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KaZaa Suspends Downloads

Posted by timothy on from the put-it-next-to-your-decss-mirror dept.

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?"

6 of 586 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't matter too much by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  2. Get your Kazar right here by XenoBOFH · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  3. C|Net Reporting on this... by instinctdesign · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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    forma3
  4. Gee... by NoWhere+Man · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

    --

    "Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
  5. Misleading Topic by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.

  6. Napshare by evilviper · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant