Slashdot Mirror
KaZaA Resumes Downloads, Company Sold?
Robert Johnson writes "According to an article on Dotcom Scoop, popular file-sharing service KaZaA may have been sold over the weekend.
"As of last week the company was based in the Netherlands. However, upon close examination of its new terms of use license, the company now says, "This License as well as all disputes arising out of or in connection with this Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the New South Wales, without regard to or application of choice of law rules or principles. Any dispute arising out of or in connection with this License, or in future agreements resulting there from, shall be exclusively resolved before the competent court in New South Wales," the article states. New South Wales is an Australian state."
Update Apparently the website reverted to the former content
which might raise a few eyebrows. Update: 01/21 18:17 GMT by T : DotcomScoop writes: "KaZaA isssued a statement regarding its sale after our story was published." Here is the statement and a little more info.
What are the laws on file-sharing and Peer-to-peer networking in Aussie-land? Does this mean they can be blacklisted? Or does it mean that they can't be sued as easily?
Because of that Dutch thing.
Thanks for the geography lesson.
way to go,fight them with legal means like they do you
:))
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
So does this Aulstralian state have less stringent laws about Copyright violation? Is their a legal advantage to having the company there?
If a country's laws dont suit your needs...move.
It's only a matter of time until MS becomes based in the Cayman Islands.
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
Presumably no Chinese or Saudi company wanted to buy them. I mean, presumably they were looking for a buyer in an internet-hostile country?
--
E_NOSIG
I'll admit it - I bought the company. Don't believe me? I have a receipt for $24.95 to prove it.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
...that they don't try and pull a Napster.
will this be good or bad for KaZaA?
{TheT3chfreak}
If what we've seen over the past few months are any indication (broadband woes, ridiculous internet laws), Australia's laws won't be too kind to file-sharing. Not that it will matter to P2P users, they can just move on to the newest P2P startup that hasn't been gobbled up yet.
*This page intentionally left pointless*
I am unable to get kazaa to work for the past day or so. I get the following error :
Error logging into Kazaa, continuing as anonymous.
I am using the linux client. Is it only me, or are others also having difficulty logging onto the network?
Don't Panic
There's no "competent court" in New South Wales.
Incompetency is the hallmark of NSW.
With the recent posting about the mystery blacklist in Australia, I don't see how hosting the service from Sydney is really going to improve the situation all that much from the Netherlands. Sure, they're not currently being sued in Australia, but they're not currently being sued in Australia.
Interesting someone would choose to base a company like this in Australia... given our track record with Internet censorship, banning porn [hosted down under], forcing gambling overseas (where it does just as much damage, except without our collecting taxes on it), etc.
I'll bet they'll completely ignore the idea that this might actually be a GoodThing[tm] and use it as an excuse to push through more shitty laws.
Anyway it's past my bedtime.
And for the same reasons. They have a court order to suspend their service, and now they're trying to launch a pay service so they can pay royalties and continue operations.
The only difference is that they're much faster. According to the Napster website, they were supposed to launch their pay service last summer, and only recently have they started asking people to preview their new pay service.
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
is it me, or shouldn't they be based in Kazakstan???
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Why sell to an Australian company? Am I totally wrong in assuming that the rampant government censorship of the internet would be a bad thing for this company? I could probably think of a dozen countries that would be a better place to have KaZaA.
Well, at least they didn't move to the US.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
have the potential to keep changing ownership of the company to various contries across the world?
They could probably stay up for a few years just bouncing from country to country, or could they host the servers off shore us in some place like Bermuda with very lax laws in this type of instance?
Seems that the Linux client is no longer available for download. Posting a link to a mirrored version won't help either, since it stopped working. Error message is "Error logging into Kazaa".
Very odd. Moving the company to Australia doesn't spare Niklas Zennstrom (the guy who cofounded both KaZaA and FastTrack, the company that provides the software) of any liability for his past actions in Europe, especially given that Australia is a signatory to the same international copyright treaties as everyone else. Nor would selling the company be any help, unless he could hornswoggle somebody into assuming the liabilities. That seems unlikely, given that the vicarious infringement liability that Napster is exposed to -- identical to the one risked by KaZaA -- is in the billions of dollars. An acquirer would have to be crazy to take it on, and would probably have a hard time finding hosting services (they're legally exposed, too). And the service is still up and running exactly as it was before. Very hard to figure out this one.
So sorry, we Amerikuns can't learn geography this way. Australia needs to piss us off so we bomb NSW, and then CNN can show us where it is.
for the unfortuanate:
A week after the company stopped downloads of its software, Amsterdam-based peer-to-peer software firm KaZaA announced on its website that it had launched a new version of its software, that includes a pay service, and a cryptic message made it appear that KaZaA is now owned by an Australian company called Sharman Network Services. Or perhaps not.
The Kazaa.com website was stripped bare of much of its content on Sunday and was allowing users to download an updated version of its software, although attempts to download this software were met with an error message.
By 4:15 AM EST on Monday, the original KaZaA website was back up with no mention of new software or Sharman Network Services. But access to the new terms of use agreement was still possible and the copyright information at the bottom identifies "Sharman Network Services" as the owner of the website's contents.
As of last week the company was based in the Netherlands. However, upon close examination of its new terms of use license, the company now appears to be based in Australia.
"This License as well as all disputes arising out of or in connection with this Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the New South Wales, without regard to or application of choice of law rules or principles. Any dispute arising out of or in connection with this License, or in future agreements resulting there from, shall be exclusively resolved before the competent court in New South Wales," the new terms of use dictate.
New South Wales is Australia's largest state population wise and the home of Sydney.
The "WHOIS" information for the Kazaa.com domain has not been updated, but a note posted on the KaZaA site on early Monday morning EST led users to believe that FastTrack, the company that created the code used for and owns KaZaA, and has licensed its code out to competitors MusicCity and Grokster, no longer controls KaZaA. Various searches for "Sharman Network Services" turned up no results.
"The original brains behind Kazaa have moved on to develop new innovative software. The team now running Kazaa will continue to deliver the best technology for finding, saving and transfering all the data you want: no limits. Get ready for the next version of KaZaA with even better performance and enhanced usability," said a note posted on the KaZaA homepage, before it reverted back to its original state.
In an ironic twist, one major new area of the company's terms of service agreement covers the distribution of the KaZaA software itself. KaZaA and other file sharing companies are under legal fire for allowing users to trade copyrighted material.
"This License allows you to install and use the KaZaA Media Desktop on a single computer. This License does not permit you to install the Software on more than one computer at a time. You may make one copy of the Software in machine-readable form for backup purposes only. The backup copy must include all copyright information contained on the original," according to KaZaA's new terms of use agreement. The original terms of use agreement is still linked on the KaZaA homepage.
The company has also apparently added new features that consumers will be forced to pay for.
"Certain features of the KaZaA Media Desktop may require payment in the future including a prepaid fee ("Prepaid Fee"). The Prepaid Fee, and all taxes and other fees related thereto will be paid by you in advance. You shall pay all fees and charges incurred through your account at the rates in effect for the billing period in which such fees and charges are incurred. All fees and charges shall be billed to you, and you shall be solely responsible for their payment. You shall pay all applicable taxes relating to the use of the Software through your account. If you do not pay the applicable fees, including Prepaid Fees, within the prescribed period of time your account will be terminated immediately, without limiting KaZaA's right to demand payment of fees and damages at a later time," the company now says.
The new terms appear to try to help KaZaA further indemnify itself from being responsible for users who trade copyrighted material.
KaZaA suspended downloads of its software last week saying it was awaiting a Dutch court decision on its fate.
"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," the company said in a statement issued on its website last week.
A Dutch court ruled in November that the company must stop its users from sharing copyrighted material. The ruling is under appeal and the court will make a decision on Jan. 31.
KaZaA also recently added a disclaimer on its site regarding the copyright issue.
KaZaA, MusicCity and Grokster find themselves the subject of international court pressure. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) launched a lawsuit against the companies last fall in an effort to stem the tide of peer-to-peer transfer of copyrighted music files.
In October, an internal RIAA memo, leaked to Dotcom Scoop, outlined the RIAA's strategy to take on the file-sharing networks. The memo indicated that the RIAA would attempt to negotiate with FastTrack in an effort to shut down its licensees.
"Thus, we recommend (1) filing claims against FastTrack, MusicCity, and Grockster, (2) immediately thereafter initiating discussions with FastTrack about resolving our claims in a way that will provide us with useful information and testimony against MusicCity, and if possible obtain FastTrack's cooperation in shutting down or converting MusicCity and Grokster," the memo stated.
Photos.
Its a trap! Don't do it! They said they were free! All I wanted was some more Pogues bootlegs and now I've got a black helicopter in my yard!
Oh my God...They're coming in! Aiiiiiiiieeeeee...
(PAUSE- THEN DIALTONE)
There are plenty of decentrlaized, absolutely unregulatable things for file sharing, like IRC.
Repeal the DMCA!
If these people are so up front about skirting legal jurisdiction I wonder how much of a problem they would have with planting spyware in the client and not telling anybody. I mean if the RIAA can't get to them, how would you?
This is stright from the front page of he web site:
The original brains behind Kazaa have moved on to develop new innovative software. The team now running Kazaa will continue to deliver the best technology for finding, saving and transfering all the data you want: no limits. Get ready for the next version of KaZaA with even better performance and enhanced usability. Click here to read the new Terms of Use for KaZaA.
To me, this sounds like a mass exodus, not a simple move to avoid some laws...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
6 Payment and fees
6.1 Certain features of the KaZaA Media Desktop may require payment in the future including a prepaid fee ("Prepaid Fee").
The Prepaid Fee, and all taxes and other fees related thereto will be paid by you in advance.
Guess someone in the RIAA managed to make a new acquisition, as per the leaked memo.
Okay, new game. Who wants to make acronyms for KAZAA that indicate how f*cked they are?
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
>Australia is a signatory to the same international copyright treaties as everyone else.
Yep, but... KaaZaa itself doesn't include any material that is of questionable original. The client itself is made of 100% pure legit code.
Perhaps they hope that in Australia they won't extend copyright violation to include clients that can be coaxed into it?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I mean, they get KaZaA in their back yard...
AND THEY HAVE TO PAY WHAT, 5 BAZILLION A MONTH FOR BROADBAND? With a bandwidth cap?
I can already see a whole bunch of Aussies looking up in the sky and moaning like Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes when they find this out.
"Damn you! Damn you all! ARrrrgggghhhh!"
Seems to me that Australia is well on it's way to beating China at Internet control. You think perhaps Kazaa moving / being sold to a company in Australia might cause a nasty problem?
SIG: HUP
Whether or not they continue serving up spyware to the public? Yea, you get your songs, but they get your information! Why would anyone want to install a bunch of garbage on their system? Here is a link to a page with more information.
My sig hates me. That's ok, I never cared for it much anyway.
When are people going to realize that if you try to build a business around giving away other peoples work that first youre going to get sued, and if that doesnt work, theyre just going to try and buy you out?
Decentralized, head-less networks like Gnutella or Freenet are, once again, the only way to make sure this doesnt happen. KazaA may have a decentralized network but there still is the one authority distributing the client; if they go down, eventually the network they created will disintegrate. With Gnutella or Freenet, there’s no one to sue worth their time (individual users?), and no one to buy out at all.
Liberty in your lifetime
Ere you are:a za a.sharman.networks.verkocht.html
http://www.telegraaf.nl/digilink/teksten/digi.k
There is an article [dutch] on webwerel.nl:
"According to a monday released press announcement the buyer - Sharman Networks - it is a aboute certain parts of KaZaA. The following company parts are "in ieder geval" involved: The website, name(/trademark), logo's , and a licence on the peer to peer network of fastrack. If the client software is involved is unknown
Futher details are not made public. What amount the from Australia coming Sharman Networdks paid for KaZaA is not clear. According to Nikkki Hemming, CEO of sharman the continuenece of Kazaa is insured. "we think it is fantastic to resume the service of Kazaa and development the tradmark Kazaa"
[sorry for the bad translation, my dutch is better]
rest of article is stuff we already know.
-download suspended.
-talks bumra stemra (riaa)
Which country has the best mix of sensible copyright law and robust internet access?
That is where you want to locate a Napster/Kazaa/Morpheus/$whatever; a place where the legislators have better things to do than "fix" imaginary problems, and where everyone from everytwhere can connect fast, every time, 24/7/365.
How long will it be before countries face sanctions for allowing unfettered file sharing from thier soil?
The lobbying pressure will be strong for sanctions, because investors are still putting money into pay for stream/download business plans like Peter Gabriel's OD2
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
Does this mean they've dumped kza-linux for good?
There's no mention of it on the site and it stopped working rather abruptly sometime yesterday.
Why would anyone pay a monthly fee to access when you can get the same thing for free? The short list:
http://www.filenavigator.com
http://www.winmx.com
http://www.limewire.com
http://www.bearshare.com
my linux client wont login at all, just sits 'connecting...'. (some suggested that the linux client logs in as anon and continues as always)
:)
.0401
:)
since there's no way to get at more interactive or per-peer user functions in the linux client (and you dont have to see advertising!) it doesnt much matter that you're anonymous (at least it didnt matter to me
trying to sign up again as a new user doesnt work either. and there seems to be no new version for linux to download on the site.
do others have a different version for linux?
mine was 294517 Dec 18 17:52 kza.linux.tar.gz
which calls itself
(if yours works, can, i uh, get a copy?
This is probably the first action where an internet company has avoided a court order by moving its base of operation to another country. If this is continued, KaZaa could potentially avoid shutting down by doing this each time they are sued. One thing though, this would cost RIAA a whole lot of money to keep up with them.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Most likely, they've not been sold at all. This used to be pretty common for companies to do. For those that don't remember, Commodore did this back in the 70's so they could pay lower taxes. They incorporated in the Bahamas I think. One advantage is that when the company goes bust, the top executives can't be touched. It happened in C='s case and if it can happen with that company (massive debt and serious problems with management decisions), it could easily happen with KaZaA...
It would seem that the disgruntled users have decided to switch to gnutella. This chart shows that an increase of 400% overnight just occured . Shuting down a truly decentralized P2P network won't be so easy.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Any firm with that kind of power wouldn't necessarily have to tolerate that sort of ham handedness. I suppose that if the price is right, China or Russia would cheerfully launch their comsats. I also have little doubt that connectivity for the constellation could be bought from somewhere as well.
..that they provided to the court stating they didn't have the ability to stop users from using the software/network since by it's very nature it is decentralized.
By disabling the linux client from being able to connect, haven't they proved otherwise?
There are a number of Free alternatives, like Gnutella, Freenet or the FastTrack-Clone giFT. Use them. Make them work. Make them get big. Donate billions of dollars for advertising :)
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
I use neither Kazaa or BearShare. What is the difference, if any? What is the spyware situation with them?
They've also acquired the fasttrack licence.
Users will be required to agree to new terms of usage, the next time they log in.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
It's only a matter of time until MS becomes based in the Cayman Islands.
Why would they move after investing all that time and money buying all those american politicians, and getting all those pro-microsoft laws passed?
Nope. M$ will stay where they are, this anti-trust thing will be dealt with by a suitcase full of money or the assassination of clueful judges. The bandwidth is too good in the PNW compared to backward tropical islands.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Futher details are not made public. What amount the from Australia coming Sharman Networdks paid for KaZaA is not clear. According to Nikkki Hemming, CEO of sharman the continuenece of Kazaa is insured. "we think it is fantastic to resume the service of Kazaa and development the tradmark Kazaa"
i on al13.html
heres a conspiracy theory for yall
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0011/07/national/nat
a Nikki Hemming was segaworld's CEO in sydney. sega world was owned by the same guy (kevin burmeister) who also ran brilliant 3d (www.bde3d.com)- but its really suffering. brilliant 3d's projector plugin was included with all morpheus downloads (and maybe kazaa too) for the last few months (you might have seen it quickly installing when you installed morpheus). could they be the new owners??
The urge to bark "Yes, I know!" in exasperated tones at my monitor...
I just downloaded Morpheus this morning because a major HD crash pushed Kazaa off with the rest of my data.
Now I read on that site in the RIAA letter that they [RIAA] is teaming up with the Fast Track team [MC&Kazaa].
Not good for me since my registered name on Morpheus is: IH8URIAA.
I must also report that about 30 mins ago I wasn't getting files [segments] from Kazaa users, but now I'm doing that and also getting great speeds.
I'm going to gnutella [mainstream] if Limewire puts a tad more work into their program. It's great now, and so is gnutella in general. But it doesn't have the 'juice' like Fast Track does. I know I will get flamed for this.
Get your Unix fortune now!
from the terms of use:
6. Payment and fees
6.1 Certain features of the KaZaA Media Desktop may require payment in the future including a prepaid fee ("Prepaid Fee").
The Prepaid Fee, and all taxes and other fees related thereto will be paid by you in advance.
You shall pay all fees and charges incurred through your account at the rates in effect for the billing period in which such fees and charges are incurred.
All fees and charges shall be billed to you, and you shall be solely responsible for their payment.
You shall pay all applicable taxes relating to the use of the Software through your account.
If you do not pay the applicable fees, including Prepaid Fees, within the prescribed period of time your account will be terminated immediately, without limiting KaZaA's right to demand payment of fees and damages at a later time.
*sigh*
sig - .
Yeah, I use KaZaA. Every day. KaZaA never stopped downloads. I'm wondering what all the hubbub was about.
I belong to the ______ generation.
Napster was hit for "vicarious" liability, which means (more or less) that they helped somebody infringe copyright, even though they didn't actually infringe copyright themselves. In other words, the company didn't actually have to download or use any copyrighted material itself to be guilty. As I understand it, the liability consisted of operating the service -- not in having a central index -- so that KaZaA could be charged with the same offense. To show that the service itself wasn't vicarious infringement, they had to show substantial noninfringing uses, which in the opinion of the court they didn't (I'm not making this argument, I'm just saying what the court said). KaZaA argues that it can't know what people are trading, because a) it doesn't maintain a central index; and b) the files are encrypted. IP lawyers have told me that these arguments are weak as a matter of law. That the FastTrack crew seem (on the basis of this article and the web posting on the KaZaA site) to be bailing would suggest that they agree.
Even if there was the most amazing / stable / perfect / best performing operating system out there; if it was made by M$, the average slashdot reader would still say that it 'sucked'.
Ya gotta love the RIAA going against the DMCA or whatever that anti-reverse-engineering thing is called.
According to this PDF from the US Library of Congress, law enforcement officers operating in the line of duty are exempt from the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. (Read More...)
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's not offtopic. If Kazaa goes down, who cares? There are plenty of superior file sharing systems that the government can't stop.
This sucks... does anyone have a copy of the linux client?
Does it work?
Dotcom Scoop first reported earlier today that it appeared that file-sharing service KaZaA had been sold after the company's website was mysteriously changed early this morning and then reverted back to its original form.
The company issued the following statement this morning:
"Jan. 21, 2002 -- Sharman Networks Limited, a privately held company, has purchased certain assets of KaZaA BV, including the popular consumer site KaZaA.com, distributor of KaZaA Media Desktop software. KaZaA BV is the Netherlands-based software and products company that founded KaZaA.com. The transaction was announced by Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming.
KaZaA Media Desktop is a full-featured peer-to-peer file sharing software that allows users to search, download, organize and play media files. Included in Sharman's purchase of assets are the license for the FastTrack P2P Stack, the KaZaA.com Web site, name, and logos.
"We are thrilled at our opportunity to resume the KaZaA service and further develop the KaZaA brand,'' stated Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming. "We value the millions of users of KaZaA's software and will continue to enhance and grow our core offerings."
KaZaA BV will continue to operate its remaining assets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed."
No further information was provided about Sharman Network Services. As we reported earlier, the company appears to be based in Australia due to information contained in KaZaA's new terms of use agreement.
A search for Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming reveals that she was the CEO of Sega World, an electronic theme park in Sydney, Australia that closed in late 2000. If that is indeed the same Nikki Hemming.
Hopefully - provided KaZaA really did sell out - the new company will put more effort into developing a MacOSX version of KaZaA--LimeWire is good, but KaZaA is great.
I think, therefore, I'm smarter than our president.
I think millions of chechians pray that
Switzerland never pisses of the US of A.
See:
http://www.clifford.at/funpic/cnn_europe.jpg
for reference.
johnboy
Wait - are they saying you can resume downloading now? Or are they saying you can download their resumes if you're interested in hiring them? :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
LOL...big bro srtike again.:)
If Kazza (btw in translation from Russian kazza means a female-buck..yes yes..the one with sharp horns and which gives milk.:))) will be charging for their service. It'll die as Napster died. What happened in company itself?. Ha... Good old american way to win wars. If we can't kill them....lets buy them. War in Afganistan is a good example. And now we have another exelent example of War@Work.
Come on like Fidel would give two shits.
No sig for you!!
What a shame. I got the linux client just the other day and i loved it. Only thing i was worried bout was that it wasn't open source.
;-(
I didn't consider this to be a problem but now when i hear about hardcoded nodes i am really upset. Why oh why?? It could be all up and running in a few mins. But nope! They had to close the code
Any other useful Linux Fastrack Clients I don't know of?
So...next time the RIAA/MPAA come knocking, quickly sell to someone in another country. Then the media giants will have to go get new warrents in that country...
I've posted this before, but it was late and I think it was missed. Just incase I'm reposting it just to get my thoughts out on the media sharing community.
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.
I am not an Atheist I believe in Dog.
all i needed to do was to leave it running on my router instead on my desktop machine. Doh! This is sad. It's got the nicest uptime...
Anyways, let's go for Kza-Uptime Records...see if we can sit out the windows client...
Do you live in australia?
NO - well i do and you have no fucking idea about our 'laws' on internet or other issues - i work in Aussie IT and the supposed restrcitions are something i have never come up against nor most lilkely will.
If your not an aussie butt out - after all when was the last time and american listened to someone from overseas ? (hint it involved 3 airplanes)
I had 800+ megs of VCD-compliant red dwarf, that I've been leeching for a week and a half, but all the episodes are about 90% complete. This morning I killed kazaa in order to surf the web (I can't with kazaa running, HTTP timeouts everywhere), and now I'm SOL!
DOH DOH DOH!
Everybody keeps saying 'yea, I'm switching to gnutella'. and yes, the downloads are through the roof:
/. ran this article
t ml
l
http://www.limewire.com/historical_size.html
(as mentioned earlier in this discussion)
And I recall a few days earlier
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/02/14/190225.sh
describing why Gnutella et al can't scale
It points to the whole dissertation here:
http://www.darkridge.com/~jpr5/doc/gnutella.htm
(last url, I swear)
So, is Gnutella still working?
I know my kazaa is...
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
US$35/month on Optus Cable - hardly unreasonable by any means
why is it OK to tape a show and not to divX it? well? why can everybody individually put any show on the telly on video; but as soon as you make it machine-readable and share it so others that could potentially tape the very same show don't have to? (is this a sentence? I need some sleep)
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
I had the client, then for some silly reason I decided to format my drives. I believe it was an "alpha" version, but it worked well. The only thing which I didn't care about it was it forced you to share files. Other than that it was pretty straight forward. It ran from the console and you weren't bombarded with ads and such. Just a simple interface: search and download. I really could care less if there's anything else there for me to use.
A country that bans GTA 3 from it's citizens because of what you can do in it that is not part of the story line is dealing with some rather stupid politicians (yeah, we have that problem in America too)...
SIG: HUP
Why dont they just move to Bolivia or something?And pay the government to allow you to do whatever you want.Small govs are easily corrupted,as are large ones.
"Fight The Power"
I did a search of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission business names register [www.asic.gov.au] and the Australian Business Register [www.abr.business.gov.au] and no company like Sharman Networks Limited exists...
I don't see how this company can be "Limited" and not be in ASIC's register.
Ok.
There is no Sharman Network Services registered as a company or trading name in Australia.
There is a Sharman Motor Company and a Sharman Constructions. There is a Sharman Pty Ltd which is owned and directed by SHARBEL FARAH, born 1968 in Isreal. However that company is registered in Victoria, not NSW.
I smell something fishy.
Nikki Hemming would appear to be Nicola Anne Hemming born 1967 in the UK. She is a director of NKB Holdings and RESONANCE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS PTY LIMITED both are incorporated in NSW but don't mention Sharman at all.
Hmmm. Very interesting.
Does morpheus [musiccity.com] use KaZaA as it's engine?
I know it names all the files kazaa29387409871234.dat
If this is the case, what other software out there uses KaZaA as it's engine and what is going to happen to all of those?
Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try. -- Homer J. Simpson
Why not put the thing on a ship and connect via satellite?
Check out the details on Ultrapeers. Gnutella will scale very nicely. Ultrapeer Proposal
Sharman Networks Limited does not exist as a company in Australia.
According to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (with which *every* Australian company must be registered), there is no such company as Sharman Networks Limited.
Furthermore, there is no company by that name in either the Yellow Pages nor the White Pages. Heck, I even checked Directory Assistence in case they had newly been added.
NSW Department of Fair Trading hasn't heard of Sharman Networks. Sharman Networks holds no patents. Sharman Networks is not listed as either an Australian company name or Australian business name. As far as I can tell, no Australian Gov. organisation (or indeed Industry organisation) has had contact with Sharman.
That leaves two possabilites.
#1 Sharman Networks is a newly formed shell company that is being used soley for this transaction (hence lack of web presence or reference). However, this is unlikely as the ASIC database carries information on companies who are registered under names different to those they trade under.
#2 Sharman Networks does not exist, and Kazaa is up to some strange tricks in order to move juristiction of its matters out of Dutch hands, as their new ToS states.
Janie took my gun...
NO. I won't switch to gnutella in the nearest future, and many people won't. Why? Let's do the experiment: fire up gnutella and search for something like "Klaus Hallen", "Koopmans", "Nico Haak", "Max Greger". You'll get shitloads of hits in all morpheus/kazaa/whatever clients, and very quickly, but only a few in Gnutella. May be there is no difference when you search for britney on these systems, but when you want to find rare records... Unfortunately, today Gnutella can't beat Fast Track systems. Gnutella is a nice concept, but still needs imporvement. And by the way, there are STILL NO CLIENT WORKING WITH FRIGGING SOCKS PROXY! And don't say anything about sockscap... it doesn't work.
1) Incorporate.
2) Program P2P file sharing system.
3) Host enough Britney Spears songs/videos to get RIAA attention.
4) Sell company to RIAA, Get Rich Quick!
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
There is a followup to this article.:
http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/9910.phtml
-sherman networks is unknow.
-A judge will not take this.(according to a involved loyer)
-bumra/stemra knows of nothing