I'm burning a karma point by posting here but, like others here, I don't care since I feel the need to express my (logged in) opinion.

Shame on the /. editors for their juvenille behavior.

Oracle's software

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe that Oracle's software is necessarily immune to bugs. The advertising does make it sound like that but it no software can ever be completely error free. The very fact that a security problems with oracle make news indicates that it must be pretty good. Also think about the sheer number of people using Oracle's products. The more people use a product the more likely it is for problems to be found. Oracle perhaps is not mistaken in saying that their database is reliable. The mistake is of course saying that the system is completely secure. As stated many times before there is no such thing as absolute security.

even funnier

[Richthofen80]

is that i'm sure the kazaa client is available for download from Morpheus, or one of the hundreds of other file sharing programs. Effectively, once one copy exists, software gains a sort of immortality... which the courts can't effectively dismantle.

Re:even funnier

[zatz]

kazaa and morpheus are the same network, so if you can download something from morpheus, you dont exactly need the kazaa client :)

the downloadable installer actually gets most of the kazaa program from the fasttrack network, oddly enough....

Re:even funnier

[dozing]

Or you can just open up your Kazaa client and download Kazaa and install it on your... Oh wait... I suppose if I don't have Kazaa I can't open it... So I open Morpheus and download Kazaa and install it... Oh, I suppose if I already have Morpheus there's no real purpose in installing Kazaa since the use the same network... What was I saying?

Re:even funnier

[billcopc]

This place needs a new mod flag : "+1, Pathetic". For those who've just tuned in, Morpheus _IS_ Kazaa.. or to be more precise, they are both clients for the FastTrack P2P network.

Re:even funnier

[Anonymous Coward]

but it will be better if we had the source...

Buggy Linux client

[Anonymous Coward]

I always found the Linux client, which uses the FastTrack proprietary-but-cross-platform (http://www.fasttrack.nu/) P2P stack, to be buggy to the extent of being unusable. Could've been a libc mismatch with my Debian-unstable system, but it wouldn't accept user input after starting up and logging in.

Re:Buggy Linux client

[Choose Wisely]

I've found this too, I've had both the daemon and the user interface crash on me regularly on a variety of systems. It's really disappointing, but then again, I spend most of my time Windows anyways. None of those annoying software crashes without a trace as to why, at least.

Re:Buggy Linux client

[Anonymous Coward]

go away please.....

Yay!!!

[ecliptik]

Ha!! All this time I just thought it was our shitty shitty school network admins here at my campus and their inability to properly configure routers and firewalls!!!

Re:Yay!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they finally figured out how to avoid the traffic. :)

What will they do?

[Hatechall]

WinMX
Audiogalaxy
Morpheous
Bearshare
LimeWire
Should I go on? Not to mention that only shutting off the server and only shutting off the front end application is like someone giving out cheat sheets to a test and the instructor later telling everyone not to use them.
But I'm sure that the Einstein-like geneouses in the RIAA/MPAA are on top of the situation. Don't worry folks.

Re:What will they do?

[I.T.R.A.R.K.]

Audiogalaxy now blocks all copyrighted materials. Try downloading anything written by a big-label band and you'll get an error message saying the download has been blocked.
A shame too. They were halfway decent.

Re:What will they do?

[PowerBook2k]

Of course, that's only if you look at the listings where the song title and the artist name are exactly correct.

Try looking a line or two down from the blocked listing.

Re:What will they do?

[zeno_2]

Ya, its always done that, and Ive always found another copy of the song, with maybe the track name added or something.. not really a big deal...

Not bloody much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he's either naive, or overwhelmed by the technology.

How does this solve anything?

[arcadia]

Does this really solve anything? There are almost 500 000 users online at any time on Kazaa/Morpheus and you can download the client from mirrors still and it won't go away. What is the point of suspending the download from their homepage?

Re:How does this solve anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the point of suspending the download from their homepage?

Because a judge took a look at the binary executable and found that the byte values and/or their disposition in the executable is offensive.

Re:How does this solve anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually works. just look at the post further down this side. If a software seems dead on the page people will look for alternatives.

-"Ohh, but isn't KaZaAa dead? I think i must use XYZ client instead."

Many casual people don't realize how cool and decentrialized these next-gen p2p tools are.

And lets not forget that the kazaa client won't get updated, so it will also loose users by being old.
So it really works if the kazaa looses the trial, maybe not 100% but it works.

//lean

I've got the windows installer...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm uploading the windows installer to a tripod website right now, gimme a few minutes and this story will be more or less worthless.

What a difference a day makes.

[Mike the Mac Geek]

Great. In one 24 hour period we have had stories on Universal's general screwing of it's customers, the network's reluctance to let us record shows in any shape or fashion, and now Kazaa shutting down pending litigation.

What a happy joyous world I live in. How in the FUCK did we get to this point?

Re:What a difference a day makes.

[anotherone]

KaZaa hasn't shut down, they've just taken the program download off of their website. I've got KaZaa open right now, it's working fine.

Re:What a difference a day makes.

[mlk]

You stole music, then distubeded it over a P2P network which the lovly, all knowing goverment could not control.

Re:What a difference a day makes.

[DavidTC]

Don't forget Borland backing down.

Re:What a difference a day makes.

[Rogerborg]

• In one 24 hour period we have had stories on Universal's general screwing of it's customers, the network's reluctance to let us record shows in any shape or fashion, and now Kazaa shutting down pending litigation. What a happy joyous world I live in. How in the FUCK did we get to this point

What point? That there's more content freely available right now than there's ever been in the history of humankind? It's way harsh on Dmitri and Jon Johansson, but as far as the rest of us are concerned, what's the biggie?

Don't get me wrong, I think it's loathesome that content distributors can tell us to our faces that we're all guilty (of whatever new offence they want to buy with "campaign contributions"), but in practical terms, they're fighting a losing battle, and I can show you precedent. The ex-Soviet Union.

Like most truism, this one is actually true: The more they tighten their grip, the more star systems, er, customers, will slip through their fingers.

When they tell us that we're all criminals whatever we do, when they make it harder to play by their rules than to get content via P2P or on a street corner, when they try to dictate demand by controlling supply, they'll create a black market that will supply the genuine demand of you and I and Joe Public. It happened in Russia, with far tighter controls at every level of society than even the RIAA and MPAA combined can buy in the USA. The War on Piracy will be about as successful as the War on Drugs, because they are both a War on The People.

I mean, really, this is bad luck for Kazaa, but Kazaa screwed up by trying to control supply using authorisation servers. They joined the losing side there and then. If Kazaa goes under, another service will pick up the pieces, and the amount of content available will just grow and grow. The losers will be anyone who refuses to supply the demand, the winners will be you, me, Joe, and the lawyers.

Re:What a difference a day makes.

[blibbleblobble]

Welcome to the dark ages of software, Mike. Our computers are fortresses, my security arrangements multiply daily, as do the attacks on them. We've long since stopped trusting the next town, or anyone we don't personally know. The raging tribes of lawyers, hostile programmers, hostile laws, and hostile programs are throwing themselves against our defences.

How long until the renaissance?

Re:What a difference a day makes.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't see the connection between systems like Kazaa and Napster and the recent copy protection of CDs I'm not sure what to tell you.

In fact, if all these services shut down you wouldn't have to worry about copy protected CDs anymore, and that's good, right? You can rip your own CDs, so why do you even need this service unless you are transferring illegal mp3s or software?

You've heard of the goose that laid the golden eggs, right? Well that goose was Napster and people butchered and abused the hell out of it. So, here's the fallout. Why are you surprised?

Re:What a difference a day makes.

[Anonymous Coward]

2010 sounds about right.

Use Morpheus

[Ender7A]

IT does everything kaZaa does.

Re:Use Morpheus

[Anonymous Coward]

Run on Linux ?

Re:Use Morpheus

[Choose Wisely]

Why would you want it to? Linux has shown itself time and time again to be sub-par for a wide variety of reasons.

Re:Use Morpheus

[Anonymous Coward]

You really are a twat, aren't you.

So...

[bonch]

To get Kazaa, I'll have to use WinMX or Morpheus to find it? No big deal.

What to do:

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually they will simply have to go after individual users if they want to stop illegal sharing. I know that if word got around on perhaps a college campus that students were being kicked out of the dorms that it would cause the casual pirates to think twice.

No doubt a similar fear campaign could be orchestrated in other demographics.

Re:What to do:

[VA Porware]

Eventually they will simply have to go after individual users if they want to stop illegal sharing. I know that if word got around on perhaps a college campus that students were being kicked out of the dorms that it would cause the casual pirates to think twice.

The fear of this happening is spreading. I recently had a few people come to me to ask about encrypting their hard drive contents. This will help for now, but I'm expecting the US to pass an equivalent law to the UK RIP Act, which requires people to turn over passwords if the government asks for them.

This country used to be about freedom for the people. What have we let happen?

Re:What to do:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if they go against individuals, it will be an outcry of people wanting the copyrights rules to be rewritten - also, it will go underground like the speakeasy of yesterdays. Kinda cool and hip where police don't really care to arrest anyone/ or everyone :-)

Re:What to do:

[Com2Kid]

Solution?

Biometrics.

"Oh, what password officer? I just put my eyeball upto the retina scanner, my thumb on my fingerprint scanner and belch into my microphone and then hum Beethoven's fifth backwards. Then I say the list of woman I have cheated on my wife with."

Even if they tied you down to a chair and made you look in the retina scanner, pressed your hand on the scanner, and made you drink alot of carbinated soda, you could hopefuly plead self incrimination for the voice recognition part of the authentication. :)

Re:What to do:

[Black Parrot]

> Eventually they will simply have to go after individual users if they want to stop illegal sharing. I know that if word got around on perhaps a college campus that students were being kicked out of the dorms that it would cause the casual pirates to think twice.

That strategy hasn't been notably effective as a way of stopping people from using illegal drugs.

Re:What to do:

[Anonymous Coward]

equality for people and preservation of some fundamental rights.. stealing music is not a fundamental right and investigating crimes has always been the american way SO expecting to be able to perform illegal acts such as stealing copyrighted material and then bitching about the subversion of our rights is not a well thought out argument. In fact, it would seem that by stealing music you are prompting lobbyists with money to work against what few freedoms we do have left. What is the root cause? Us AND them I say.. (note: im listening to mp3s as i write this so call me a hypocrite)....

Re:What to do:

[Silver222]

Offtopic, but ontopic concerning your post: How does a law prevent me from forgetting a password? Hell, I do it all the time now, and I'm not trying to :) How does a law like that work in practice exactly?

Re:What to do:

[Anonymous Coward]

no!
HA!

Re:What to do:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you encrypt your hard drive? You should burn all of your mp3's to cd's or DVD's. (Really, you should make 2 copies, so you can bury one in the ground somewhere so it doesn't get destroyed.) If the RIAA really wanted to get rid of mp3's, they just need to ask me. I could probably wipe out 90% of them in exsistance. Let's just hope they don't figure this out though.

Re:What to do:

[Anonymous DWord]

Or you could just cut off your thumbs and flush them down the toilet when you see the Gest^H^H^H^Hpolice coming. Poof! No password!

Re:What to do:

[a random streaker]

Biometrics would be bad.

A password you don't have to give up because you can't be forced to incriminate yourself.

Biometrics are not freedom of speech. You can't stop them from making you open up your stuff that way.

It's like refusing to take an breathalyzer when they suspect you of drunk driving. That is physical evidence. The police don't force you generally because that is a public relations goof, however, they have every right to force you if necessary.

Re:What to do:

[ImaLamer]

ummm... I thought that they could demand passwords in the USA already?

It's called a subpoena, and if that doesn't work it's called contempt of court.

Even if you did nothing wrong you are going to sit in jail until you prove it.

Re:What to do:

[kinko]

Or you could just cut off your thumbs and flush them down the toilet when you see the Gest^H^H^H^Hpolice coming. Poof! No password! But how do you cut off the second one after doing the first one? And how do you pick them up afterwards????

Re:What to do:

[snyperm]

I think there's a bit of a difference between hardocre drug users and people downloading mp3s off the internet casually. Plus drug users are prolly tooout of it to care. I'm certain a bulk of the p2pers are college kids or even younger. Threatening them with legislature would probably be more effective. Though truthfully I'd like to think this could be avoided in lieu of a reasonable and fair legal online distributor.

Re:What to do:

[magnified_plaid]

Which is why you should always use your little finger for bio-metrics

Re:What to do:

[frost22]

stealing music

You cannot steal music

SO expecting to be able to perform illegal acts such as stealing copyrighted material and ...

To steal copyrighted material you have to go somewhere and take it away from it owner. Nobody advocates that here.
Get your propaganda right. The only illegal act discussed here is copyright violation. Theft is not an issue.

And, as Richard Stallmann correctly notes, copyright violation means sharing with your neighbour, which is a deeply human and positive act.

So, please, get lost and die.

f.

Re:What to do:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring em' out china style and just shoot em'! That'll teach those dirty dirty college students hehe.....

It's the teeny bopper suburban boys that do the actual spending though. Maybe a campaign against them would be in order also.

Send out the robotic clown lawyers!

Re:What to do:

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking the same thing, except have a clause in the software that can somehow detect if you are being coerced into giving your password and refuse to decrypt.

Like if it were a voice-recognition based system, detect any wavering/fear/uncertainty in your voice and your key comes out wrong and won't decrypt!

Re:What to do:

[Alrescha]

"ummm... I thought that they could demand passwords in the USA already?

It's called a subpoena, and if that doesn't work it's called contempt of court."

How does the 5th amendment apply to this?

(The 5th amendment says that you can't be compelled to testify against yourself in a criminal proceeding)

A.

Re:What to do:

[Happy go Lucky]

It's called a subpoena, and if that doesn't work it's called contempt of court."
How does the 5th amendment apply to this?

It doesn't. The Fifth only applies to testimony. Your hard drive contents are non-testimonial evidence. It's just like any other subpoena requiring you to surrender your own documents as evidence.

Re:What to do:

[Anonymous Coward]

Most drug users aren't "hardcore" drug users. And most drug users don't spend more than a few hours a week "out of it". Fucking ignoramus.

Re:What to do:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bugger off, you smarmy fruit loop.

Nother thing

[ecliptik]

I'm looking at Kazaa's website at the moment and I'm not seeing anything about suspension of downloads, just a big download button and a quote from c|net. Am I missing something here?

Re:Nother thing

[Anonymous Coward]

try clicking that button

Bug or design?

[yerricde]

Could've been a libc mismatch with my Debian-unstable system, but [KaZaA for Linux] wouldn't accept user input after starting up and logging in.

That might be the whole point: if I remember correctly, you start a client daemon (with &), and then you use other apps to send commands to that daemon and interact with the network. (Normally, a GUI wrapper would handle that for you.)

Re:Bug or design?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your thinking of something else... KaZaa has a curses based ui. Try upgrading your ncurses library. I use 4.2 and it works fine.

Re:Bug or design?

[Linux Freak]

Well, I wouldn't exactly call it "working fine". I use it too, but it segfaults a lot at startup, doesn't redraw the screen properly many times (I have only ever used it with 'screen'; perhaps on a raw console it behaves better). Now this. If only they had opened up their code, a) we could fix the glarinb bugs, b) we could add cool features, and c) we could tell the courts to piss off.

Now, if kazaa is shut down completely, we will forever be stuck with this version. (Hopefully the "gift" project on sourceforge will mature soon.)

The legal system, etc.

[Alien54]

The Brad Waldell article Lawsuits in the Internet Age sums it up nicely; as he says:

''Never in human history has technology allowed the big to crush the small with so little effort, and never have the laws and infrastructure of the world been so set up to expedite this process. [...] In reality, the legal system is a nasty, ugly thing that unless you have a great deal of time, resources and money, you're up the creek.''

He also explores the various myths of how the system works. For example -

Myth #1: What matters is who is right. Sorry, wrong -- it matters who is willing to spend the most money proving they are "right."

- and on it goes.

I wish these guys well with their fight

Re:The legal system, etc.

[mjpk]

So the question is, as always, what should be done? Would we be better off, if there were no legal system? Should there be someone superior who would make things right for the little globo-citizen?? Propably no. The _system_ is the correct one in general terms, in democracies. It's the application that has number of bugs.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[dozing]

Would we be better off, if there were no legal system? Should there be someone superior who would make things right for the little globo-citizen??

I vote we make Cowboy Neal our countries official disciplinarian. I'm sure there won't be any problem getting him elected. He does really well int he polls anyhow.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[dimator]

Well put yourself in "the big"'s position: suddenly, all the content (movies, music, etc) that you've made your billions with can be exchanged with next to zero effort by countless millions of people. Wouldn't you be doing something to defend your business? And don't give me that "The cat is out of the bag, they should evolve to use the internet." Let me repeat: BILLIONS of dollars. Why would they want to adapt when what they've been doing has gotten them so much cash?

The only power they have is the legal system, and they are forced to utilize it.

Note: I'm not passing judgement on who's right or wrong. I'm just pointing out that "the big" have their side to the whole "digital rights" story too. It would be stupid to expect them to give up and walk away.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

And don't give me that "The cat is out of the bag, they should evolve to use the internet."

But that's what the parent post is all about - they got big off of a system that would not work if it were brought in brand-new today, and now that they're big, they can crush opposition. Of course they don't want to adapt when what they've been doing has gotten them so much cash. The point is that the law allows obsolete business practices to litigate their way through a few more years of survival - hurting a lot of entrepreneurs and innovators in the process.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Robotech_Master]

There was an article in the New York Times about that this very day. (registration, yadda, blah blah, if someone wants to post the 'registration-free' link, please do; I don't remember how to construct them) Quite interesting.

BTW, I didn't even know there was a KaZaa client for Linux. Where can I find it? :)

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Nephrite]

Let me repeat: BILLIONS of dollars.

Yeah, here we can see the corruption of the whole system. The system itself is wrong. Cinema/music/etc is art, not business. When we see it as business we get such ugly monsters in music like Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys and Metallica (late Metallica that is) and even uglier monsters in cinema like Godzilla (american one), Pearl Harbor and such... Cool technology poor quality. Just to get a lot of money. No heart, no soul just BILLIONS of dollars :-(

Re:The legal system, etc.

[gid]

Scary as it may seem, I feel you've actually hit on something there. I've always firmly believed that the people that want to be in political positions are exactly the people who shouldn't be allowed to be. We should just have all the smart people sign up for a draft to be president.

Ok, so I don't exactly believe all this, but I do find it rather interesting.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[cancrman]

That all comes back to the old saying (I'm sure I'm butchering it):

Any one who wants to be a politician, shouldn't.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[dimator]

http://archive.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/technology/c ircuits/17VIDE.html

You just switch the 'www' with 'archive'.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[a random streaker]

...and therefore I should be able to download it all for free for my own entertainment pleasure.

Sounds like Sartre. While you can't know the thing-in-itself, for you merely experience a perception of it, not the thing itself, that perception is itself an object, and you do experience that directly, and know it directly...

...therefore no one should read anything but what the communist party permits.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I try that or 'partners' it never works. Now, not even your link works..

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Nephrite]

Well, a real artist gets pleasure from making a piece of art itself and doesn't care about money. I'd say even more - money kills art. As I could observe quite alot of good artists succumb to profits and lose quality.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[issachar]

that doesn't work. it used to, but it doesn't anymore. neither does using "http://partners...

instead, you can use the amazing slashcode0 account.

Username Slashcode0
Password Slashcode0

That's a zero in both cases.

Have fun.

.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Nicolas MONNET]

...and therefore I should be able to download it all for free for my own entertainment pleasure.

No. The conclusion is: and therefore it does'nt matter to humanity if it dies a deserved death.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[linzeal]

A geek aristocracy then? I'm sure plato would be proud he always liked a keen man.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

it is amazing how human nature often allows people to discard rational logic to justify their actions. unfortunately, this issue isn't as moral unambiguous as people would like to believe. you (along with thousands of others) are saying that "the law allows obsolete business practices" regarding this issue. it's amazing that the _protection and preservation one's rightful property_ transformed overnight from an inalienable human right acknowledged by almost every society (though not by every political system) throughout time, into an "obsolete business practice." in reality, these immutable liberties haven't changed. what has changed is that technology stripped theivery of its legal reprecussions and made it amazingly easy.

i especially like the quote, "hurting a lot of ... innovators in the process." file-sharing systems are indeed innovative. selling drugs on the street was innovative once too. planting a bomb in your shoe was an innovative form of terrorism. i think you get the point. the only good that can come of these innovations, is that steps can be taken to protect individuals from these threats to their natural liberties of life and livelyhood.

a change in the system doesn't justify the violation of these most basic human rights. we're nothing more than looters using technology to our advantage, grabbing everything we can because we know there will be no reprecussions later on. we can't blind ourselves with these false arguments, or criticize the system for putting an end to our exploits.

if the record companies/movie studios successfully utilize the law in order to preserve their rightful property, i applaud them.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cinema/music/etc is art, not business."

WRONG, it's business AND art. any product that an individual puts a piece of themselves into may be deemed art, though, from code to furniture to buildings and so on. that people shouldn't be allowed to receive compensation for "art" is a ridiculous notion.

regarding the "ugly monsters" such as Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, they exist only because consumers are willing to pay the prices they do for their music, shows, merchandise, etc. You may not like them, but obviously it meets a large demographic, as they are some of the most succesful pop stars to date.

You may not like Britney or her music, but ultimately the consumers, not the record companies, are to blame for her success. Your anger is misdirected. You should really be mad at your little sister and her friends I suppose.

Besides, britney's existence isn't denying you from other music. It's all out there. Nobody record exec is going to storm into you house, turn your radio knobs to KISSFM and replace all your cd's for the latest n*sync album (but again, your sister/daughter/niece might do that). if you want heart and soul, go find it.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Nephrite]

WRONG, it's business AND art

In my world business is for the body while art is for the soul, as simple as that. I won't die without my favourite music however I'll eventually get bored :-)

regarding the "ugly monsters" such as Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, they exist only because consumers are willing to pay the prices

You're right but you missed my point. Britney Spears was created for profit, aggressively advertised and sold to millions of kids. No different from M$ products when we have clueless listeners kids or teenagers. Compare to an average home wife using Windows.

Culture is no different from industry from the point of education. We may have different tastes but we should be able to divide good from bad.

Besides, britney's existence isn't denying you from other music

Right, just like no one denying me from using Linux while there are huge advertisement campaings around which promote M$ products :-\

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Rogerborg]

• Wouldn't you be doing something to defend your business [...] The only power they have is the legal system, and they are forced to utilize it

Hang on a minute while I just choke quietly in the corner. The only power? So, a big business can buy the laws they want through political bribes (aka campaign contributions), can have courts stop just about any activity they like (prima facia, before any guilt has been proven), and then can keep anybody they like in court until the little guy runs out of money and has to settle or starve, and that's the only power they have?

What more do they need? Well, it would be nice if they could get laws passed that effectively allow them to instruct their government to provide paramilitary enforcers to imprison individuals either at home or abroad, but that's beyond the realms of fantasy, surely?

Oh, wait, remind me, why did I buy that "Free Dmitri" T-shirt? How's Jon Johansson doing these days?

Only the legal system. God help us all.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Sloppy]

The only power they have is the legal system, and they are forced to utilize it.

I don't have a problem with that. I just wish they would go after the copyright infringers, instead of the tookmakers. The whole idea of vicarious/contributory infringement is bullshit, because there's no way a tool can ever be made that knows the difference between infringing and non-infringing use. Going after toolmakers is an abuse of the system.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Bosconian]

More NYT logins

slash2001 : slash2001

or

cypherpunks : cypherpunks

vary your usage and feed misleading demographics.

Please poison the well... And allow everyone in the grocery store checkout line to use your "Bonus Club" card. And swap them with friends.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Paolomania]

it's amazing that the _protection and preservation one's rightful property_ transformed overnight from an inalienable human right acknowledged by almost every society (though not by every political system) throughout time, into an "obsolete business practice."

since when, from the beginning of time, has information in an abstract form separate from physical media been considered property? sure things like tablets, scrolls, and books could be owned, but information could, at best, be considered secret. if you did not want the information to get out, you had to prevent anyone from hearing or reading it. even with the modern notion of copyright, patent and trademark it is not the idea that is protected.

now, when a movie has been projected into rays of light, a song has been converted into vibrations in the air, or either one has been converted into blips of electricity over an ethernet cable - has it not been separated far enough from its physical storage media to be considered "abstract"?

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Tungbo]

"Protection and preservation of one's rightful property" is NOT an "immutable liberty". Through out much of human existence on this earth, we've lived in cultures where most resouces are communally owned, or viewed as not possible to be owned by human beings. The current concept of 'private property' has evolved to deal with the incresing economic complexity of our environment. Furthermore, the concept of 'intellectual property' did not even exists some 2 centuries ago.

I would not want to go back to those days where composers got almost paid nothing for their work. Nor would I encourage others to break the law. However, if someone feels that the current scheme of distributing rewards to the creator/distributor is inadequate, then she/he should be free to explore ways to change the scheme and the laws. We should not lie back and assume that the current system is the best one possible.

At some primitive level, I might consider property rights a natural right. But can you seriously think of the yard high stack of copyright laws and patent laws as NATURAL?

Re:The legal system, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

They made their money when THEY were the only means of getting the "product". Now the "product" can be had a much easier and cheaper way. Corporations need to find a new way to actually EARN their money, a concept which would involve some considerable effort on their side. It's so much easier to resort to lawyers.

But as someone else said, the filesharing "providers" such as Napster, Kazaa et. al. are relatively easy to control. It is much more difficult to control end users. And yes, we will see end users prosecuted to set examples. They will have our (spineless) ISP's turn off our internet connections based on simple accusations. Maybe 1 per week. Maybe 10 per day. Maybe regionally targetted. They will instill fear in us turning on our P2P programs.

They will use whatever tactic is necessary to keep us in check and as long as we keep on buying the "product" they'll continue. The only way, they will learn is to stop buying product so the money (which comes from US) will no longer be used against US.

The bottom line is, big business does not "get it" until it's too late for them.

Re:The legal system, etc.

[oasisbob]

Or the slash2001 account:

Username: slash2001
Password: slash2001

Either one will set a cookie that will say goodbye to login requrements...

Re:The legal system, etc.

[coltrane99]

Right. But when the law makes something illegal that millions of people will do anyway, it weakens the overall rule of law. The law itself needs to move away from those things it can't govern. Even when commercial interests are threatened thereby. An example: when VCR's came out, the movie and television cartels got together and got them banned for a few years. Similarly with the newer ad-blocking VCR's. These are efforts by companies to extend existing rights to defeat new technologies. The introduction of these technologies resulted in a new balance being struck in those areas. People can copy movies. There was once a controversy over whether people could copy from vinyl records onto tape. The result: balance between consumers' interests and corporations' interests.

Similar efforts are underway by the content companies today to extend their property rights into areas that have been opened up by the introduction of new technologies. Today, the content companies are attempting to further expand their control over their 'rightful property', which consists of digital files residing in consumers' houses. This expanded control conflicts with individuals' property rights over the copies of these files they have purchased (CD's, vinyl, copies of movies, broadcasts of movies and TV programming). It also conflicts with the property rights of consumers who wish to purchase things like electronic media without built-in content control systems, and Internet connections that are unburdened by 'content cop' surveillance.

Why should corporations' property rights take absolute precedence over individuals' property rights?

Morpheus - still available

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still download Morpheus, another Fasttrak-100 client from CNET. According to my packet sniffer, it connects on port 1214 of these hosts:
12-230-133-211.client.attbi.com
cs2416272-88.jam.rr.com
scooby.videomaker.com
d226-68-164.home.cgocable.net
cs2424242-147.hot.rr.com
resnet129-210.medford.tufts.edu
orinoco.portland.co.uk

Except for the ads servers, no commericial servers appear to be contacted. So once KaZaa gets shut down, we just won't see their ads.

Only a matter of time

[What goes up]

One by one, all the file sharing services will succumb to legal pressures and get shut down. I wish I could defend them, but as much as I hate to admit it, trading of copyrighted material is quite illegal.

I just wish all the record labels would agree on a pay service that gives me (legal) access to almost any music title out there.

I can dream, can't I?

--
Mr. Taco, tear down this wall!!!

Re:Only a matter of time

[cscx]

Remember:

KaZaA does not condone activities and actions that breach the copyright of artists and copyright owners - as a KaZaA user you are bound by the KaZaA Terms of Use and laws governing copyright in each country.

Slow down cowboy? Maybe I just type too fast...

Morpheus is still going

[asv108]

For windows users, you can still use Morpheus for all your mp3 and pr0n downloads. I wouldn't be suprised if Morpheus is next considering Kazaa and Morpheus are based on the same technology from fastrack. Both morpheus and kazaa are similar to napster in the sense that they have centralized authentication, but they differ in the fact that there is not a centralized index. There is a good writeup on morpheus and kazaa available here.

Re:Morpheus is still going

[Tuscahoma]

And if you really want Kazaa, you can download it off of Morpeheus. Heh.

Re:Morpheus is still going

[Anonymous Coward]

The download for Morpheus can be found here: http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-1896420-108-7 6172.html?bt.48575.185

Artist websites

[Inthewire]

Yeah. I pay for music. See, I don't like record companies, so I just buy music online from bands I like. If that's not an option, well, I break down and buy the cd, but since I hate most music put out by the big guys, it all works out. MP3.com had some good stuff, particularly Americana (which is my personal choice)

Re:Artist websites

[Paradoxish]

The record company that a band is under still gets money whether you buy directly from the band, from an online store, or from a regular retail store...

Who cares?

[Chemical]

Chemical's reasons for not caring:

1) Even if the stupid Kaaza client is no longer available, Morpheus still is, and is a lot more popular a client anyways. That's like trying to shut down the WWW by banning Netscape.

2) Morpehus/Kaaza suck anyways. Even though the idea behind it is pretty genius, in practice their software sucks. Besides crashing constantly, being spyware, bloatware, and every other type of negative ware there is, and just plain being a crappy client, there is no friggin music on their network. I try searching for something somewhat well known but not quite mainstream, say "The Descendents", and I get 0 results back. And any results I do get download at 1.1 k/sec, despite claiming the user has a bandwith of "300" whatever that means. Worst of all you can only get mp3s of up to 128kpbs. I'll stick with WinMX or eDonkey2000 for now. There are plenty of alternatives to Kaaza/Morpheus that don't suck ass.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to truncate bits after 128kbps -- for example, a file advertised as 64kbps is probably 192kbps. I find this rather frustrating.

Re:Who cares?

[VA Porware]

Actually you can get mp3s higher than 128kbps. In regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Morpheus or Kazaa, change LimitBitrate to 0 and reboot!

Re:Who cares?

[xtremex]

Try the Linux version of Kazaa. A joy to work with.

Re:Who cares?

[roguerez]

I wonder why there is a limit in the first place?

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you ill? unless you are searching for Milli Vinilly(sp?) you can get most anything. (might get that too)
There is plenty of stuff you can get off Kaaza, you just type it in and it works fine. I even went away from mIRC to Kaaza.
"The Descendents"?????
doing a search now brings up.. STILL collecting....117 files. that's not bad (maybe you were looking for music videos?
SpyWaRe?? who cares? what nowadays isn't EVERYTHING spyware, really. Most of the people nowadays is useing Windows anywho and that's a deathtrap of security(see also WindowsXP). So stop being so paranoide, and calm down. I'm sure you were at the bunker come 1999 to 2k eh?
(hit that one on the nail)
-UnphaZeD

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the tip. I can't believe I never heard of this before.

Re:Who cares?

[Choose Wisely]

I disagree. I tried it, but much to my disappointment, both the daemon and the user interface crashed repeatedly. It was really a shoddy piece of software, not that that's a first for the Linux community or anything.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can get around the bitrate limit. use regedit, search for "limitbitrate" and change value from 1 to 0.

Re:Who cares?

[ImaLamer]

The daemon and user interface? What?

It's one in the same you fucking lying ass moron. It does suck down resources, but that isn't anything different from the windows client. Trust me, I've actually don't both.

It was really a shoddy piece of software, not that that's a first for the Linux community or anything.

'Shoddy' software isn't a first for anyone. But! a 'shoddy' OS is a first for the linux community.

So please, shut the fuck up with your linux bashing, it's sad that you don't actually have a leg to stand on.

When M$ fires you, are you going to still post this crap to slashdot?

Re:Who cares?

[a random streaker]

"128 bits of music ought to be enough for anybody."

It's not a bug. It's not a design flaw. It's not foreplanning ignorance. It's a feature.

Re:Who cares?

[roguerez]

If they actually thought that 128 Kb ought to be enough and that more Kb's don't make a difference, I consider it a design flaw.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr choose wisely

with email: linuxfailures@islinux4you.com.

and

website: http://www.islinux4you.com/

Can YOU choose wisely and head on back to ZDNet, I don't think your little idea is going to change anyones opinion of Linux around here.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't disabling that setting mean you can only download from others who have disabled that setting?

Re:Who cares?

[Goragoth]

I think they anticipated legal trouble right from the beginning. Limiting to 128k means that they can claim the MP3s to be sub-CD quality and therefore not directly competing with CDs.

Re:Who cares?

[prentis]

Who said Bill Gates doesent hang out on /. ?
seriusly though dont you think you are the wrong place if you are going to devote your time to linux bashing?

Re:Who cares?

[rixster]

Fantastic quotes if you follow the links - see the above post. I just had to quote them here. [ Don't critise ME as I didn't write them - but some people actually believe this stuff.... ]

"VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast"

"Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it"

"Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc"

And the last one's a killer :

"Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable. Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position"

Re:Who cares?

[rixster]

You have to visit the posters website... He slates off Apache as a complete shambles, but guess who'se hosting his website ? I'll give you a clue ...

his server @

Oh doncha just love the power of the internet sometimes...

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's 128 "kilobits per second", not "bits".

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's "That's", not "that's".

That'll stop it..

[diwolf]

Let's see. Suspend the downloading of the program from KaZaa, stop the spread of the software on KaZaa and Morpheus. That'll work for what, zero seconds? So, instead of Kazaa, all the kids in need of their next MP3 fix just go to Morpheus and grap that software. Voila! Access to Morpheus AND KaZaa.

When will everyone realize that you can't put the cat back into the bag. Once the technology is out, telling someone, "Don't use it, or you'll be sorry" becomes an invitation to flaut its use.

It's really too bad that a Judge doesn't order Windows banned--because most people who pirate MP3's, etc. use Windows to do it. Hey, there's a good idea in there somewhere..

Re:That'll stop it..

[Iguanaphobic]

It's really too bad that a Judge doesn't order Windows banned--because most people who pirate MP3's, etc. use Windows to do it. Hey, there's a good idea in there somewhere..

Nope. Really bad idea.
1. The judge demands that Windows incorporate DRM technology.
2. MS does it.
3. Judge rules all other OS's to incorporate same technology or face prosecution under the various greed laws.
4. Linux users revolt and refuse to do so.
5. Judge legislates all hardware manufacturers to use specially encrypted BIOS or face prosecution. MS has the key to said BIOS, no one else does unless they agree to incorporate DRM technology.
6. Game over. MPAA/RIAA 1 Freedom 0

Re:That'll stop it..

[Goragoth]

Voila! Access to Morpheus AND KaZaa.

Kazaa/Morpheus/Grokster all connect to the same network, FastTrack. They all have the same content and the only difference between them is what advertising is bundeled with them.

Now that's out of my system I go to the next point. Everyone says the software will live on. Not so. All FastTrack clients have to log in to the network using the FastTrack servers. If they shutdown the servers or deny authentication then nobody will be able to use Kazaa/Morpheus/Grokster anymore. Why do you guys think that they announced that Morpheus2.0 will have "links to the Gnutella network"?

Re:That'll stop it..

[rixster]

So US Judge rules that Taiwanese, Japanese, Chinese (et. al.) BIOS and moby manufacturers abide by his rule ? Hmmm. Now that's something I'd like to see (well at the least the reaction by the Chinese govy anyway...)

yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

i downloaded that video from kazaa too

Morpheus still up..

[hughk]

As noted wlsewhere, both KaZaa and Morpheus share the FastTrack network. They are P2P clients but have the disadvantage that they are centrally authenticated (to force the advertising down the punters' throats).

KaZaa users are still connecting as of 06:00 GMT today. The main problem is if the courts go after the authentication servers. This isn't happening yet.

Re:Morpheus still up..

[Robotech_Master]

It's worth noting, again, that giFT, the open-source FastTrack clone, is now undergoing network testing. Slashdot over to there, get their client, try it and see if you can't help them out. giFT, if it takes off, shouldn't have any of the advertising, authenticating, or other such problems of the commercial FT clients, right?

Re:Morpheus still up..

[daw]

> The main problem is if the courts go after the authentication servers. This isn't happening yet.

Actually, I have read (in the leaked RIAA memo on fasttrack) that if the authentication servers are unreachable, the software will connect to the network without authenticting. It comes with a long list of peers to try connecting to, which whenever it connects. If this is true, and kazaa etc. vanish with their servers, the software should keep working.

On the other hand, I have read (in the New York Times article on video trading yesterday) that FastTrack have the ability to shut down the software remotely. And this would seem to be borne out by the time they forced everyone to upgrade to version 1.33. (Though maybe this was accomplished in the authentication process.)

Re:Morpheus still up..

[SubtleNuance]

(to force the advertising down the punters' throats).

I live in Canada, and read allot of British press online, can you offer me a hand? What does the 'slang' term "punter" mean? I have been unable to quite figure it out. As best I can reason it is analogous to 'person' or 'guy'... but im sure there is more to it than that...

Re:Morpheus still up..

[Anonymous Coward]

Punter - ordinary person (there are overtones of 'gullible' in this word, mind you, because of where the reference comes from). Try this link.

Re:Morpheus still up..

[ScumBiker]

An Americans take on punter; dumb-ass, dope, idiot, moron, senator. Any Brits out there? I'm probably wrong.

Now to the on-topic bit. Fasttrack updated everyone during the authentication process. Although I can't wait for a Morpheus client for Linux, especially if it also ties into the gnutella stuff.

Re:Morpheus still up..

[greenrd]

Customer or user, depends on the context.

What it will do

[ErfC]

I wonder what the judge thinks this will do to the tens, if not hundreds of thousands who already have the software?

It will get a story posted on /., prompting millions of users to simultaneously fire up their existing KaZaA software to see if the network is still up, thus melting the servers and shutting down the network...

Extremely Intresting To See

[kawaichan]

It would be extremely interesting to see when the court actually makes Kazza to shut down, I wonder what would happen since Kazza doesn't have a centralized server.

Next step? I think the cournts will try to force ISPs to refuse any incoming/outgoing connection to kazza or similar services.

Re:Extremely Intresting To See

[RadioheadKid]

Actually there is a central server for both Kazaa and Morpheus, but what separates it from Napster is that there isn't any file index on the server, only user authentification. Will the courts be able to get at that server? It's a harder case to argue, that's for sure...

Morpheus anyone?

[SectoidRandom]

How does this affect Morpheus and other FastTrack clients I wonder? Well, no news of MusicCity doing the same as yet, and I would assume this does not affect that company at all, as the case was brought against Kazaa.

So, as I'm sure a million others will say, download Morpheus! And enjoy everthing Kazaa does, _minus_ the spyware!

Just get Morpheus

[doughnuthole]

Morpheus is up and running and has the added benefit of not having spyware. Or if you're at college like me, get stuff on the campus network.

Re:Just get Morpheus

[xtremex]

The Linux Kazaa client has the added benefit of not having spyware. It is better than the windows crap. Search for a song, download it...couldnt be any easier

Re:Just get Morpheus

[Choose Wisely]

The Linux client is junk (much like a good amount of Linux software out there). Both the daemon and the UI crash constantly. You're surely better off sticking with something like GTK-Gnutella if you are really forced into using Linucks.

Re:Just get Morpheus

[orangesquid]

Actually, the Linux client never crashes assuming that you wait at least three seconds or so switching between the download and search windows. Seems there are some issues in the client with select() and ncurses usage.

But I'd go with LimeWire as far as Gnutella is concerned, even if there are ads. It's a damn good piece of software...

Re:Just get Morpheus

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to use LimeWire, but I actually switched to Gnucleus. It's open source, very streamlined, and it updates automatically. Apparently it also supports multiple source downloading (at least the beta) though I haven't seen much of that in action...

Reminds me of a wonderful book.

[AMuse]

In the book "Microserfs", by Douglas Coupland, the writer muses (This was, by the way, in about 1993):

"Someday life will be nothing more than jail and shopping."

'Nuff said.

Re:Reminds me of a wonderful book.

[linzeal]

Hey if we start acting like the industrious chinese workers maybe we will create a society based on those two exact principles.

The RIAA has it all planned out

[gultig]

By preventing the download of Kazaa you will have to have the Kazaa client creating a whole new 'chicken and the egg' paradox that will make file sharing applications cease to exist in a fit of logic.

Re:The RIAA has it all planned out

[Anonymous Coward]

Great comment!

The question however will not be which is the predecessor, but how do you obtain the software if you do not have the software already.

Re:The RIAA has it all planned out

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there who already have a client, and some webspace, and the kazaa client will be downloadable from many places, they'll just be a *little* harder to find...

it was fun while it lasted

[obi-1-kenobi]

Oh well looks like its back to ripping dvds for me. Just like fat tony when he said he would go back to smuggling drugs instead of licker :P... Dont u just love the simpsons ? :-)

Doesn't matter too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, lots of people use Fasttrack, and the network is fairly decent (in that it sort of works sometimes), unlike Gnutella, Open Napster, and Direct Connect. But now that Fasttrack implemented a cryptographic challenge (such that no open source client can enter the network easily without cracking the code) they have shot themselves in the foot since it's easier to shut down with only one company licensing the technology. I wouldn't download Kazaa anyways, since it's loaded with sypware, 3rd party programs, and the like. Morpheus is another Fasttrack program, and it is pretty decent, although it does have ads that popup through Internet Explorer (!) and they even often have sound or shockwave, or take up the whole screen! Your best bet is to use Freenet once version 0.5 is released (really soon now) with Frost. All those who know the old, non-working Freenet will be impressed by 0.5, as it works incredibly well now.

One other thing worth mentioning: Kazaa wants you to use it so that it can make money off your processing cycles, memory, and network connection. That's right; Kazaa plans to introduce technology to allow businesses to use the Kazaa network to burden the load of distributing large quantities of data.

Re:Doesn't matter too much

[ImaLamer]

[not a fanboy!]
Ok ok... spyware. The spyware is detectable by all anti-virus software. Ad-aware will take care of the other spyware as well. The 3rd party programs can be not installed... if you know how to read and use your mouse.

FastTrack, IMHO, has more promise than other P2P ideals. I love gnutella in many ways, but being able to get a full movie in 30 minutes kills the rest.

ALSO-If Kazaa does use my unused cycles, memory and connection to make money... who cares? I'm downloading a small, ok large fortune of media from that network. Do you know how many people downloaded XP [for example] from these networks? That saved people thousands of dollars.

What is your point?

Re:Doesn't matter too much

[linzeal]

Do you know how many people downloaded XP [for example] from these networks? That saved people thousands of dollars

I wish people would serve up linux distros that way so when new releases come out people can collectively share bandwidth to get them. edonk forces you to share whatever you are downloading in 8 megabyte chunks with a known md5 hash from the origina and they have a linux client as well with an easy to use cli or if you want gui interface.

Re:Doesn't matter too much

[mr3038]

One other thing worth mentioning: Kazaa wants you to use it so that it can make money off your processing cycles, memory, and network connection. That's right; Kazaa plans to introduce technology to allow businesses to use the Kazaa network to burden the load of distributing large quantities of data.

Well, I for one would be more than happy to give some bandwidth, cpu power and memory for exchange if I could legally download music and stuff. If, however, the plan is to count on dumb users not to read eula and spend those resources without payment this sounds ridiculous.

won't it be nice...

[npietraniec]

Won't it be nice when things like giFT and freenet are standards and we won't have to worry about the man keeping us down?

Forget Kazaa

[xxSOUL_EATERxx]

Have we forgotten that the system is supposed to be PEER-TO-PEER, not PEER-TO-SPYWARE-EMBEDDED-GET-RICH-QUICK-SCHEME-TO- PEER?

True file sharing technology should not sneak Gator onto your hard drive or try to sell you CDs you don't want

The future of P2P belongs to technologies like GNUtella, which can be used to set up truly decentralized file-sharing networks that CANNOT be struck down by tyrants disguised in business suits

Yes, GNUtella is harder to use, klunkier, and tends to access smaller listings of files, but given time and work, these problems will be alleviated as greed-driven fake P2P systems like Napster and Kazaa are crushed by the moneyed interests controlling the legal system.

Anyway, True Freedom belongs to those willing to work for it. Strong, free geeks will always find a way to overcome the forces of oppression. Forget Kazaa. P2P4Profit is a deservedly dead end.

Re:Forget Kazaa

[Anonymous Coward]

Well i dont think so. Gnutella is cool and all and i like it fine but gnutella has no scalability so we need a NEW napster not a napstter clone or some half baked p2p scheme please stop rushing out to "catch the wave" and code right. for the good of us all please.

Re:Forget Kazaa

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like spyware, why don't you write your own client for the fasttrack network? It's not like they are preventing it.

Or if you're not quite up to that, lend some help on an existing open-source client project.

Re:Forget Kazaa

[ImaLamer]

I think at first I was kinda mad at your comment.

But the last line got me. P2P4Profit is wrong. That is what clearly violates 'fair-use'.

They can't make money selling your bootlegs.

I still like Kazaa though... sorry.

Re:Forget Kazaa

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm

yep gnutella sucks - you get smaller listings of files and download speed like a snail and all for nothing - as a product it sucks, but then again so does kazaa/morpheus

When was the last time you actually got a movie downloaded?

A large file ?

I use blubster for music and FTP's and contacts for other stuff, thats all, GNUtella is shit like most open source software, badly written shittily implemented and needlessly complex and it attracts less files because its used only by people who find that sort of thing strangely attractive, like Linux Users.

What a relief

[Dan Crash]

Well, that takes care of THAT! Piracy is finally solved. Move along now! Nothing to see here!

Re:What a relief

[Merconium]

You forgot to add [wiggum] at the front and [/wiggum] :)

Where?

[lostchicken]

Is there a country where there would be no sort of recourse? [no copyright laws]

The only country I would see where this would work is China, but they have government censor proxies.

Or, would we have to set up something on some micronation island? I remember hearing something about someone trying this.

Re:Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is that country of sealand on an old oil rig. But they do not have much bandwidth. Plus they don't have much of an army to defend against anyone. The MPAA/RIAA could hire hitmen to take out the entire country and no one would notice.

What we need is a server on a satellite out in space. Let's see them try and shut that down.

There should be enough people on Slashdot in a few years that we will be able to overtake a small country. Then we will write our own laws.

Re:Where?

[loucura!]

Can I toss in the Bahamas as a recommendation? I mean, really, the then named 'Geekland' would be well out of the United States' jurisdiction, we'd be close enough to drop our own fibre, we'd be close enough that they couldn't drop half a dozen nuclear weapons on us to wipe us out...

...and we'd get frozen alcoholic beverages with straw hats...

not to mention, summer. :)

Re:Where?

[Spreetin]

Actually there already is a mini-island-country outside of england. It is called sealand and they host internetservices without much restriction. Perhaps we should put up a p2p network homepage on one of their servers?

If we had a server there it would even work with a cetralized server system!

/S

Re:kazaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen buddy, it's not a matter of whether it can be used for illegal purposes or not. As has been said many times before, a gun or a hammer can be used for illegal purposes. The intent of this program is innocent; it allows users to share files in a P2P manner which is far more efficient than the usual client/server architecture. As a matter of fact, AFAIK Kazaa only allows sharing of low bitrate MP3s, the concept being that if you want the full quality music, you will go buy it. These litigious bastards are ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater because they can't see the potential of this sort of thing for promoting small artists, or don't want to see it because they are interested in shoveling teeny-bopper pap down our throats.

kazza? good riddance.

[juju2112]

There are other decent file-sharing networks people can get on besides FastTrack, like OpenNap or Gnutella. Good riddance to Kazaa, I say.

I just wish someone would write a file-sharing client for windows that doesn't suck so badly. Almost all of them have ads, spyware, and crummy interfaces.

Re:kazza? good riddance.

[Graspee_Leemoor]

You could try getting the source for mutella and compiling it under cygwin- it might work.

(mutella is a console-based client for gnutella network- simple but effective)

graspee

Re:kazza? good riddance.

[LegendLength]

The idea is to get people to share files not run away in fear.

resolution

[spongman]

now, more than ever, it's important to open up your outgoing bandwidth when you're not actively using your machine and share the love. i recommend downloading a gnutella client too and share your files over both networks. the only thing that can keep this technology alive is selfless participation...

KaZaa MaNtraa

[guttentag]

The "communitieZ" topics at the bottom of their home page reads like a strangely appropriate twist on Apple's "Rip. Mix. Burn." ad campaign:

Discuss. Chat. Defend.

Wow

[J'raxis]

Well, it worked so well for DeCSS, didnt it? Didnt it?

This is like...

[suss]

Suspending downloads of Internet Explorer and expecting the web to automatically disappear?

Way to go BUMA/STEMRA! (Dutch record company mob), a fine example of clear thinking...

Get your Kazar right here

[XenoBOFH]

It is still possible to download KaZaA, a quick search found a copy here

KaZaA still up -- I think

[ciurana]

Greetings!

I just logged on to KaZaA, did a search on 'Spears' and lots of images, MP3s, videos, etc. are available for download. Could someone please explain?

Thanks,

E

Re:KaZaA still up -- I think

[mlk]

You can not download the application from their web site.
It's a bit silly really. You can not download it(from the website), but you can't stop ppl using it... Ahh well

Re:KaZaA still up -- I think

[J'raxis]

No you see, the court decided the best way to stop the illegal KaZaa downloads is by preventing people from downloading the one file theyre already sure to have which the people didnt even download using KaZaa in the first place.

In related news, the DEA has decided to step up the drug war by arresting dealers after they have completed selling their entire lot, and the FBI has put out an arrest warrant on Egyptian national Muhammad Atta and revoked his passport in an effort to prevent the September 11, 2001 bombings from actually happening.

Re:KaZaA still up -- I think

[Wing]

I just logged on to KaZaA, did a search on 'Spears' and lots of images, MP3s, videos, etc. are available for download.

Whew... for a second there I thought I wouldn't be able to download all those Brittney Spears teeny bopper songs and fake pr0n that we all love so much!

Pay for download services will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Slashdot editors didn't post the story...

Aimster has gone from a free service to a pay for service (about $5/month) and have shut down their www.aimster.com and www.clubaimster.com sites. Their new service is at www.madster.com and is exactly the same as their old service but you pay for it. The old service is shut down and you can't download them without paying.

I think this was a huge mistake, Napster will fail for doing this and so will Aimster. The best way to make a profit is to use advertisements and although I hate to admit it spyware.

People have gotten used to the free internet and sure as hell don't want to pay money. AOL's legal downloading service and any others will bomb as long as there are free services available.

Re:nothing quite like...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but doing this is a misuse of your reproductive capabilities.

Amen !

[Murphy(c)]

We should do this more often, and call it the "International Internet Is Fast Again Day".

Affectionatly known as IIIFAD.

Murphy(c)

Re:Amen !

[J'raxis]

iiiFad? Youre probably infringing on some Apple trademark with that.

Re:Amen !

[linzeal]

I thought he said intifada.

C|Net Reporting on this...

[instinctdesign]

C|Net is reporting on this, check out the article which includes a few more details that haven't been mentioned here.

Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just get one of the many other good clients out there:

http://www.bearshare.com
http://www.limewire.com
http://www.winmx.com
http://www.filenavigator.com

With 100 programs still left...

[thumbtack]

Resistance is futile the RIAA has been assimilated. they just don't realize it yet. Afternapster has a list of 100 other filesharing programs. Song long KaZaA. Next!

I was wondering if they'd bother to try to comply

[Merconium]

It seemed to me that it was would be a rather fruitless thing to try stop KaZaa, and that the guys named in the suit were just gonna get screwed. Judge: "Shut it off." Them: "uhhhh...." I find it honorable that they are at least 'trying' to meet the responsibility set out. How can it be that the judicial system doesn't know that port blocking across many ISPs would be the only solution? Do judges really not talk to people in the know?

Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[tempest303]

All I can say to that is a big simpsons Nelson-style "HA-HA!"

Yeah, the content companies suck ass, no doubt, but that doesn't mean that NOT PAYING FOR THE SHIT YOU DOWNLOAD is going to make things any better. If you hate stupid restrictions, stop buying records from the opporessive major labels. Frequent places like Emusic.com, where the downloads are all real MP3s, no bullshit copy prevention. The albums are sold for a reasonable price, and the artists GET PAID.

And finally, would everyone stop acting like they're somehow oppressed because they actually have to PAY for their media? Cry me a river. Don't put up with copy prevention bullshit, but don't go back and *REINFORCE ITS APPARENT NEED* by "trading" stuff on Kazaa...

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad the service is still up. Maybe next time you should actually read the article, or at least the summary, before spewing your self-righteous bullshit. Thanks.

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[minusthink]

/clap clap clap.

I completely agree, and you opened my eyes to what a hypocrite I'm being - no matter how I try to rationalize my mp3 collection, I am stealing. there's no way around it. I do believe the artists should get paid, and so I will take up your suggestion and frequent emusic.com and such.

just wanted to know that your words aren't falling on deaf ears.

gj.

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[tchueh]

Screw that,

You talk all high and mighty thinking just cause you pay for your media makes you better than people who download.
Anyone else think CDs, DVDs, Video Tapes, Video Games, Movie Tickets, etc are all way way way over priced?
Shit, For a 16 year old (like me) with a part time job, I have to save every penny, sacrifice lunch once a week, just to save enough money to turn on my computer and surf the net.

Computers are expensive, Consoles are Expensive, Discmen are expensive.

I'll spend my money on the hardware thank you,
I'll download my media..

Where the f@ck do all these people think that the teens around the world are an untapped source for easy money.

Kids are poor man! And unless their spoiled by their parents, there's no way a highschool kid can afford to buy all the music he/she wants to listen to on a part time job flipping burgers.

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[rick-o]

> NOT PAYING FOR THE SHIT YOU DOWNLOAD

OK. I'd like to pay to download songs. Where do I sign up?

Here's the answer: nowhere. Your options are: either drive down to your nearest record store and pay for pressing, shipping, handling, packaging, advertising, sales assistance, cashiering, and post-sale security checks; or you can download it for free. What am I supposed to do if I like one particular song and would like a legal, electronic copy of it?

The issue isn't about opression, or stealing being some kind of right. It's about a market that's unsatisfied.

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[nmg196]

> The albums are sold for a reasonable price,

Only if you live in America. If you live in most other places, music is quite expensive.

Here in the UK we pay around £12-£16 ($18-$24) for a single CD and double CDs can cost more.

Nick...

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[phalse phace]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Emusic.com owned by Vivendi Universal, the very same company trying to implement copy-protection technologies on their CDs? If so, wouldn't you still be financing the very same "opporessive major label?" Besides, couldn't it be possilbe for Emusic.com to copy prevent their MP3s or at least have them set to expire after, say, 30 days?

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[BenHmm]

there's no way a highschool kid can afford to buy all the music he/she wants to listen to on a part time job flipping burgers


Yeah, and you know what? I can't afford that motorbike I want to ride on my salary, but it doesn't make it right to steal one.
You can't afford it, then you can't have it. That's life, kid. Deal with it. Buy a radio. Grow up.

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...stop buying records from the opporessive major labels. Frequent places like Emusic.com..."

From http://www.emusic.com/about/facts.html:

EMusic is part of Vivendi Universal's (NYSE: V; Paris Bourse: EX FP) US-based Internet and technology company, Vivendi Universal Net USA.

Now what?

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[shepd]

>Here in the UK we pay around £12-£16 ($18-$24) for a single CD and double CDs can cost more.

Last time I ventured into America (a year ago) this was the price one paid in American $$$ for some of the latest releases, and most of the re-releases.

Double CDs in Canada, unless you look far and wide, will cost $35-$45 CDN ($25-$35 US). Imports cost about 50% more.

I still don't understand why an album sells for more than (or the same as) the movie Waterworld (for example). Waterworld cost $175 million, was a money loser right from the box office in America (so they have a lot of catching up to do in home sales), yet still retails for $9.98 US. The soundtrack for that same movie, which cost far, far, far less to produce, and has had far less promotion also costs $9.98.

Maybe I don't get it. Maybe it actually costs $175 million to record a record these days and I'm deluding myself. I guess you have to buy a radio station every time you record a track nowadays to get a studio quality cut?

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[Hamshrew]

That would be a good argument, except for one flaw: Not everyone downloads copyrighted content. I make a decent amount of money, and buy a LOT of DVDs each month. None form big name studios, since most of the stuff isn't worth watching. Mostly anime. But here's a summary of my Media directory, where I keep all my downloads. Hmm... looks like I have:

10 episodes of Star Ocean EX, fansubbed. If this were brought to the US, I'd buy the DVDs.
1 Episode Dragonball GT, fansubbed. This is being released, and I'll likely buy it. Maybe not. GT sucks, mostly.
Several clips from varios anime and movies, none more than 3 minutes long. Perfectly legal.
A load of fan-made, anime music videos. I don't know what the legality of these are, but most would agree that they're perfectly harmless.
oh! 4 MP3s!
- Opening to Xone of Enders... can I even buy that?
- Opening to Metal Gear Solid 2... that'd be a nice CD.
- A Linkin Park MP3 from an album I own... no comments on my taste, please.
- A Queen song from Highlander... which I own the soundtrack to.

And one piece of software, a Quake 3 mod. 90% of this stuff is very difficult to get elsewere, sometimes impossible(the Star Ocean episodes, in particular, since importing the tapes from Japan is impractical. I'd need a new VCR, and don't speak Japanese anyway)

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you feel you have the right to listen to listen to all the music you want to? You have a job save up and buy the stuff you want. if you can't afford just save more.
Kids are poor man! And unless their spoiled by their parents, there's no way a highschool kid can afford to buy all the music he/she wants to listen to on a part time job flipping burgers.
yeah oh well kids are poor, they have to OMG work to make some money and OMG don't get paid much cause they don't have any experience. No one has the ability to everything they want, most people have to work for it, if anything you sound spoiled. whining cause someone wants you to pay for something.

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

uhm wouldn't that be cause everything costs more over in the UK cause of that flat tax rate thingy

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[kurowski]

Besides, couldn't it be possilbe for Emusic.com to copy prevent their MP3s or at least have them set to expire after, say, 30 days?

no.

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[tempest303]

Your options are: either drive down to your nearest record store and pay for pressing, shipping, handling, packaging, advertising, sales assistance, cashiering, and post-sale security checks; or you can download it for free. What am I supposed to do if I like one particular song and would like a legal, electronic copy of it?

The issue isn't about opression, or stealing being some kind of right. It's about a market that's unsatisfied.

Come to think of it, I'd really like nude pics of a petrified Natalie Portman with hot grits poured down her pants, but I can't have that either. So I deal with it, life moves on. Not a perfect analogy, but it illustrates what I'm trying to get across, which is, to quote the Rolling Stones: "You can't always get what you want." If one don't like the purchasing options, yeah, that sucks, but that doesn't give one the right to just take for free whatever the heart desires.

The fact that downloadable music (well, legally downloadable anyway) is a largely untapped market may be true, but it's irrelevant to the fact that people aren't giving anything back for the stuff they copy. You're blurring the issue. The fact remains, while the available options suck, not paying for stuff is still wrong. And cliched as it sounds, two wrongs still don't make a right.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a hardcore music freak - I'm painfully aware of how corrupt the industry is, and how much they jack both consumers and artists. But until something can be worked out, what else am I supposed to do? I can't stick it to the labels without sticking it to the artists. So I have to either bite the bullet and pay for the over-priced disc, or choose not to buy the stuff. Taking without paying is not an option.

As for solutions? While Emusic's 128kbit MP3s (as oppposed to much nicer ~160kbps .OGGs or something) and relatively limited selection aren't exactly what I'm looking for either, it's a damn fine start. There's no bullshit encryption, and the prices are fair. You can even buy single tracks, etc. All these things are *exactly* what the "untapped" market you refer to are clamoring for. It's just not developed enough yet... Here's to hoping that a place built on fairness and rights for the consumer and the artist actually succeed.

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[tempest303]

Not everyone downloads copyrighted content

This is quite true! Unfortunately, that's what the vast majority of the material "traded" on Kazaa, et al., is: copyrighted content. So my argument isn't necessarily flawed, but yes, I agree it's a shame that the *legitmate* uses of peer networking and filesharing can't be better explored, because people are too cheap to go out and buy the music of the artists they claim they love... :/

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another fool who tries to make a comparison between IP and a physical entity.. Sigh...

If you made a COPY of someone's motorcycle instead of stealing it, then maybe you'd have an argument.

Re:Serves ya right, you cheap bastards.

[BenHmm]

sigh all you like. It's still illegal. Breaking the law does not change it: only reasoned rational argument can.

Just saying "fuck you I can take it anyway" and quoting the bits.v.atoms debate is not going to make any difference. It's theft, purely theft, and a lack of respect for that law - regardless of campaigning against it - mirrors itself automatically to the laws you do respect, from the legal enforcement of the gpl to the legal boundaries stopping me from taking your car. You steal my music/code, I take your car. No difference at all from a legal standpoint.

You can't change a law by breaking it, bo matter how stupid it is. and I tend to agree it's stupid.

Re:That will not do much

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese version of Intel/AMD comes out with a "unlocked" linux friendly computer, everyone buys it to play their mp3's (or other files). Hardware isn't that hard to make, most of it is made overseas anyway. Hell, if I had enough time, I would make a new BIOS/patch. There is no stopping mp3's.

Upload a mirror today!

[GuNgA-DiN]

I uploaded a mirror here: Windows, Linux. If everyone uploads a copy of the program this thing will never go away!

So... whatever happened to the time when...

[ebbomega]

Copywrite laws existed to protect the artist and not the corporations that bought the artists out.

Music is intellectual property, not physical property. When are people going to figure this out?

I remember the days when music copywrite was simply so that someone couldn't blatantly rip off some artist and then claim it as their own work. For instance, if The Verve decided to blaringly take a riff from a Rolling Stones tune without permission, the Rolling Stones should be given all the money that The Verve makes on said song, or at least a portion thereof.

Now all of a sudden intellectual property means The Ability To Listen To said song.

Since when do Music corporations have a right to limit how far the music is reached? Doesn't this compromise the artist's intent in itself? Honestly, what this is doing is once again putting more power in the hands of those with the money and reinforcing Murphy's Golden Rule (whoever has the etc.).

Morons. All of them. Especially since they don't realize the awesome power (wow, this sounds like a speech from Masters of the Universe or something) of Filesharing, and that the existence of mp3s/Divx/mpgs/exes/whatevers is going to negate any attempt to control flow of music/information. napster got shut down. Everybody said it was over. Out sprung a dozen clones. Now Kazaa gets shut down. If Morpheous, Audiogalaxy et al follow suit, I personally guarantee this number reaching out in the fifties. And eventually genre-driven ones and all that kind of stuff.... It'll be glorious.

Wow. That was cheesy. I'm gonna stop before it gets worse.

Re:So... whatever happened to the time when...

[Ieshan]

That ended, when Puff Daddy Blatantly Ripped off the Police (I'll be *MISSING* You?), Shaggy Blatantly Ripped off Steve Miller Band (Listen to ANGEL and then The Joker, my lord!), and countless other rappers decided that other *good* classic rock songs didn't actually deserve their copywrites.

So... I'd say... sometime in the mid-90s.

Maybe mid-80s, if you count Vanilla Ice (Under Pressue and Ice Ice Baby, yeeesh).

Re:So... whatever happened to the time when...

[gorilla]

Copywrite laws existed to protect the artist and not the corporations that bought the artists out.

Then they're failing, and should be replaced with something else.

Apportioning blame

[Boiling_point_]

Q. Why is it that it's the Napsters, KaZaAs and Morpheii of this world that seem to get squashed by courts, rather than, say, Gnutella?

A. Courts squash what they can define.

Just like America turned (rightly or wrongly) a non-nation-state terrorism incident into an old-fashioned "my country vs. yours" war, courts/governments will try and shut down companies with business models that (they argue) are based on piracy and individuals that write "harmful code".

<pessimism>
The day someone anonymously builds a true peer2peer network that scales well and people choose it ahead of something with advertising in it, the genie really will be out of the bottle. Sadly, that's when governments will decide that "anti-supply" laws we're talking about now are useless, and the "anti-demand" laws will get tougher - in essence, they'll start going after 'users' rather than 'dealers'.
</pessimism>

Re:Apportioning blame

[linzeal]

What are they going to do with an encrypted datastream that does not operate on a single port or range of ports? Even at 256bit they are going to have a bitch of a time justifying searching in that keyspace to discover a minor just downloaded some redhead porn and served up part of a disco gold collection, what then?

The more impossible they make it to legitematize the whole electronic Intellectual Property trade mechanism by destroying instead of integrating with the upstarts the more impossible of a system will be devised to prevent them from destroying the next system, that the users create out of need not spite.

Eventually such a client will exist that will either require an act of god to unravel (1024 bit encryption) or an act of congress/corporate aristocracy to destroy (1984).

Re:Apportioning blame

[WMSplat]

How about producing anonymously a p2p app that allows users to communicate anonymously themselves. Kills two birds with one stone, and trust me, I'm working on this project right now...

- Andrew

goddam tripod is useless

[GuNgA-DiN]

Try getting the link here: dowload kazaa

Gee...

[NoWhere Man]

Looks like I might just have to download it from 1 of another billion locations like this one:

http://www.mpex.net/software/download/kazaa.html

oops... that was edonkey

[yerricde]

Your thinking of something else... KaZaa has a curses based ui.

I guess I was thinking of eDonkey and Freenet.

The network is up. Grokster & Morpheus still t

[ROThompson]

It is my understanding that if Kazaa/Morpheus/Grokster's servers were all removed, that the network would continue anyway. Meanwhile you can access the network by downloading Grokster at http://www.grokster.com or Morpheus at http://www.musiccity.com

Still downloading...

[MisterManiac]

I find it odd that, even though KaZaA has suspended downloads, their download counter (at the top of the page at http://www.kazaa.com/en/defend.htm, for example) is still going up. This might be automatic (it's going up very smoothly and uniformly), but even so it's amusing. In addition to Morpheus, there's also Grokster, which likewise licenses the FastTrack technology. Is file sharing really dead? I don't think so. I mean, the way courts generally work, organizations like the RIAA and MPAA would have to sue every file sharing program making company separately. In addition to the legal fees, the industries are lagging behind by a year or at least several months... Programs are around for a while before any suit gets filed, and then the suits take time. True, it's hardly optimal that file sharing programs rise and fall every so often, but a bit of a shakeup is good now and then. Besides, they're growing faster than people can try to get them shut down. Direct Connect is quite good for some things. Gnutella, although it sucks, cannot be eradicated. And if something like Freenet ever gets somewhat usable and efficient, they won't really have anyone left to sue. Maybe then they'll concentrate on making movies and music and software good enough that we want to buy it, instead of producing crap on a stick, trying to limit what we can do with it, and suing everyone in sight. Marketing can only do so much to sell a bad product (although M$ has done an entirely too good job of it...).

Re:Still downloading...

[1%warren]

I find it odd that, even though KaZaA has suspended downloads, their download counter (at the top of the page at http://www.kazaa.com/en/defend.htm [kazaa.com], for example) is still going up.

It appears to tick over once a second - there are 604,800 seconds in a week, & there was 1,156,821 KaZaA downloads last week. It's probably just catching up.

This might be automatic (it's going up very smoothly and uniformly), but even so it's amusing.

My goodness! I just checked! There are no IP packets being exchanged as the counter moves! What will they think of next!

Maybe this isn't a bad thing?

[BladeMelbourne]

When Napster closed Kazaa was my next move.

I found the interface far less friendly than Napster, but it also allowed searching for other file types (I rarely used this feature anyway).

I also disliked the addware/spyware installed with the program. After installing it, an extra program appears in my unistall list, which it won't let me remove.

I also thought the mechanism for sharing directories was meant to be intuitive, but it wasn't really. My searches for audio only ever yielded 128 kbps and less bitrate files.

Maybe the closing of this service will force users to migrate to other services. I'm going to start looking.

Speaking about legal action against people/companies providing content (files and web pages), I strongly believe that prosecution should only happen in the country of origin, not the destination. For example, eBay should not have to block German Nazi relics and items, but German ISPs should. A judge in one country should not be able to affect the services available to users around the entire world.

My 2

"I would like to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!"

Re:I need to get some opinions here...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have done it myself if I wasn't peddling away on an excercise bike at the gym at the time.

Erk

[TACD]

Tripod. Slashdot.

Slashdot. Tripod.

Think about it...

Shutdown? That's Ok..

[Thakandar2]

I'll just go get it on my other 4 or 5 P2P programs. And then, once I got KaZaa that way I'll trade again.

Hey, wait, this node goes through Holland...?

Re:Troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha you were too early!

WOOHOO!!!

[EchoMirage]

WOOHOO!!! Now our college campus network's bandwidth won't be nearly as hyper-saturated! Why...why...I can actually browse the Web again!! And download via FTP!! I'd almost forgotten what 10Base-T felt like!

Re:That will not do much

[PyroMosh]

The problem there is that, let's face it. The reason you can log on to Gnutella or any other filesharing network and find almost any MP3 you're looking for is because of the sheer number of people ripping them from CDs. If this fantasy world were to become reality (which I think is highly improbable) then only a relativly few geeks would be left to feed the network. So you've then gone from a pool of say 2 Million active users to what? 2000? Note that the reason these numbers seem low is because it's only the ones that contribute (rip tracks) that count, not just anyone on the network.

Remember, there are MILLIONS of filesharing system users out there that are using prefabbed compaqs or Dells or iMacs and logging on though AOL who can barley figure out how to rip MP3s. Most of them are certainly not savy/brave enough to go out and order new hardware to hack past DRM.

KazaA

[Partisan01]

This is kinda off topic, but I know at my school here they just recently limited the KazaA traffic with a packet shaping program. Kinda crazy, I doubt it will actually limit how many people use it, but they're trying. In my experience there's always been a way to get files. At first it was FTP, then iMesh, then Audiogalaxy, then BearShare, then Morpheus(KazaA). Once each one is shut down a new one pops up. The courts should give up, the cat's out of the bag, why try to stop it now?

Nate Tobik

Heads up

[Anonymous Coward]

Just letting you know that people that are not logged in do not get to see other peoples sigs. So do you ming posting it for me, so I can read it?

TIA.

Let's clear this up.

[ImaLamer]

i'm sure the kazaa client is available for download from Morpheus

If you've got Morpheus, you don't need KaZaa. KaZaa is the main company, and Morpheus [music city] is just another client on the network.

While their goals may be different-the software is effectively the same. If you use KaZaa, you notice that some users are @musiccity, while others are @kazaa.

I've actually had people tell me that Music City is better than Kazaa.. but because there was more stuff on Music City.

Re:wrong on all counts

[Chemical]

Well excuse me, but...
1. Morpheus may not be spyware, but Kaaza is.
2. Okay bloatware is a little bit of an overstatement, but WinMX and eDonkey2000 are half that size. How big does a stupid file sharing program need to be?
3. Sometimes I have better luck than other times. Still I have a hard time finding a lot of not too unusal songs.
4. I have many Descendents vinyls. In fact I have more vinyls than CDs. Unfortunatly making mp3s out of vinyls is a PITA and don't sound too good. I think I am legally entitled to d/l mp3s from an album I have purchased.
5. Chemical is not ammused.

128 bit limit

[Anonymous Coward]

128 bit limit can be switched off. It's in the registry somewhere. I think it is limitbitrate and set it to 0. (I think. I am too lazy to dig out regedit and confirm the details. Maybe someone else can.)

HTH.

They use the same network don't they?

[Anonymous Coward]

They use the same network don't they? So getting Morpheus would be redundant AFAIK.

Re:fuckin awesome

[Choose Wisely]

What do you expect? Slashdot runs on Linux. Please note the facetious tone when using the word "runs."

That's good and all...

[ebbomega]

But do you seriously believe that The Police, Steve Miller and all the other aforementioned bands didn't give permission or anything?

Honestly... think about it... If Sting sang Every Breath You Take at the MTV music awards and almagamated it into I'll Be Missing You wouldn't that imply that perhaps he condoned it?

The Verve is simply an example of someone who didn't ask permission for it.

I'm more pointing out the difference between Copywrite laws that protect the artist and copywrite laws that give more money to corporations.

If the artist gives their permission for someone to bastardize their music, that's their own damn fault.

Misleading Topic

[Jucius Maximus]

The topic "KaZaa Suspends Downloads" is very misleading and is making people think that the ability to download content people have shared on the network is being halted.

This is not the case. They have taken the CLIENT software download off the website. The actual service seems unchanged.

Forget the future, replicator technology is here!

[invckb]

I can replicate most music, right here from my computer. I may have to screw around with different clients, networks, etc, but I can replicate almost any music I would care to hear. Wouldn't it be great I could replicate the beer I am drinking right now? Or the dinner I had a couple of hours ago? Or the computer I bought two months ago? When I was a kid and cared about music a lot, I would make tapes for my friends. It was a lot of work. I had to setup my stuff, flip the LP over, and buy a decent tape for $1 or $2 dollars (not adjusted for inflation). The whole process took at least an hour. Now, I can plop a cd in one player, and a $0.15 blank cd in another, and have a perfect copy in 5 minutes. I can get music from other "friends," whose names I do not know, in just a few minutes, too. I think the music publishers are somewhat worried because they no longer have any manufacturing based advantages over their customers. Book publishers are not worried, because who would bother Xeroxing a book? It would cost more than buying another copy. Sooner or later, the music publishers will figure out the new media, and make even more money, and nobody will care very much. For now, be glad you live in interesting times.

Re:That will not do much

[a random streaker]

> Chinese version of Intel/AMD comes out with a
> "unlocked" linux friendly computer, everyone
> buys it to play their mp3's

That's a strange definition of everyone. I've never seen it defined as "about 10 people" before.

> Hardware isn't that hard to make,

Sorry, "4 people".

Take your racism somewhere else.

[ImaLamer]

when Puff Daddy Blatantly Ripped off the Police (I'll be *MISSING* You?)

Hrmm.. we all saw Sting on MTV singing WITH Puffy right? Puffy has loads of cash, he paid everyone enough to sample those songs.

Shaggy Blatantly Ripped off Steve Miller Band (Listen to ANGEL and then The Joker, my lord!),

Steve Miller Band? Come on! Shaggy has had way more 'hits' than them... they are basically one hit wonders. Whoever ownes the rights to SMB songs needed the cash, trust me. But, just because two songs sound similar doesn't make them the same. Plenty of songs are ripped from each other... you just didn't bother to listen close enough because it's not rap vs. classic rock.

and countless other rappers decided that other *good* classic rock songs didn't actually deserve their copywrites.

It's copyrights and since you are obviously a racist, you should know that the only Rap song that didn't pay to use the beat [etc] is Ice Ice Baby.

But while we are on the subject, most Rap songs don't take beats or lyrics from classic rock songs. They take many of their beats from Funk songs. They also take their beats from other rap songs.

No one ever points out that Country songs take from Classic Rock songs. Just noticed that.

People get paid... this isn't a rip off, it's business. I like Classic Rock first, but I'm also a Rap fan. Sometimes I don't like the 'new' songs, but at times I find myself applauding the 'new' song for the work they've done.

Look at "Changes" by Tupac. It's a good song if you listen to the lyrics. If you don't like it, I'm sure there are other reasons.

Re:Take your racism somewhere else.

[SubtleNuance]

Steve Miller Band? Come on! Shaggy has had way more 'hits' than them... they are basically one hit wonders.

The fucking-asshole-RIAA has this to say about your delusion: Tell me, where is 'shaggy' on this list compared to Steve Miller Band? For the record, Im not a Steve Miller fan. I just feel that 'rap and hip hop' is to the art of music as as television commercials are to the art of theatre. The sole reason for its existence is to sell a product (which the performers are in-and-of-themselves) such as Shaggy, Backside Boys, 2Pac or Brittany Spears. This is not art, its a catchy jingle for the performer-as-artist-product.

you should know that the only Rap song that didn't pay to use the beat [etc] is Ice Ice Baby.

If i recall correctly there was a lawsuit sometime-ago that made sampling legal via compulsory licensing... where ice-ice-baby fits in this is im not sure.

People get paid... this isn't a rip off, it's business.

What? How does 'business' end up being a justification for an act... as if it is self-evident and natural? Give me a break pal.

Take your racism somewhere else. && It's copyrights and since you are obviously a racist

Wow, a little defensive arent we?

It's a good song if you listen to the lyrics. If you don't like it, I'm sure there are other reasons

Not to sound to harsh, im sure there must be some merit and talent somewhere in the rap/hip-hop world... just that 99% of it is blatant pap...here are always exceptions to the rule...

Re:Take your racism somewhere else.

[Genom]

It's copyrights and since you are obviously a racist, you should know that the only Rap song that didn't pay to use the beat [etc] is Ice Ice Baby.

So...if you don't like rap, you're a racist?

But while we are on the subject, most Rap songs don't take beats or lyrics from classic rock songs. They take many of their beats from Funk songs. They also take their beats from other rap songs.

Here's part of the reason I don't like rap music. At the risk of being labelled a "racist" in your eyes, it all seems to sound the same to me. I understand that some people like it, and it's their perogative. I don't begrudge them for liking it. I just don't care for the sound of it myself.

No one ever points out that Country songs take from Classic Rock songs. Just noticed that.

Well, I don't like Country, either - does that mean I'm also racist? Or does it mean that I "even out"? My isagreement with Country is that I have a hard time with "twang" - it just gets on my nerves. (Yes, my musical tastes are rather closed-minded, I guess. Classical, Metal, Rock, Classic Rock, and Jazz)

Look at "Changes" by Tupac. It's a good song if you listen to the lyrics. If you don't like it, I'm sure there are other reasons.

Yep - like not liking rap music in general. =)

Seriously - just because someone makes an overgeneralization towards rap music, it doesn't mean they're racist. They may just not like the sound. They may have obnoxious neighbors that feel it necessary to play rap music at extremely high volumes at 2am during the week. (Hell, that's enough to make you hate any genre of music, if youre someone who has to work during the day, and thus has to be able to sleep at night)

Re:Take your racism somewhere else.

[Anonymous Coward]

OH MY GOD! He doesn't like rap music - he must be a racist! Betcha he's got a KKK hood in his closet!

Re:Take your racism somewhere else.

[ImaLamer]

1) Steve Miller Band: Your RIAA list proves nothing. Look at the top part of the list. Music sales != good music.

2) So classic rock, and only classic rock is the true music? Most artists are about selling their product... music. Listen to the music next time. Sure, lots of hip-hop is commercial, but much more isn't. Tupac for example has some of the most profound things to say about society, that I've ever heard. I guess it's a matter of listening and not judging until you hear it.

3) Vanilla Ice was sued because he ripped off the beat. He claimed that it was different because he, or someone, added on beat every X seconds or whatever. Other artists that sample give full credit, and the record company gives 'points' on the album sales to compensate the 'rip'.

4) If you haven't noticed there is a huge business behind all that music you hear. Plenty of times rappers come up [to stardom] with only lyrics. When they hit the RIAA-fan some white guy in a suit thinks that it would be cool to use the twangs from Stairway to Heaven.

5) Yes, I'm defensive. When I hear this 'rip-off' argument it's being produced by some racist piece of shit. I'm not Black, and that isn't why I jumped.

6) "I'm sure there must be some merit..." Exactly... you don't know because you haven't listened to it.

One thing I can say with confidence though, rock and roll [in general] is a blatant rip-off of other's work anyways. How many times have I listened to covers? By respectable artists, like Jimi Hendrix or even the Beatles? I mean, this is the whole song that is ripped off. The genre was ripped off. 'Nuff said.

All in all, I'm still a good classic rock fan. Just keep that Steve Miller bullshit away from me.

Re:Take your racism somewhere else.

[ImaLamer]

No no... I really didn't mean to imply that anyone who hates hip-hop/rap is racist.

Who cares what you like? I don't.

My point is, the same old song and dance [Aerosmith] that we hear about it being ripped off is perpetuated by people who are racists. [usually]

Yes, there is sampling, yes there is full 'beat-stealing'. But 99% of the time people are getting paid for it. Do you think a big time commercial guy like Master P [whom I don't like] is going to risk his multi-million dollar empire by copying a few drum hits? No... the original artists get points on the album and get paid depending on album sales.

Seriously - just because someone makes an overgeneralization towards rap music, it doesn't mean they're racist.

No, it makes them prejudice :-)

I still stick to my statement: "All white people are prejudice" [joke, like GNU]

For the record, i'm white.

Re:Take your racism somewhere else.

[ImaLamer]

Maybe...

hey is this Ralph The Jew Hater?

I think you missed my point. Hit parent and read my replies to people with usernames.... you'll figure it out.

Re:Take your racism somewhere else.

[SubtleNuance]

1) Steve Miller Band: Your RIAA list proves nothing. Look at the top part of the list. Music sales != good music.

So you agree with me? I was disagreeing with you that Shaggy has had way more 'hits' than them... they are basically one hit wonders definition of artistic value... thats how *you* defined it until i presented the RIAA list, at which time you changed your mind about what 'success' is. Holy shit man, you cant argue by agreeing with me.

2) So classic rock, and only classic rock is the true music?

No, who said it was?

Most artists are about selling their product...No, publishers are about selling a product. Being an "artist" means you are compelled to create by your very existence. An "Artist" doesnt care to sell millions of units, sure, he likes to eat (as do us all), but he wont stop being an artist if it ceased being 'profitable'. If he did, he wouldnt have been an "artist" in the first place.

Tupac for example has some of the most profound things to say about society, that I've ever heard. I guess it's a matter of listening and not judging until you hear it.

Agreed. Ive never listened to Tupac. I have no opinion of the lyrics (or music). This is why i said "there are exceptions..".

3) Vanilla Ice was sued because he ripped off the beat. He claimed that it was different because he, or someone, added on beat every X seconds or whatever. Other artists that sample give full credit, and the record company gives 'points' on the album sales to compensate the 'rip'.

I believe that the legal issue had not been made of rap-sampling until this(??) test case. After this(??) test case a rap-sampler was required to pay royalties to the original copy-right owner.. again.. Compulsory license of music, for the purpose of rap-sampling was created.

4) If you haven't noticed there is a huge business behind all that music you hear.

you dont know what kind of music I listen to... Ill just tell you that your wrong. I dont pay for music that has been time-shifted (i copy it all from friends and dload mp3s). I also listen to allot of self-published artists.

Plenty of times rappers come up [to stardom] with only lyrics. When they hit the RIAA-fan some white guy in a suit thinks that it would be cool to use the twangs from Stairway to Heaven.

What kind of racist crap is that? Hey man, WTF is this "white guy with suits" bullshit. That is pretty fucking racist, IMHO. Or, are you trolling.. hmmm.

5) Yes, I'm defensive. When I hear this 'rip-off' argument it's being produced by some racist piece of shit.

Suggesting the music is 'ripped off' doesnt make the guy a racist. If the guy is racist it doesnt make the music *not* riped off. There is no relationship. Also, the 'ripping off' argument in music is worthless, mostly done by self-congratulatory music-wonks trying to pull a turf-pissing match with a commoner. Art can be the inspiration for other works, only when you involve capitalist-copy-right && $ does this become an issue.. the whole idea is bunk.

All in all, I'm still a good classic rock fan. Just keep that Steve Miller bullshit away from me.

...again, your jerking your knee, when i explicitly said "im not a fan".

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

Re:Take your racism somewhere else.

[ImaLamer]

Oh... here I go.

Shaggy has had at least two hits, one more than Steve Miller Band.

No, I'm sorry, but most artists are about selling their product. Sometimes there are self-less artists out there, but you don't hear them on the radio... no matter what genre you like. This even goes for painters etc. Even John Lennon, imagine it, was into making some cash.

You stated that Tupac was one of the no-ability, rip-off artists. Yes you did. Doesn't matter because you shouldn't have an opinion on something you know nothing about. I HATE GOAT SEX?

It's simple. When you use something, or sample, the copyright holder gets a point on the album. Maybe two. This goes back to Sugar Hill days. If I used your beat, you get a 'point'. I ususally get 30-40 points. The record label gets the rest [out of 100] and uses it to pay for the costs, cars, etc.

Sure, you listen to those guys who are out there doing all for the 'art'. I'm sure. I won't even touch that one.

I'm racist because the record industry is owned and operated by white guys? How can you fight this? Look back. Rock and Roll, white's fought this black devil music, then one guy liked it. Next thing you know it's all whites, and to this day white guys in suits rip off black artists. Motown?

Suggesting the music is ripped off is racist, most of the time. Never do I hear about whites doing the same thing. It is because the person is RACIST! That's right. When you can easily point out all the times blacks do it, and you don't bother to look at when whites do it, that makes you a racist. The person may not think that they are racist, but that doesn't not make them a racist. If I liked guys, but I don't think I'm gay... guess what, I'm still gay.

STFU about Steve Miller, I know you are NOT [NOT] a fan.

The ultimate irony

[James1006]

Okay, they have shutoff downloads of the client from their website.

Wouldn't the ultimate irony be if people then used their own Kazaa/Morpheus clients to move the client .exe file and post it elsewhere?

I think Morpheus and Kazaa and the ilk do exactly what the internet was designed to do: Survive a major failure at one point and still operate (in this case share the client files).

Granted, shutting down the Kazaa Master Servers would be a huge hit, but that is the point of distributing them to multiple people, across multiple providers around the globe.

This is the wrong way to do it.

[arikb]

KaZaA are supposedly acting in accordance with the court decision by stopping download of their software - BUT - this will not stop the network from existing.

In order to really stop the network from existing, the KaZaA guys nead to really break it - for instance, force a download of a newer version of KaZaA media desktop and disable it on a particluar date.

Thinking about it, maybe the versions we all have contains a remote control code which disables them, thus disabling the entire network.

It is enough that the network is inactive for a few days or fragmented enough to make it stop. There are some mechanisms built into KaZaA to prevent that from happening, but it is not impossible.

-- Arik

Re:This is the wrong way to do it.

[James1006]

Breaking the client 'could' work.

DirecTV did it in its electronic warfare against pirates. However I do believe it took a lot of time to fully squash them (I believe there was an article here on /. regarding that).

At risk of tangenting, in a free software environment (free as in speech), this could never exist. I would say that is one obvious benefit of OSS there.

Re:This is the wrong way to do it.

[josh crawley]

Still, this is yet another version of Obscurity. So what if they release a broken client/server. I've already got source to kazaa-like places (I used it to connect my linux box to them). Personally, I archive everything I get my grubby fingers on. As an example, I found a place I could download VirtualDub 1.3d, the avi editor that could convert ASF's. Yet another example is that I still use WinAMP 2.23 , and yes it's still shareware. I don't trust the AoL version until I comb the code. It'll have to be ASM, but I want to look for network tattletale code. Well, all of my data (in collecting rarelike downloads), I have about 4 archive cd's.

Josh Crawley
contact if you need something ,ahem, rare.
jwcrawle aght iupui daught edu (just say it out loud)

good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

at least, by not being able to download kazaa, you don't get the spyware :-)

Re:speaking of rights...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone should reply to this post...that way, it will be evident that every single reply will immediately be modded down by one of the editors/censors.

Re:UK RIP act

[Graspee_Leemoor]

I live in the uk and have lots of encrypted stuff- if they ask me to turn over my decryption keys I'll just say- it's not encrypted! It's supposed to be like that!

Kinda like having a sentence "oeurlal/aouws/lou##" on your hard drive and claiming that's what it's supposed to say.

All my stuff is encrypted with my own super secret encryption which means the encryption is undoubtedly super-weak compared to real systems, but hey- I like writing it, and security/obscurity.

graspee

When cool stuff gets posted by PC World, etc.

[DraconPern]

How? Easy, just tell the writers at all those magazines that target the population at large to write an article about a 'useful' ;) tool or service (eg. DVD Genie in the January 15th PCWorld newsletter). The general public downloads the program, use it, and the worst part is flaunt it. "Look ma, I can play these DVD's that are cheaper from other countries." Soon after, everyone and their grandma knows about it. D'oh, attention from the authorities and soon followed by a lawsuit from a company.

doomsayethyou?

[BEA6D]

I went out for drinks tonight, and when I returned kazaa was still operational [as a service(duh)].
A google search for the full install package's filename revealed an online download site (from taiwan).

what's the big deal?

It's a shame the youth of today seem to be, more and more, sucking off masses of random media and imagery, and not learning more about how things work.

I enjoy any kind of outage for the fact that it usually provides me with some fresh air and exercise. too bad this crap is redundant.

then again - I suppose you COULD learn something from porn.

peace.

Re:Important!

[Anonymous Coward]

lol...the linked post keeps getting modded down like there's no tomorrow....too bad everyone browsing at 0 or above doesn't get to see the slimy, censoring dark side of slashdot.

They're going to lose.

[bigmaddog]

Why? Because their opposition has more money, and you can't fight money in this money-driven society of ours.
What's going on is nothing new, and it is a well known and (mostly) accepted fact that it's all about wealth (money). Some people resist this notion, but they usually end up not having the money to prove their point, or to even survive for that matter. Wealth is what makes you smarter, stronger, and generally better. If you own more stuff than the next guy, you're better than the next guy. It's even better if you own the next guy. It's been going on since the guy with a club met the guy with a rock and they founded a town between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Since then, it's been slavery, empires, slavery, more empires, some more slavery, feudalism, slavery, colonization, good amounts of slavery, empires, slavery, industrial revolution, glorious amounts of slavery, and now, in the 21st century, we are in the age of law, and if you follow the pattern, what's bound to follow is slavery. I don't know about you, but I can't wait.

Re:UK RIP act

[sconeu]

dd if=/dev/random of=somefile.crypt count=437k

repeat as needed.

They'll go crazy trying to figure out what you've got encrypted there!

Who cares, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kazaa sucks anyway! Wasn't it Kazaa who had trojan program shipped nicely with it's client?! Perhaps I should sue them for abusing my computer.

Rate this post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll, Redundant, Insightful, Informative, Interesting, Funny
Well, all these words describe me perfectly.

(Score : Montreal:1 - Carolina:1)

Hey, people just being reasonable :)

[saikou]

It's easy. If the track you want is not available from Emusic what are you going to do?
I want new Vangelis. EMusic has a whopping TWO albums of "Best songs" from 1984. Sweet. Oh wait... I already have those, bought for less than $5 each. Now I am supposed to pay 9.99 per month for right to download those two albums. I don't think it's a good deal.

As for other new services where you can pay for download -- you either can't burn downloaded copies or you have to pay a full price (that exceeds the cost of a "regular" CD album) with a limit of songs. Until it gets to the level of Tivo where for 9.95 a month I can record and play and do whatever I want with the tv shows without limits it won't be a good deal and big guys will be giving out interviews screaming that "those bastards don't want to use our legal system!". Hope they'll get smart one day :)

Your recipe for a society

[Anonymous Coward]

Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism

A recipe for a society where the weak are crushed and utter selfishness has been made a virtue.

Reason, socialism and solidarity

Nasssty, nasssty sun.

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention, summer

The yellow face! It burns us, my precious!

Re:fuckin awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about "facetious", but you're certainly a grade-A fuckhead.

RIAA has become one of us?

[Anonymous Coward]

the RIAA has been assimilated

I do not think that means what you think it means.

Hollywood makes billions of dollars

[Convergence]

Which is chump change. Telephone and communications companies make more in a year than hollywood has made SINCE THE INVENTION OF THE VCR.

Furthermore, they, as a group, have a monopoly on the creation of new fictional entertainment... Does this give you ideas?

If hollywood could (say) get even a small part of the communications (aka, the delivery) pie, they'd make more money a year than they do now.

Does this give you ideas for other sources of revenue? Make everything literally free (to download) on the internet. With, maybe, a royalty on home-user (IE, non-business) bandwidth, with statistical sampling to determine how much of that royalty should go to which entertainment industries for mass-market entertainment. Maybe add in hard drives or cd blanks. Basically, make something similar to the Audio-CDR mechanism.

After all, if they increased home telephone/communication bills by even 10% for such a royalty. 100 million people spending $100/month (cable, telephone, internet), with a 10% royalty toward entertainment production starts moving into the billions of dollars/year range.

Not only that, but suddenly there is MUCH less fighting over copyrights, hollywood doesn't have to worry about extra duplication, caues every duplication is more profit for them. It lets people do whatever they want on and with their computers.

Yeah, its annoying, and if you only backup your hard drive onto CD's, you're subsidizing brittney spears. But on the other hand, it *will* give hollywood billions and billions of dollars, and stop digital control technology.

And, in such a world, napster/gnutella/morpheus for movies would be the best thing ever for movies. 10x the bandwidth, means 10x the money coming in! Furthermore, they could make even more money from premium servers where you pay, but you get high-quality, uncorrupted, fast downloads.

The idea is to not fight humanity, but try to go along with them.

I heard about this idea, oh, about 3 years ago.

So, what do you think.

Re:Hollywood makes billions of dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

a great idea.. difficult to implement. especially such cooperation between two seperate industries, as the communications-industry side would hold most of the chips. at the current time, there doesn't seem to be enough of a cry for change to support a revolution.

Re:Hollywood makes billions of dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

they, as a group, have a monopoly on the creation of new fictional entertainment...

what?

Re:Hollywood makes billions of dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, not a bad idea. At the same time, I take exception to this statement:

"The idea is to not fight humanity, but try to go along with them."

Maybe you meant the rest of humanity. It irks me when people forget that politicians and industry executives are humans and citizens just like the rest of us.

Re:Hollywood makes billions of dollars

[StevenMaurer]

Yeah, its annoying, and if you only backup your hard drive onto CD's, you're subsidizing brittney spears. But on the other hand, it *will* give hollywood billions and billions of dollars, and stop digital control technology.

Here's the problem with that. How would anyone know which artists to subsidize? As it happens right now, sales go directly to the artist who is currently actually selling music (whether or not the establishment *likes* the music), not just to whoever some "music commission" decided had artistic merit.

Further, if you don't like the power media companies have over artists now, imagine what it would be like in a world where they get no direct credit for anything they create. The "music commission" would no doubt end up being filled with industry lobbists who would try to funnel as much cash as they could to the media conglomerates, starving the people who actually stimulated demand in the first place.

This idea is a non-starter. I'll take the current system over it, warts and all.

Re:Hollywood makes billions of dollars

[Artifex]

Does this give you ideas for other sources of revenue? Make everything literally free (to download) on the internet. With, maybe, a royalty on home-user (IE, non-business) bandwidth, with statistical sampling to determine how much of that royalty should go to which entertainment industries for mass-market entertainment. Maybe add in hard drives or cd blanks. Basically, make something similar to the Audio-CDR mechanism.

What a scary thought. This would make artists even more subject to patronage than they are under the current system. Remember, at least now you can come up with your own money and release what you want independently, and it may find a market. If business can effectively control the means of delivery, you won't be able to do that without cutting deals... and those deals will be excruciating for the little guy.

Of course I am being a bit extreme here; independent producers could find alternate methods of delivery. But still... look back to the roots of artistic patronage, when museums and "salons" were solely showcases for the baubles of the rich. Great things came out of counter-movements to that paradigm - but lots of good and important artists and ideas starved while it was still dominant. Or look more recently at MTV (since the whole recording industry is too byzantine to summarize here). When it first came out, it had a monopoly on playing music videos, and could directly control what millions of teens saw - and so not only commanded billions from advertisers, but also from record companies... not to mention asserting "creative control" in other ways as well. (Who do you think made the "a" in "alternative" a capital letter? The same people who now sell you pre-rumpled plaid shirts and jeans for more than "dress" clothes. ) Even now, the "discoveries" or "underground" bands that get airtime go through rigorous vetting and are brought in primarily for novelty and market share.

We must remain vigilant when new technologies get introduced, that there are no hidden strings attached. By the way, the best way to see that alternative and free technologies get chosen by the masses over what industry will offer them is to make it available to them in ways they can use - that means making your super-cool new codecs and software available for MS-Windows and Mac, not just for *nix and BSD, because otherwise, for most of them, it's still no choice at all.

Re:Hollywood makes billions of dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. Radio, Jukebox and performance fees are paid based on the sampling. The prior post was a good one - and while it may not be perfect, it is workable.

Re:Hollywood makes billions of dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

It irks me when people forget that politicians and industry executives are humans and citizens just like the rest of us.

They are? Some of them would be the first to deny it...

Finding KaZaA for linux.

[1%warren]

search for kza.linux.tar.gz on one of the other P2P's - If someone hasn't already mailed it to you - it's only 287KB.

IMHO, wasn't it something else?

[Convergence]

Isn't the real reason for the war the fact that they didn't turn over the terrorists?

IE, we're not invading them because they have terrorists inside their borders (in which case, we'd have to invade half of the world), but because they didn't turn over *the* group of terrorists that killed 3000 of our people.

Re:IMHO, wasn't it something else?

[Boiling_point_]

[+1 bonus self-removed cos this is OT]

Not sure if you meant it, but your comment supports what I said - The US blamed the Taliban because they were aiding and abetting bin Laden. They had no mechanism to simply walk into another country other than picking a fight with a nation-state.

(disclaimer: War is not simple, nor do we get all the facts. Probably only about a dozen, fully briefed people worldwide are "in the know" enough to be qualified to judge whether what's going on is "moral" and "just". I am an Australian with access to the same media as you - hence my "rightly or wrongly" comment.)

Re:IMHO, wasn't it something else?

[gorilla]

Nations don't normally hand over accused criminals unless the nation requesting extradition provides reasonable evidence that those accused may have committed the crime and usally that the requesting nation will treat them in a fashion which is compatable with what the originating nation would expect, no torture, or other cruel inhuman or degrading treatments. In otherwords, if Ebolia demands extradition of George W. Bush for the crime of eating pork, then the US is not going to hand over George W. Bush. Even if eating pork was a crime in the US, Ebolia is still going to have show that GWB is a reasonable suspect. It's also very rare for a nation to extradite unless there is a treaty with the requesting nation.

The US refused to show the Taliban the evidence they claim they have against bin Laden. Afganistan also has not extradition treaty with the US. The Taliban was therefore justified under international law to not extradite bin Laden.

Re:IMHO, wasn't it something else?

[Anonymous Coward]

>The Taliban was therefore justified under international law to not extradite bin Laden.

I'm sure that's a tremendous consolation to them, knowing they were in the right. ;-)

Re:IMHO, wasn't it something else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. People can't listern to music. They can't have music in wedding etc. Seen that on CNN or MSNBC (aren't they the same anyway), so it must be true.

I bet the RIAA is some how involved. I am not sure which side though.(Restricting music is their style.)

IMPORTANT

[baron000]

IMPORTANT: Please read the whole post

I'm sure many of you are aware of this thread already.

If you are interested in helping against the moderators who have been "editing" the thread, please read this.

Please do not moderate this post down. It is good for the long term, but if you still feel like being someone who denies the horrible truth, give me your best shot. You will help hold all of Slashdot users back in the long term.

For more info, read this piece from an apparently superior news site.

Good

[TheCrunch]

Personally, I'd like to see Kazaa, Grokster & Morpheus taken down. Don't get me wrong, I'm an avid Grokker, but every time a popular P2P service gets taken down, a newer and better one rises to the top.

When people wanted more than Napster, Scour appeared. When they both stopped, Kazaa etc.. hit the scene.

It's only a matter of time before Kazaa etc.. are stopped completely and I look forward to the "next big thing". Although annoying, this leads to progress and I hope it'll end up with a P2P network that you *can't* kill and that's better than Gnutella.

Still a virgin?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really bothered by their grunts and sweat

So, you're still a virgin?

Sex involves "grunts" and lots of sweat -- at least if done properly.

It won't work without the spyware.

[1%warren]

You can choose not to install Gator etc, but if you remove Aureate/Cydoor, KaZaA just pops up a message that "You have uninstalled a part of KaZaA that is needed to run. KaZaA will quit now, so you can reinstall it."

BTW, the Linux client doesn't have any spyware. Guess they figured there wasn't much mileage in ASCII banner ads.

Re:It won't work without the spyware.

[Rude Turnip]

Hey, is that why iMesh won't start for me? I opted not to install Cydoor.

Re:you cant fool me

[spongman]

yeah, either that or I'm currently sharing over 100Gb of files. take your pick.

Re:you cant fool me

[spongman]

over 3 networks (morpheus, gnutella, audiogalaxy), and on a T1... man, what a leech i am. (Hi Hilary.)

Don't complain, do something.

[inKubus]

When was the last time you send your congressperson a letter? When was the last time you then got all of your friends to send your congressperson a letter? It might take 5 fucking minutes, but everyone is so lazy and apathetic these days. If you feel strongly enough about it to emphasize FUCK, I suggest you do something. As least maybe it will ease your troubled mind a bit. Besides, if every one simply goes about doing what they do with good intentions, eventually everything will work out. We are not helpless.

Re:Don't complain, do something.

[mark_lybarger]

it's gotta take at least a couple hours. come on. you have to search for their snail address. write the letter, make it all nice and pretty, good sounding. shove it in an envelope, attach the 0.32 postage or whatever the current going rate is, and then shove it in a mail slot. and that's just for it to be read by some college student intern and given some smack reply. my goal for Feb. will be to write a letter to someone in office and see what the response is.

Re:Don't complain, do something.

[Spankophile]

I think we need an online service, that lets you write letters to politicians.

I.e. You get an online interface, a simple text box in which you can write your complaint, and a list of politicians from which you can select (or even multi-select/mail-merge).

The service charges for postage/consumables via paypal, and someone then looks after printing your letter, and mailing it to the appropriate person.

That makes bitching convenient, which is what lazy /.ers want. It also makes their bitching more effective, which is something /. doesn't offer.

Re:Don't complain, do something.

[NonovUrbizniz]

Or you could just email them

Re:Don't complain, do something.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you are on the left you may find this service useful http://www.progressivesecretary.org

they send the letters to your mail box and you just need to approve them or not approve them..
once approved, they send the e-mail for you

Re:Don't complain, do something.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it makes your bitching less effective. The more effort you're willing to put into speaking your mind, the more people will listen to you. If you're not willing to go to the trouble to send snail mail, then your congresperson probably figures you aren't going to go to the trouble to vote, either.

Re:Don't complain, do something.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

With snail mail, at least they have to throw something physical out instead of just hitting delete....

Re:Don't complain, do something.

[Mike the Mac Geek]

I send about a letter a month. Snail mail, as well as fax and email. I keep doing it, even as I see my rights slowly eroded away. I need to buy my own congressman.

Only on Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

would "authentification" be a word.

Re:Only on Slashdot...

[RadioheadKid]

that's hilarious, what was I thinking...sounds like some kind of shit-your-pants disorder...

LIMEWIRE? Trojan backdoor.

[Anonymous Coward]

LimeWire contains trojan backdoor program.

Napshare

[evilviper]

It's amazing how closely this lawsuit coincides with the release of Napshare v1.0. Napshare v1.0 being the best Gnutella client out there.

Based loosely on GTK-Gnutella, it has the best features I've seen in any type of downloader. You feed it a string to search for, the minimum file size, a string that the files SHOULD NOT contain, and the minimum server speed if you like. (someone I know *cough**cough*) personally downloaded Jurassic Park 3 and Pulp Fiction in the past 2 days since they got Napshare... and that's 700MB/piece over a SLOW cable-modem (30KBps/7KBps).

Did I mention it's been running for two days constantly, under heavy load, without any memory leaks, and not a single crash.

Re:Napshare

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that impressive. I have morpheus running 24/7 for weeks in a row on a 486 under win95 without crashing/memory leaks. This still leave some CPU time.

Gnutella on the other hand sucks my bandwidth, CPU etc. and is slow.

Re:Napshare

[evilviper]

I have morpheus running 24/7 for weeks in a row on a 486 under win95 without crashing/memory leaks.

I don't even believe that Win 95 would not crash on it's own in that time so I'll ignore this comment. But I will say that Napshare is still running...

Gnutella on the other hand sucks my bandwidth, CPU etc. and is slow.

Gnutella is as slow as you make it. It's completely configurable. If you only have 1 host, you'll use up only a tiny ammount of bandwidth, and can still participate.

CPU? It all depends on the client. There are dozens of implimentations out there and universally globbing them together just shows ignorance on your part.

Slow? Slow how? If it's anything in addition to the above, you need to point out exactly how it's SLOW for you.

GPL = Intellectual Theft???

[KlomDark]

WTF? Your dumb little rant on the GPL is retarded. The GPL only states that you have to distribute the code if you distribute your binaries. If you do an in-house code change, and never distribute that change, you DO NOT have to distribute your source code.

You are insane, or a Microsoft shill.

The best part about Kazza...

[Agent Green]

...was the fact that a huge file could be downloaded from several people that had the same file. In essence, enough people with 1.5mb down 300kb up cable modems could effectively share a file with a guy on a DS3 and have it be efficient.

I don't know of any other file sharing clients that allow this kind of transfer capability, so if anyone knows of one, it might be a good idea to get the hype started!

Re:The best part about Kazza...

[cryosis]

EDonkey will do that. I've had good luck with it. It's kinda KaZZa mixed with Hotline.

Re:The best part about Kazza...

[PMan88]

limewire version 2 does

How in the FUCK did we get to this point?

[phalse phace]

I think it's called capitalism and pure evil greed.

ok, so the first port of call is blocked...

[posmon]

i can only assume that all the mirror sites have complied.

I noticed this a couple of days ago

[rograndom]

I went to download the Windows client a couple of days ago and the download page on Kazaa.com said something to the effect of "Downloads are temporarly unavailable". But meanwhile the little download counter on the top of the page was still chugging along past 3mil downloads or so.

a step in the right direction

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite that this client is available elsewhere, just hearing that is is slowed in spreading is wonderful. This kind of application was installed by a f**king 20-something moron on my network at work - hosed a T-1 for almost three hours. I'll bet she got a really good rating as a source. This crap deserves a slow painful death into oblivion.

Re:UK RIP act

[plumby]

Unfortunately that doesn't help.

(2) If any person with the appropriate permission under Schedule 2 believes, on reasonable grounds-

(a) that a key to the protected information is in the possession of any person,

(b) that the imposition of a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information is-

(i) necessary on grounds falling within subsection (3), or

(ii) necessary for the purpose of securing the effective exercise or proper performance by any public authority of any statutory power or statutory duty,

(c) that the imposition of such a requirement is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by its imposition, and

(d) that it is not reasonably practicable for the person with the appropriate permission to obtain possession of the protected information in an intelligible form without the giving of a notice under this section,

the person with that permission may, by notice to the person whom he believes to have possession of the key, impose a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information.



In other word, if they believe that your data is encrypted, then they can impose a disclosure requirement on you. Not supplying the key is an offence under the act. The only defence is to prove that the document isn't encrypted. This is one of the many problems with the act, that you have to prove that a random block of bytes that they have discovered on your hard disk is not really encrypted.

Copyright

[btrain]

Dosen't the word imply a right to copy?

Re:Copyright

[WebMasterJoe]

Yeah, if you OWN it. If you copied it, you're not the owner.

Get your linux kazaa here

[iocc]

http://www.mds.mdh.se/~cel95eig/secret/k_M_d_/

Here can u get both the windows and the linux version.

FYI - OT

[GungaDan]

"Angel of the Morning," from which the Shaggy tune "Angel" is blatantly ripped (not the Steve Miller Band's "Joker"), was recorded by Merrilee Rush in the early 1960s (possibly late '50s?) and repopularized in the late '70s/early '80s by Juice Newton. Agreed on the premise of your post, but had to niggle on the attribution error. BTW - didn't Vanilla Ice have Billy Joel's permission WRT "Pressure/Under Pressure?" That was much more than a sample he "borrowed."

Re:FYI - OT

[EllisDees]

You're both right. Shaggy ripped off both Steve Miller and Merrilee Rush in the same song. Also, Queen originally sang the sone "Under Pressure" and Vanilla Ice definitely didn't have permission to use it.

Re:FYI - OT

[cooley]

the Billy Joel song "Pressure" is different. This is a Queen song called "Under Pressure", written by David Bowie (who also recorded the song, singing lead vocals with the dudes from Queen).

ill bite

[SubtleNuance]

it's amazing that the _protection and preservation one's rightful property_ transformed overnight from an inalienable human right acknowledged by almost every society (though not by every political system) throughout time, into an "obsolete business practice."

Intellectual Property is a fiction, it is not property (as in tangible asset) at all. The act of creation ceases when the work is born, only in the 'intellectual property world" does a producer feel the right to control a work once he has borne it. Does a plumber call you and ask for a fee every time you flush your toilet? No, neither should a musician, actor, author or inventor ask for fees to exercise the purpose of their past creation. Meaning, that by its regular availability, the thing *has been created* and no further compensation is necessary.

If I copy a book, I am creating a book. The original author was not present or required to make my copy - why should he be compensated? If a creator feels he needs to reach some artificial economics of scale to make his time worthwhile, thats his issue -- i refuse to have *MY* liberties eroded to enforce a concept of capitalist business practice. The creator has no business telling me what I may or may not do with my own time and equipment.

Intellectual Property, (Copyright, Trademarks and Patents) have no place in an intellectually free society. Intellectual Property is a tool of economics and not a 'rightful property by inalienable human right' -- to suggest such is absolutely ridiculous. It is neither a 'right' nor a natural, self-evident thing. It is a concept, a construct, an agreement... and those who would use it as a economic hammer are no longer entitled to it.

I no longer purchase any item that would re-enforce this system. I copy all my music CDs*, I download movies and use the library for all books and magazines. I also advocate the rest of us do as well.

Ideas dont exist in a vacuum, and to suggest that a creation of the mind has a sole creat or with inalienable right to then control it is offensive to the rest of us.

* Canadians, because our government collects a fee for the RIAA types with every CDR sold, are legally allowed to make copies of Music CDs OTHERS have bought at record stores. Stop buying and burn those discs!

Re:ill bite

[afedaken]

Discounting your second paragraph, which falls under fair use clauses, what you're saying is that once something has been created once, that because we are capable of copying it, that the creator can not reasonably expect to be rewarded for his work.

You sir are a LEECH.

It's precidely this sort of attitude that Copyright is designed to thwart. While we *CAN* infinately reproduce almost any work created, in the end, removing the incentives and rewards of creating will lead to a decline in creation. Intellectual Property is indeed an artifical coneccpt, one designed to foster and promote creation. It has a place in any society that decides that promoting creation is in it's economic and social interest.

I'll agree to the idea that the powers that be are abusing the concept of Copyright, (yes, the RIAA is trying to protect itself, and it's monopoly on the distribution of music, they're not attempting to foster the creation of music....) but that doesen't justify deliberately flaunting the law, nor taking away from the creators the rightful earnings.

When you say "I copy all my music CDs", you're comitting piracy plain and simple. You don't wanna give the RIAA or the artists your money? Fine. Then don't buy any CD's, see any movies, or consume any other media. If you don't PAY for it, and you don't get it via available LEGAL means, you're still not entitled to STEAL it."

Re:ill bite

[SubtleNuance]

what you're saying is that once something has been created once, that because we are capable of copying it, that the creator can not reasonably expect to be rewarded for his work.

Yes, that is what i am saying. If I write a song. only the activity of writing it should be compensated - not the use of it after it has been performed/written. The * act * of creation should be compensated. Simple. If i was a carpenter, would I collect a fee for every comfy-night you spend in bed??? NO!

It is exactly the same, patents and copy-written material are not magic. If they exist then the work required to create them has ceased. It is in the past -- what makes these things so special that their control, and the 'right' of the builder causes such a pile of ill-logic and nonsense as copyright and patent law?

You sir are a LEECH.

And you excrete dogma without a mite of critical thought. You are a PUPPET.

It's precisely this sort of attitude that Copyright is designed to thwart.

No, copyrights were granted to people to protect them from printing press owners. Copyright was granted to a person so he could sell his works. Capitalists have, by making themselves legal-persons (amongst other plutocratic-borne legislation in the USA), granted themselves copyrights... the concept was built to protect a person from publishers. Not publishers from people. Dont try and pretend this is not the case, it is indisputable and intellectually dishonest to suggest otherwise. This discussion is not a debate -- as in public debate as an exercise -- are you honestly presenting this as your opinion?

removing the incentives and rewards of creating will lead to a decline in creation.

Untrue. Intellectual Property was created all through time -- it is society itself... without copyright and patents the mechanisms through which people would have incentive would change. Was Matisse given a copyright? Mozart?

RIAA is trying to protect itself, and it's monopoly on the distribution of music, they're not attempting to foster the creation of music.

Agreed.

but that doesen't justify deliberately flaunting the law, nor taking away from the creators the rightful earnings.

Actually it does. Civil disobedience is an act of a free society. If 50%+1 of the population decides to ignore a law it should be changed - the consequences are ours to reap. If it proved true that creation ceased when copyright ended (it wouldnt) then the people would pay the consequence -- or make a new offer to potential producers. Not being a 'producer' in this dynamic doesnt mean we are with out rights. If the persons (like yourself) willing to accept this construct + the creators ("artists" (or RIAA))
But that is how (im sure you would agree) a democratic and free society should work. Im not suggesting the USA is this place, but that is another issue, and a much bigger problem.

When you say "I copy all my music CDs", you're committing piracy plain and simple.

No, by law, in Canada I am fully entitled to do this. My government has changed the construct of copyright to encourage the act. It is not "piracy".

http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq03.html#S3-33-2
http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml#copy_for_friend s

If you don't PAY for it, and you don't get it via available LEGAL means, you're still not entitled to STEAL it.

Life is not about money. Watching a movie or listening to music has zero effect on the producer (no incremental cost) - what part of this basic problem with the capitalist-economics of copyright are you not understanding?

Re:ill bite

[Anonymous Coward]

And you excrete dogma without a mite of critical thought. You are a PUPPET.

Funny, thats exactly what comes to my mind when I read your post...

Re:ill bite

[tonedevil]

Easy enough to say as AC.

Re:ill bite

[RalphSlate]

This is almost undoubtably a troll, but I'll respond anyways since some unenlightend people may still cling to this idea.

Intellectual Property is a fiction, it is not property (as in tangible asset) at all. The act of creation ceases when the work is born, only in the 'intellectual property world" does a producer feel the right to control a work once he has borne it.

You state this as a fact, yet it is opposite of what the law says. Intellectual property is a reality, and there are laws that back it up.

You may not like it, but that doesn't matter -- the law is what governs you, and if you choose to ignore it, then you are doing so at the risk of the penalties written in that law.

If you don't buy that argument, would you like it if I walked into you house and said "Property rights are a fiction; everything is derived from the earth, which no one owns, so you can't possibly own that DVD player", and walk out with it? Who made you the supreme lawmaker so that you can declare that "intellectual property is a fiction", claiming that all such works are in the public domain? How could you even be so arrogant.

Ralph

Re:ill bite

[AKAJack]

Before copyright there were other ways to protect work. Mozart had a patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, who underwrote his needs so that he could spend he day doing whatever he wanted.

Because Mozart's patron allowed his music to be freely performed does not mean that it was always that way. Kings and princes always had court composers and they jealously guarded their music.

Handel's patron (George I, the first of the Hanoverian kings) jealously guarded "water music."

Please remember at the time you couldn't "copy" music unless you could sit in the audience with a quill pen and follow along! Actually Mozart could do this, but not many others.

It was easy to protect music back then and hard to steal it. Don't think people wouldn't have if they could. The technology didn't exist.

Jump ahead to the 1890's where the rampant bootleging of sheet music was a huge business (please refer to http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/mann.htm )

From the above article a reference to Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame:

"The irate Sullivan filed lawsuit after lawsuit in U.S. courts, but only dented the trade. To prevent the pirating of The Pirates of Penzance, he long refused to publish the score; bouncers prowled every show to stop music thieves from writing down the melodies."

Let's face it, in U.S. society you are not going to do much with out being paid for it. So change the law, but until then buy what you use, or move to Canada where it is apparently legal now. (Yes, I know the original author lives there, I'm speaking to everyone else.)

Society values artistic works and society (Through the govenment) grants the creators a limited license to profit from their works in order to better society. That's the theory anyway. Maybe it's gotten out of hand, but the "music and information want to be free" approach doesn't really motivate humans to create great things.

Even throughout history people like Mozart have been motivated by "compensation" to produce new creative works.

Having people enjoy what you do is great, but even if they enjoy it how do you make a living if you can't sell it? If you sell one song to a company for a million dollars and that company sells two million copies of the song for one dollar each that is motivation for you to write more songs and for the company to buy more from you. If the company buys the same song and only sells one thousand copies at one dollar each, but later discovers two million copies have been made for free they are motivated to only pay you five hundred dollars for your next song, or to ask society to grant them a limited right to distribute your song, and the protection from counterfeits of your song.

So somebody loses. Either you no longer can make a living writing songs and you find other work, or the company lays off staff because they don't need a big distribution network anymore to deliver one thousand copies of a new song.

While you seem to have "higher ideals" about what is right and wrong it doesn't play in reality. Your carpenter analogy is flawed because I can't easily duplicate the house with little or no effort. If I could then you better believe the carpenter would want $5 for every night you spend in your new house because a new house would only be worth a few thousand dollars! There would also be much fewer carpenters who could make a living building houses (sort of like few musicians who can fully support themselves only selling songs.)

While IP has always been created through time it has always been protected by rule, religion, or force. People didn't share fire - they stole it from each other. The Egyptians didn't give their knowledge of mummification away to anyone that asked. The Library of Alexandria (aka "The Kings Library") wasn't a place you or I could lend a book from. Knowledge really was power. Ptolemy III paid the sum of fifteen talents of silver (a vast amount) to be allowed to copy the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

So while the ancient scholars and composers may not have had our modern day protection of copyright, please don't confuse that with no protection at all.

Re:ill bite

[Anonymous Coward]

Curious - what do you do for a living?

Re:ill bite

[Anonymous Coward]

what, you cut-n-paste last year's term paper?

Re:ill bite

[SubtleNuance]

That was very lucid and compelling. Thank you. I will consider it.

Re:ill bite

[ShortSpecialBus]

Intellectual Property is a fiction, it is not property (as in tangible asset) at all. The act of creation ceases when the work is born, only in the 'intellectual property world" does a producer feel the right to control a work once he has borne it. Does a plumber call you and ask for a fee every time you flush your toilet? No, neither should a musician, actor, author or inventor ask for fees to exercise the purpose of their past creation. Meaning, that by its regular availability, the thing *has been created* and no further compensation is necessary.

This argument is severely flawed. Since when do you have to pay to watch a movie each time after you have already purchased it once? Since when have you had to pay to push play on your CD player with a CD in the drive?

Sure, the plumber doesn't charge you each time you flush the toilet, but he did charge you for his time in fixing the toilet or installing the toilet or whatever, and chances are you (or somebody else) paid for the toilet at one point, so don't give me that crap.

Perhaps you are talking about how the RIAA and/or artists collect royalties on each CD used. If that is the case, you're arguing something completely different that has absolutely nothing to do with it.

You are entitled to your opinion that all intelluctual 'property' should in fact not be property but be free to all, but I believe that most people, even most slashdoters, would disagree with you there. The beef most of us have is with the RIAA and the record/movie production companies who just make the thing, not the artist/director/actor/whatever who puts his heart and soul into his project. Most of us would agree that they are entitled to some compensation for it, if they ask for it.

Re:ill bite

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that I haven't seen is that the creators (at least musical artists) tend to see a small percentage of the sale price from CDs. They tend to receive more from live performances (read sans publishers.) I doubt that this holds as true for movies or books (as there tend to be few live performances.)

Does this actually protect intellectual property rights or an oligarchy of distribution? Perhaps competition in distribution with the support of artists (KaZaa starts signing contracts with your favorite band thus 'stealing' them from Sony.) Sure this may lead to fee based services, but it should be pennies on the dollar of CD prices if fairly price.

Freeing yourself of Spyware

[nohear_t]

It does not matter what kind of spyware crap gets installed on your system, getting rid of it is much easier. A nice way to tell them up yours with Gator and the rest. Lavasoft ad-ware will remove these beasts (and others) from your computer. It even has a reference library that is updated by people who hate spyware as much as we do. Install, scan, select, and remove. Send Gator and its spyware alike where it belongs, in the garbage. Download ad-ware from here: http://www.lavasoft.de

Be quick then

[arglesnaf]

And put a copy of the kazaa client up on kazaa!

=)

Re:wrong on all counts

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, anyone who likes the Descendents is an asshole.

Holy Askissing Batman

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling you're just a sockpuppet of the original poster.

No more spyware victims?

[netringer]

I had KaZaa installed for a whole three days. When I found out here that it REQUIRES the CyDoor spyware to run I removed it. Removing it takes a bit of work as it tries to leave CyDoor installed, and it RUNS CyDoor as part of the uninstall script.

Feh! Shoo! Go away!

I wouldn't have been that interesting to watch anyway.

Wake up call, guys: The VC ain't coming. The KaZaa IPO ain't coming. I guess these scumbags will have to back and work for a living. Don't let the bankruptcy hit ya on the ass. McDonalds is hiring.

Download kazaa off of kazaa

[feed_me_cereal]

Don't worry! You can still find copies of kazaa on this wonderful P2P network I heard about called kazaa. I havn't tried it out yet but I intend to download a copy of kazaa off of kazaa tonight and give it a try.

MTV

[Anonymous Coward]

disabling of P2P programs would probobly be bad for the music industry in general. Think about it the only way to find out about new music is to either hear it on the radio and mtv or download it from P2P. And since mtv stopped playing music video's long ago and the radio plays the same crap over and over again, P2P is the only way to find out about music. Ive proboly bought more cds at record stores becuase i heard them through morpheus then i ever did listening to the radio.

Re:Serves ya right Emusic, you cheap bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the typical spew from some folks over at Emusic. What a bunch of sore losers. Back before Napster, they acted like they were taking on the recording industry. It hear them talk in the pre-Napster days, they acted like some tough rebels who were "shifting paradigms", shaking up the industry and fighting for artists. Now they are owned by Vivendi Universal and are just another arm of the recording industry.

Fact is, they never gave a shit about most of the artists that they had on their roster in the first place, and with the few exceptions of artists that sign with them directly, 90% of the artists who are on Emusic because their labels made deals don't see any more than the sucky deals their labels gave them.

I've got a band for you..... They Might Be Hypocrits! Available "exclusively" at Emusic.com

Re:I need to get some opinions here...

[Anonymous Coward]

most of them are probably lesbian or bi and that's a big turn-off

Go back to http://appzngamez.warez.com/fbi.jpg, your kind aren't welcome here.

Looks like it's the studios against the world now

[ehiris]

Today I jost got a threatening message from Pixar (The makers of Monsters, Inc.), threatening me with a lawsuit for sharing copyrighted material.

What would you do in this situation?

Can they track my IP?

Too late...

[maj12_lovebuzz]

I went to their site for the first time yesterday to download it, only to find the nice message that they had suspended downloads of the client. Guess I'll have to find a mirror.

There is a saying for this.

[mAsterdam]

If you're not part of the solution, try postponing it.

I wouldn't use Kazaa if *they paid me*

[SpamapS]

Kazaa has had some SERIOUS security flaws in the past. These were glaring errors in their code that allowed people to read your entire hard drive(well, if running a proper OS, just the files you had read access to). This is completely unacceptable, and I refuse to support a program like that.

It is for similar reasons that I do not run Microsoft products anymore either.

Kazaa Vuln:
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/3125

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[Anonymous Coward]

Underrated moderations give a +1 bonus but don't show the reason.

Everyone seems to forget...

[kbrunsting]

that if this type of technology wasn't available (the easy exchange and music and video), most people wouldn't be buying the stuff their downloading anyway because:
1. Spending $18 for a cd with 1 or 2 good songs on it isnt worth it
2. Most television shows and videos aren't even available to purchase
If these major companies would actually listen to their customers once in awhile instead of only thinking of themselves we wouldn't be having all these lawsuits going on.

Another fall of server-based file sharing...

[Brendan Byrd]

No offense, and I don't agree with the legal decision, but if you're running a server-based file sharing system, you're just asking to get shut down.

It doesn't matter what kind of lawsuit it is, but the big guys with big lawyers can laid down any kind of lawsuit to get you shut down, and you'll have to pay out the ass in your own lawyers to get it turned back on.

At least with a server-less option, the worse you could do is remove the client, and the protocol would still exist in the underground.

poor Jack ...

[jeff13]

To quote Jack Valenti...
Service in an antipiracy campaign that included raids on college campuses last month. "The great moat that protects us, and it is only temporary, is lack of broadband access," Mr. Valenti said.

Greed is all right, by the way . . . I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.
Ivan F. Boesky, U.S. financier. Commencement Address, 18 May 1986, School of Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley. Boesky's words were later picked up in Oliver Stone's film, Wall Street (1987), spoken by Gordon Gecko. Boesky himself was later convicted of conspiring to file false documents with the federal government, involving insider trading violations, and agreed to pay $100 million in fines and illicit profits.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS FICTION

[fdiaz5583]

Intellectual Property IS a fictional representation of what "innovators" (I use the term loosely) use to maintain a stranglehold on what has been given TOO MUCH power. Should the Bible or collections of Plato's or Aristotle's work be paid to whomever distributes it? They were not the author of the work, so why should the publisher be reimbursed for their time and effort. Plato, Aristotle, and God did not ASK for the publisher to publish and distribute their good works, so why are we forced to actually spend money to purchase their work?

Musicians and movie producers produce movies and music for people to watch and listen to. They put a copyright on their work so nobody else can make identical copies of their work and distribute it as their own work, and so that the proper author's are credited, not necessarily in monetary value. However, well paid politicians are "lobbied" coincidentally enough by the people seeking to earn more money for the labor of love by others -- distributers such as you and me who use such services as Kazaa, and Gnutella. The entertainment industry tries to implant a guilt trip in the consciousness of it's consumers stating that anybody who copies and distributes the work of their artists without retribution is a THIEF. This I find an apaulling lie as the artist only keeps a tiny fraction of the original price of the CD or DVD. From this fraction they are forced to reimburse the studio (who is again making money on the guilt of it's consumers and contractual agreements of it's artist) for use and promotion. Where the artist really makes their money from is T-SHIRT/paraphernalia sales, and concerts. These can not be distributed via the internet, nor any medium, since they are actual TANGIBLE items.

Over time the BILLIONS that the RIAA and MPAA have made from not giving the consumer a choice has gone into protecting their huge fortune by inventing a term known as "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY." This fictional asset has been adopted into the legal system as an actual law. It is a law that is not right and is used to control people unjustly. Yes, it is a law that governs you and me, but in the past we have seen unjust laws come and go. Slavery, and segregation were also considered "fair" and "just" laws at the time that governed people but over time were deemed WRONG. However to get those laws overturned large groups of people over time needed to rebel against the unjust laws, and send a signal to big business and the government that WE THE PEOPLE WILL NOT be trampled upon. Eventually, after hard work by the consumers and the people who bring us great software such as Kazaa and Gnutella, reason will prevail and bring an end of an era to unjust "intellectual property" laws.

Re:INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS FICTION

[RalphSlate]

I don't disagee with you that too much power has been given to the current crop of IP laws -- Di$ney's extension of copyright to be almost infinity is a good example of this. However, I don't agree with your premise that once a work has been "born", that it isn't owned by anyone. I don't think that eliminaton of IP is the way to solve the problem.

Think about this -- if there was no such thing as copyright, if someone is still brave enough to create a great work, then there would be a gaggle of companies rushing to take that work and distribute it, giving $0 compensation to the work's creator.

The party making the most money from the work will be the party with the most efficient distribution network. If Sony has the ability to take a CD that some starving artist is selling on the internet to niche groups for $5, and sell it on the internet to the world for $1 (without compensating the artist), then who wins there? Sure, the consumers may, but how many starving artists will continue to create if their work is just going to be used for others' gain?

Musicians and movie producers produce movies and music for people to watch and listen to. They put a copyright on their work so nobody else can make identical copies of their work and distribute it as their own work, and so that the proper author's are credited, not necessarily in monetary value.

Are you trying to make the claim that films are made, music is written, and books are written irrespective of money? Why are those things any different from someone writing a good piece of software, or someone who is a really good salesperson? Are you arguing that no one should be compensated for anything? Because that's the road your taking by claiming that artists are primarily concerned with credit, not with compensation.

Say what you want about people still creating creative works, but when you have to work 40+ hours a week, there is little fuel left in the brain for creativity. I know that I perform my most creatively on the weekends or when I'm on vacation -- not after a 10-hour day at work. Do you think people will quit their day jobs so that they can make music that Sony will just take and sell without compensation?

Copyright just doensn't protect the big guy -- it protects the little guy too. It's just swung a little too much in the big guy's favor now.

Ralph

Re:INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS FICTION

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see that both the poster with the nick RalphSlate and the poster SubtleNuance have good points. As a person who believes in freedom over capitalism, I tend to agree more with SubtleNuance's point that Intellectual Property rights go too far. But after reading RalphSlate's point I can see that he has a good point as well. I think taking Ralphslate's point of view into consideration that what should be done is that Intellectual Property rights should be limited to simply protecting artsists against other Corporations. In other words, a big company like Sony or IBM couldn't try to use their economic power to steal an artists ideas and exploit them. However, Joe Blow who wants to play mp3's on his computer he downloaded from Napster should not be able to be punished under Intellectual Property law. I think that a balance between artists rights and the public's rights needs to be made. Personally, I agree that an artist should only be paid once for his work not each time his work is used. That is ridiculous garbage! It reminds me of "Microsoft's Software Assurance" concept. It's more like "&^%^* you up the **** assurance and take all of your money". The whole idea of paying each time you use something is not attractive to consumers and consumers simply will not go for the concept. I laugh when I hear people talking about how big .NET is going to become. While I have never used the .NET framework for anything and know little about it's inner workings, I know that Microsofts's desired use of it for pay per play concept is not goign to work. People do not like paying for services where they have to dish out money each month. If I could find a way to avoid paying a phone bill each month and to avoid paying a heating bill each month I would be one of the first people to try an alternative. Therefore, when I see artists trying to pull a "Microsoft" I have nothing but hatred toward them. I think it is horrible that a court even has the authority to shut down services such as napster and Kazaa. I would love it if someone challenged Intellectual Property law and either toppled it and forced law makers to develop a better system or altered IP to make it more logical. I see no crime in downloading mp3's off Kazaa. it doesn't cost the artists anything. If I go onto kazaa and download music, the artists are not paying for the servers where I'm downloading the music. Considering I have never once in my entire life went into a music store and bought a music cd they are not losing any money from me at all. They never have gotten a single dime out of me and never will unless really like their music. With all the RIAA inspired fly-by-night musicians out there I feel no incentive to pay for music. I do not like intellectual property right laws telling me what I can and cannot download. So just for the sake of bucking the trend of content control that is taking place I refuse to abide by stupid laws that don't make sense. Until they make the crime punishable by 5 years or more in prison I have no intention of complying. And before they can punish me they have to catch me in the act. No crime no time! And if they can't catch me with copyrighted material then they can't do anything to me. In any case, I don't sell anything I download so they are not going to concentrate their efforts on people like me anyway.

Intellectual Property rights may be legitimate laws and the courts may very well be able to punish me for not abiding by them. However, I disagree with how far these laws are going. And again they have to catch me first. I disagree with other people's posts that it is unethical. Just like SubtleNuance points out the artists aren't paying money for the distribution of the pirated works. if the artists were paying the costs of distributing their works online then I would agree that the artists works were being stolen. However, the artists are not paying for the music one file sharing services on Napster or kazaa. Also, many people who download of napster and Kazaa would never have bought the music cd's anyway. So the artsists are not losing money. Since I have never bought a music cd in my life i certainly am not causing them to lose money by downloading the music. And I ensure you that if pirated music online were obliterated that i would still not buy music. Besides there are otehr ways of getting a hold of pirated music. I mean cassette recorders have existed for ages. While the quality of a cassette sucks in comparison to a cdrom I would rather go back to using poor quality tapes then pay most of these artists for their music. And if you think I'm stupid or wanna call me a troll or whatever then call me what you wish. Because anyone who replies to my message and calls me a troll, well here's what you are S-T-U-P-I-D. I figured I'd spell it out since if you are replying to this message and calling me a troll then you probably need help figuring out how to spell.

kazaa, napster, blah blah blah

[Pharmboy]

I have been "previewing" anything I want and I still use the same copy (only upgraded) of Forte's Agent (paid for, thank you) since the win3.1 days.

Never have a prob finding what I need. Of course, you need a decent news server...but it still takes less time than reading all this claptrap on /. about kazaa/napster/spywear :-)

Re:kazaa, napster, blah blah blah

[jeff13]

Well done Captain. But remember, when the script kiddies start to be lined up, you're next. ;p

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS FICTION

[fdiaz5583]

Intellectual Property IS a fictional representation of what "innovators" (I use the term loosely) use to maintain a stranglehold on what has been given TOO MUCH power. Should the Bible or collections of Plato's or Aristotle's work be paid to whomever distributes it? They were not the author of the work, so why should the publisher be reimbursed for their time and effort. Plato, Aristotle, and God did not ASK for the publisher to publish and distribute their good works, so why are we forced to actually spend money to purchase their work? Musicians and movie producers produce movies and music for people to watch and listen to. They put a copyright on their work so nobody else can make identical copies of their work and distribute it as their own work, and so that the proper author's are credited, not necessarily in monetary value. However, well paid politicians are "lobbied" coincidentally enough by the people seeking to earn more money for the labor of love by others -- distributers such as you and me who use such services as Kazaa, and Gnutella. The entertainment industry tries to implant a guilt trip in the consciousness of it's consumers stating that anybody who copies and distributes the work of their artists without retribution is a THIEF. This I find an apaulling lie as the artist only keeps a tiny fraction of the original price of the CD or DVD. From this fraction they are forced to reimburse the studio (who is again making money on the guilt of it's consumers and contractual agreements of it's artist) for use and promotion. Where the artist really makes their money from is T-SHIRT/paraphernalia sales, and concerts. These can not be distributed via the internet, nor any medium, since they are actual TANGIBLE items. Over time the BILLIONS that the RIAA and MPAA have made from not giving the consumer a choice has gone into protecting their huge fortune by inventing a term known as "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY." This fictional asset has been adopted into the legal system as an actual law. It is a law that is not right and is used to control people unjustly. Yes, it is a law that governs you and me, but in the past we have seen unjust laws come and go. Slavery, and segregation were also considered "fair" and "just" laws at the time that governed people but over time were deemed WRONG. However to get those laws overturned large groups of people over time needed to rebel against the unjust laws, and send a signal to big business and the government that WE THE PEOPLE WILL NOT be trampled upon. Eventually, after hard work by the consumers and the people who bring us great software such as Kazaa and Gnutella, reason will prevail and bring an end of an era to unjust "intellectual property" laws.

Karma whoring - mirror list

[almightyjustin]

Here you go.

Complaints and Grievances

[nevek]

My journey through music sharing.

It started with borrowing your friend's cd and ripping the big files to your hard drive.. Or copying it to a 4$ CD-R.

Then came the MP3, and password ftp sites came along with the endless run of phony music WebPages.

Then Napster came, I know there were a few before it, but Napster- worked... It was finally the perfect alternative to searching for FTP passwords or waiting in endless IRC lines.

It was great at first, you could throw around your George Carlin, Doors, or the newest Grateful Dead Re-Release. We were rarely bothered by a Jessica Simpson. Then the 10-13 year old girls discovered this magical service, suddenly they could click their friendly AOL 6.0 shoutcuts, open a cute little kitten, and listen to their "boy bands" through their gateway speakers and the magical Napster audio player.

It spread like a plague, every day more and more 98 degrees fans joined, using cute little symbolized usernames and their hotmail e-mail addresses. It was madness thousands and thousands of songs and servers bloated with them. Here comes the bad part, they told their friends, who in turn told their friends and they kept coming. Eventually their parents found out and eventually the record companies realized that the parents of this 12 year old don't have to go spend 21.95 on the newest 11 track cd, when they could let them simply download the music. This pissed off the record companies.

Napster Died

Then came Scour, and CuteMx.. Also died, almost no profit, could not fight the endless supply of lawsuits.

A few services came to try and fill the napster void, Napigator, Bearshare etc, all failed..

Then came Kazaa, it was great at first. Geeks could trade the newest excerpt of Linux source code, or the latest Avery Brooks IBM commercial. But like I expected: - two weeks later every girl scout with a Barbie computer and a brain powerful enough to spell download.com strolled in, flooded the service with N'SHIT and told all their 11 year old purse carrying friends that "It was just like napster" Goodbye Kazaa. Almost every 13 year old girl would come home after school fire up Windows Me, clear through the endless adds that pop up with their computer from all the crap they have downloaded. Open their Icq, MSN, YahooChat, Hotmail Mailboxes, and now Kazaa.

Turn on Kazaa, type in any of a hundred key words, street, oops, love... And your screen will be flooded with the endless lip-syncing remixes.

It's not all bad, we still have IRC, they cannot dominate that, they lack the brainpower. Anything that takes actual interface with other users, or requires a distant thought is out of their league. How often have you seen a person jump into a warez channel and yell "SOMEONE DCC ME THE NEWEST TIMBERLAKE REMIX." It won't happen.

I know I'm ranting, and I may be wrong, they're just trying to get some free songs the same way that I am. Regardless of music tastes, they do not contribute, the second they accidentally find the "Disable Sharing With Other Users" and put the D section of the encyclopedia back on the shelf. They stop sharing. Freeloaders. I also understand I may be biased, but I think the majority of the problem is coming from them, feel free to argue with me, I don't mind.. They don't actually contribute to the community, they just take. How many of them do you think have ripped and encoded a cd. How many of them do you think have ever run a free FTP?

I could go on and on with different rants and the problems with these people, I think I've written enough to be heard. These are just my thoughts.

Kevin Franklin
Windsor Ontario.

Re:Complaints and Grievances

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

My friend, there are idiots everywhere. You must learn to deal, or you will most likely shall become depressed.

Don't want to download crapass artificial commercial pop? Just don't. I never remember seeing any pop shit show up by accident on any p2p I've used... Maybe your searches are not specific enough, try putting in "pogues street" instead of just street and I assure you you will only see The Pogue's excellent song "Rain Street" and not any crappy pop which might have the word street in it.

Meanwhile, people who turn on the "Disable Sharing" option should be hit in the face with a bag of rocks. Although personally I haven't ripped any CDs for sharing (seeing as how I own so few), I do make sure to let others get at my files....

Isn't it suspicious

[Anonymous Coward]

that Kazaa suddenly stops being available for download so soon after it's spyware had been admitted to.. ??

It seems like you're only allowed to use it if you want give up your privacy...

Terror sponsors came from Saudi, Egypt, Pakistan

[meehawl]

Afghanistan is just the fall guy, and a convenient site for a new oil pipeline. How many Afghanis were on the planes in 9/11?

It's a good thing that the Bush Gang have frozen many "suspect" international bank accounts... but they specifically excluded those with ties directly to Bush or his dodgy family oil company, Harken. That banks in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia are not being investigated, where most of the Al Qaeda funding must have come from, is ludicrous and abdurd and patently dishonest.

Thanks

[AKAJack]

I'll take that as a complement.

But to answer your question, no, I'm just really involved in this subject.

Audiogalaxy

[xmda]

...but of course all of us know that Audiogalaxy rules when it comes to share and download music.

I shoulda become a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

In this day an age when copyright infringements and all this stuff is going on, everyone turns at the court to settle a case. I should have become a lawyer not a programmer, I could now make millions.

Dagnabit :(

yeah...

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

They did it in a clever fashion too... apparently they released small dormant bits of code hidden in other updates, and then one update all the little bits of code combined and erased some important memory by rewriting it with the message GAMEOVER.

Re:Sign up here to be moderated down

[NO I'm Spartacus]

My name says it all.

Try not pirating?

[shaldannon]

I realize this is an amazing concept, and I'm going to get flamed all over for this, but taking music/movies/software without paying for it, when the thing being taken isn't freely offered by its creator, is called STEALING

If you don't do it in the first place, you won't get thos threatening letters you're so scared of. Face up to the consequences of your decision and take it like a man...not a snivelling snot.

score -1: disobedient

[Anonymous Coward]

score -1

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this offtopic? Isn't the story about Oracle? Or /. is moderated by scripts now?

By the way, please stop wasting mod points on this story, both positive and negative. They could be much better spent on the new articles.

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[cat_jesus]

I have a real problem with the offtopic mods. Often when discussing an article, discussion will drift away from the original article. I think this is to be encouraged or at least looked upon neutrally. Not everyone is so anal retentive that they need every post to be under its "proper" article. Sometimes there isn't a proper place for it, like the comment that spurred this extended conversation.

Cat

ill bite back

[Anonymous Coward]

So you agree that the creators of art, music, cinema, etc., should be compensated for their work. In fact, to quote your later reply, you say: "The * act * of creation should be compensated."

I agree, the *act* of creation should be compensated. Of course its value cannot be compensated immediately after creation, because its true value to society cannot be evaluated this quickly.

So let's say we release the creation into society with a set price. The due compensation for this creation is then gauged by the demand of society to aquire the creation at the set price. If 1,000,000 people felt this creation (let's say an album) was worth its purchase price, then the artist will be compensated proportionatly for his creation.

This system, basically the status quo, isn't perfect, mainly because only artists who cater to the tastes of the majority will get paid the most. But, arguably, this is the way it should be, because their creations will affect the greatest number of lives.

Your "system", on the other hand, is inherently flawed and unrealistic. You argue that only the *act* of creation should be compensated. I really wished you explained this in more detail. $300 a song, as simple as that? Perhaps $100/minute. These methods obviously don't reflect the value of the creation. And the only relevent judge of that is society itself, which allows every potential audience to be reached and its demand measured.

Furthermore, your later argument suggesting selling beds is exactly the same is selling music is simply INANE. If you cannot comprehend the difference between a physical object (such as a bed) which can be used by only a few people at a time, and music, which can be 'used' by a limitless amount of people, then this argument is futile. I'm going to stop now, maybe something can seep in.

Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation

[Anonymous Coward]

If you disagree with the moderation in this thread, please blah, blah, blah...

Spamming, the seventh.

Re: ASCII porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Is *that* why I keep getting e-mails telling me to browse at -1???

Re:156 mod points spend on thread

[stefanlasiewski]

How can you tell which posts are 'mod points' and which are 'scripted editor mods'?

This is something that has always bugged me about ./ . There *is* no place on ./ to discuss ./ itself, or the inner workings, or the moderation system.

Karma to burn. Let's see how long it takes for this +2 post to become -1, offtopic.

Re:156 mod points spend on thread

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting AC here, because I've already burned 20 karma in this thread and I want to keep my bonus.

1. I can't tell what's scripted and what's not, but I can say that the majority of Offtopic mods are probably editor mods.

2. Meta Slashdot Discussion, created by CmdrTaco on January 21st. Admittedly, he didn't publicise it very well.

--damiam

--
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow!