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Kazaa Conundrum -- The Plot Thickens
Robotech_Master writes "The ever continuing Kazaa controversy just keeps getting better. This article on Wired highlights Brilliant Digital Entertainment, the company that brokered Kazaa's sale to the Australian firm, and indicates that the RIAA is investigating them."
That may not be too far from the truth.
I haven't been able to find any MP3s I've been looking for, for months now. Sure the P2P services still exist, but if the content isn't there they they are totally useless. Even right after the demise of Napster, the vast selection wasn't there anymore. Sure you'll have no problem finding the hits, but who wants to find them anyway when you could just turn on the radio?
Maybe I'm looking for stuff that is just too obscure though?
The RIAA is 'investigating' this company?
The RIAA is investigating just like Microsoft investigates Linux. Anyone can hire detectives and thugs to do some "detective" work.
I bet they eventually sue ISPs. Common-carrier defense or no, they'll be a target. By not blocking 'x' ports, they are willfully facilitating copyright infringement by their user base. Or even universities, for allowing students to violate copyright with government funded networks.
After that, it'll be individual users. A few high profile examples of Gnutella users with 40GB of music shared from an always-on cable connection being carted off to jail in cuffs, and that'll scare the pants off some people.
It's gonna get ugly. The RIAA should get the ATF to raid the homes. That'd be good tv.
Software Wars
If Gnutella supports resuming downloads (I forget if it does or not, haven't used it in ages) then there is no reason why multiple sources cannot be done with ease.
Detrermining which host if the fastest so the majority of the file is downloaded from them would be a bit more tricky though. You'd have to have a test download file, or calculate who is the fastest after the file has started downloading. Either way it is all possible, and really wouldn't be that hard.
If Gnutella doesn't support resuming, then they should add it ASAP.
No, I don't think that should be needed... Just start from the beginning of the file from one host. Download a few blocks and see how fast it goes, and then calculate where to start the second download from the speed and number of hosts available.
Actually I'm quite surprised it hasn't been done already...
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
Watch out for spyware removal software that has backdoors stuck in it. One of the IRC chans I hang in has been getting a lot of rumors of some of the software widgets that are supposed to remove the spyware also installing remote control backdoors on their machines.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The new Morpheus is assumed to have spyware and tracking built into it, right? Well... It's GPL'd and the source code is available... So... _IS_ there tracking?
On a related note, how do we know that the source code available is actually the same that was used to compile the binary version available for download?