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KaZaA Resumes Downloads, Company Sold?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the watson-bring-me-my-sleuthing-hat dept.

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.

6 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I bought them! by IAgreeWithThisPost · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Does anyone care what score you read at? YOU'RE MISSING OUT ON THE BEST POSTS(or a reasonable facsimile of such)

    --
    security through obscurity = modding down anti-linux posts so maybe noone will see them
  2. This does not make sense. by eAndroid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  3. Do they..... by wo1verin3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  4. Same thing C= did... by OneFix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...

  5. In related news, Gnutella quadruples overnight by Froze · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    -- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
  6. Re:Napster Mark II by pimpinmonk · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Heh... interesting memo. Ya gotta love the RIAA going against the DMCA or whatever that anti-reverse-engineering thing is called. There's not much proof that they tried to break the encryption, but it's suggested. From the memo:
    The FastTrack network designates (perhaps automatically) certain peers - more powerful computers with high-bandwidth connections - as "supernodes." [because of the system's encrypted communication, we are unable to determine how supernodes are designated].
    And:
    A supernode also connects to other supernodes. [because of the system's encrypted communication, we are unable to determine how one supernode knows how to locate other supernodes]. Vidius found that when one of its machines was in supernode status, it was connected to approximately 25 other supernodes.
    And this one looks particularly incriminating:
    KaZaA operates another server in addition to the log-in (.37) server and the (.38) server described above. That is alpha.kazaa.com (213.248.112.34), the address of which, as with the other two, is hard-coded into the application. The (.34) server communicates with supernodes [we do not know the nature of the communication]. During an interval when a Vidius machine was acting as a supernode, there were 12 different attempts by the (.34) server to connect to the supernode. Vidius reports that in a completed transaction the (.34) server sends approximately 1600 bytes of information to the supernode. In addition, as noted above, a supernode makes periodic connection with the KaZaA log-in (.37) server. Vidius hypothesizes that there is a loop between the (.34) server, the (.37) server, and the supernode, which is highly suggestive of some sort of control mechanism - the nature of which must remain unknown until the substance of the communications can be analyzed.
    I love that last line :P