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Kazaa Admits to Morpheus Shutdown
An Anonymous Coward writes: "KaZaa yesterday admitted to CNET that it was behind the shutout of Morpheus from the FastTrack network. Their reason? The company didn't pay its bills. Still, there has to be more to it than that for KaZaa to cut them off so quickly and unexpectedly, especially since a P2P network's power lies in the size of its audience. There is some weird cat-and-mouse play going on here that can only be damaging to both sides in the upcoming trial against the RIAA and MPAA in California."
Why does everything corporate have to be this big conspiracy? If a company wasn't paying its bills is it really all that surrising that they were shut down?
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by shutting down morpheus, they just admitted that they have control over their network and users. now they're screwed in terms of legal defense. meanwhile, morpheus switches to gnutella and will probably survive the onslaught.
how ironic...
Somewhere on this page I have hidden my signature.
Doesn't anyone use IRC anymore? You can get just as much, if not more, on any of the large networks. Bob.
Kazaa is just a minute away from getting completely shut down. They've just admitted to the RIAA that it is possible to shut somebody out of their (nasty) proprietary network... putting them into the same boat as Napster, as far as a Judge will be concerned with them.
Mopheus, who is now using the restamped Gnucleus software, is on a true P2P network, and it would be next to impossible to shut them down.
I suspect that Morpheus will be around long after Kazaa is a footnote.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
"...Zennstrom did not provide details on how the Morpheus software could have been shut down as a result of the fee dispute. StreamCast has said that Kazaa BV was able to change settings stored deep inside Morpheus users' computers as they logged on to the file-trading network. "
Isn't this a case of intrusion into the user's computer. Wonder if they can do that.... I mean, like if its fair or not...
And by locking Morepheus out of the network, Kazaa proved that the network isn't really a true P2P network, and that you can shut it down if order to by a court of law. Good job guys...
ok great. go kazaa. now go get limewire and start sharing on the gnutella network!
scott
"Your honor, we publically stated that we cut them off for non-payment but the _real_ reason we terminated their feed into our systems is because they refused to respect the rights of copyright holders. And doggone it, we just can't abide by that!"
See also: AOL vs. Aimster...
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Do we really know how long Morpheus has been in arrears with KaZaa? Maybe it's been months. If KaZaa is professional, they wouldn't be telling everyone and their cousin that Morpheus is being a deadbeat. It would be harder for Morpheus to pay if they start losing customers due to a bad rep.
All the technology in the world won't hide your lack of vision, talent, or understanding.
I was part of the working group for the next generatiopn of Gnutella about 1 1/2 years ago, and I thought that we came to the conclusion that Gnutella couldn't support itself once it became too big. The 2^n problem.
When was Gnutella brought back? Anything new change in terms of the P2P scheme?
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Is anyone surprised by this outcome? Was anyone actually watching during the dot-com meltdown? Hey, let's give away our client and fund our company on ad revenue alone. Yeah, right.
And what of all the conspiracy theorists? Guess they'll just have to remove their foot from their mouth . Oh, and maybe these guys too
--jordan
... it looks like they stand in a circle!
Why pay for a software license when you can just share the goods for nothing? Kazaa just doesn't get it!
----- Indecision is the key to flexibility.
Still, there has to be more to it than that for KaZaa to cut them off so quickly and unexpectedly, especially since a P2P network's power lies in the size of its audience.
From Kazaa's homepage:
"Morpheus users - Come on over to our place"
Kazaa has spyware, that's where their money come from. For them, any increase on the number of people using their program is good, and NOT using Morpheus.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Just goes to show you... I guess it's not really peer to peer, seems more like master/slave... I hate it when that happens, you get into a nice realtionship with a bit of software, then they freak out on you and change the rules. Kind of like some of the women I've dated...
Here's a question - is there a way to tap into the Kazaa/Morpheus community with OSS or something else that's not controlled from above?
Gnutella is the way. It will win. I got sick of Napster users moaning when it got shut down. I am getting sick of Morpheus users who think Gnutella is new and invented by Morpheus. But most of all I'm sick of all these Matrix references and the newscasters who tell the story like they told Napster, not understanding anything at all. Who gives a shite about the protocol, or the companies? You can get what you want just depends on how clever you are with internet. Better that simple tools don't exist so that mt evening news is not polluted by some dick trying to sound like he is hip with filesharing stories.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Steve Griffin StreamCast/Morpheus CEO
"This unprovoked attack is being carefully investigated, as it appears that federal laws may have been violated. We are still attempting to discover who would want to eliminate the community of millions of consumers who are using the Morpheus software product to connect with other users around the world."
Because of these attacks there is a new version of Morpheus that you must download in order to use the P2P system. They state in the message that this software was forced to be released early and I can say that the new software isn't what I was expecting. At this point in the P2P lifecycle I don't believe that this is doing any good.
Wheather or not MusicCity is going to press charges against the attacks that rendered software useless this comes at a bad time. Any company that forces another companys software to go belly must be looked at closely.
Link
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
Quote: "The company didn't pay its bills."
I think it's quite funny to see a bit of greed from a company dedicated to "sharing".
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
By the huge "so spyware" sign on morpheus' webpage. Because Morpheus is rightfully seen as a better software to have than Kazaa, they probably understood that if morpheus was on the same network, people will always prefer it.
Kazaa / Grokster / whatever "upgraded" the software last week to REQUIRE installation of the Cydoor spyware junk. Morpheus has always committed to "no spyware."
There is a solution for those wanting to use Grokster but not have the Cydoor crap:
http://www.cexx.org/cydoor.htm
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
I am not sure about the rest of you but I recently downloaded the new preview edition of morpheus that connects to the gnutella network. Of 20 downloads I tried to get I recieved 0 due to various errors and such. If this is common place people will drop morpheus and switch to kazaa, spyware or no spyware.
This whole situation sousds a lot like Morpheus escaping a burning building. Kaazaa has got to be on their last leg. All of the back-office wheeling and dealing can mean only one thing. They're desperate. Either the courst are about to shut them down, or thay are running out of money. Either way. the FastTrack software is about to collapse. Morpheus did the right thing by seperating themselves from that whole mess. If they didn't pay thier bills...It jsut tells me that they saw this coming for a while.
SM MBL-VIR looking 4 SIG 4 LTR. must be DDF, no 420, SD ok.
They were told two weeks ago to pay because an upgrade was comming. They were also told it will cost more this time. They didn't. Therefore they got shut down, easy as that.
forma3
seems to me that Kazaa shot itself in the foot by doing this.. they really need to stick together with the RIAA on their back.
thelikesofwhich.com
Try giFT or jiFT.
Whether Kazaa / Morpheus / Grokster / Fasttrack is true p2p is in debate, and mostly this question is due to Kazaa's shutting Morpheus down. Without any other facts, Fasttrack's status as true p2p isn't disproven, but it could just as easily be a software switch or "lease" renewal.
When my LimeWire client first connects, where does it go to get IPs of other peers? A central server. Does this make Gnutella not p2p? I don't think so.
When my Grokster client first starts up, it also connects to an IP within a relatively small range -a central server (ethereal tells me this much.) When Morpheus clients connect to the same central servers, they are probably being identified as Morpheus clients and being denied the list of peer IPs, and whatever authorization Kazaa's built in to their protocol.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
I believe Kaaza shot themself in the foot.
They showed to thr RIAA that they control the network in some way (they can shut it down and manipulate some registry settings) (even if they may not be able to control content right now).
They tried to make people switch from a competitor software which was more popular in a very aggresive way. (I for one downloaded Kaaza after the shutdown... However I'm back on Morpheus now). People will not like this.
Now if Morpheus is able to reclaim it' users (it should be easy because they do include spyware), the FastTrack network will be amputated millions of users.
It's good for Morpheus... If they survive a lost (if they loose)against the RIAA, their network is now completely decentralized (thank' to gnutella). Which is a good thing against further lawsuit. However, in the same event, Kaaza and Grokster will loose their network and will have to build a new one on another protocol.
It's a win-win for Gnutella... Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit... Many more millions of users on the network.
What is they do that anyone finds sufficient value in to support anything they do?
How will the RIAA / MPAA / Software industry look upon this, with Kazaa adimitting to making money off of their copyrights? (I know that's flawed logic, but the RI/MPAA cares not for your 'logic') Kazaa just admitted that they're in this for the cash. Sure, it's just a license to software that can be used to trade *anything* (not just copyrighted material), but they just admitted that they can and do control who gets on the network AND that they're making cash off of it. They just drew the bullseye on their own forehead.
do not read this line twice.
so.. now that all this fuss is happening with kazaa and morpheus.. what's the next best file-sharing software out right now? hopefully this post will help out people (like me) trying to find the Aphex Twin - Classics CD
I was running Morpheus and waiting for some very large downloads to complete. I never turned my box off. I'm still downloading the same files just as quickly, but am unable to search the network.
Morpheus didn't pay the bills and KaZaa called them on it. Morpheus' CEO sounds like a real egomaniac from his comments in the news and on their website and I'm betting he figured he'd wait til they turned him off and then blame THEM and try to make KaZaa look like the assholes.
Obviously he knew about non-payed bills and the apparent chance of being shutdown otherwise they wouldn't have has a Gnutella client all developed and ready for release within a few days.
If someone at Morpheus is reading this pass it on to your CEO and tell him that treating partners like this doesn't make anyone want to work with your company and makes him look like a prick.
I have no affiliation with either company and am strictly speaking as an outsider having dealt with people and situations like this. Is anyone else sick of this ego crap?
What's wrong with these people? Don't they have anything better to do with their lives/time than to bother others?
No.
Now: move your mouse pointer to the menu that says "threshold," and select something higher than -1.
Thought I would reitterate this point: their CEO went on record (on a C|Net interview) as saying, in so many words:
"We are not worried about lawsuits or the recording industry because, without central servers, we cannot be shut down. Even if the company dissapears, the clients are still out there and will continue to connect to eachother, regardless!"
But then, as I've learned, they released a newer version of Morpheus that allowed itself to be shout down. Gee, what a surprise: a CEO talks about how he's doing it all for the people and for the wonder that is p2p sharing, but he's really just a jerk who, when he can't make a buck, decides to screw it all up for everyone.
Yeah, I know about LimeWire and all the others, but Morpheus had the features I liked and it was always faster.
If Slashdot is where the spelling-challenged go when they die, I'm in heaven.
Not paying bills is certainly a justified reason for shutting down a service. But I don't like the idea that they used a back-door to change user settings.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I'm almost getting sick of hearing about this, eh?
However I do wish both sides would just spit out what the hell is going on.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Support Gnucleus .
Fuck Morpheus. Fuck KaZaa.
giFT is an open source ft client, and they're also developing the openFT network that they hope will become the new standard for p2p file trading. It's loosely based on the FastTrack network used by kazaa but it's all open sourced.
do not read this line twice.
my favorite quote...
"...especially since a P2P network's power lies in the size of its audience"
obviously not...if you pull the plug
If Morpheus can use the Gnutella network together with all their aparatus of media file meta-information, and multiple segmented downloading, and if they use the hyper-cube network approach, rather than the tree one, it will simply rocks, and no one will be able to stop it when it begins.
There's a project called GiFT, (acronym to GNU Internet File Transfer) project, that's trying to implement a FastTrack like protocol (not using their network). I'm really excited with it, but it development is quite slow...
Maybe they can implement a real alternative to the proprietary FastTrack, or to the old-and-slow Gnutella.
it makes the process about 2x longer.
first you download the file (whatever.zip)
then you extract all the stupid nfo files with the rar files (whatever.r00...)
then you extract to a directory
Now you have to save every message as a freaking text file
then yDecode
then do the above steps.
irritating
Just my 2 pesos!
Note the "any". You don't need rocket science to work out that you can only give people the benefit of the doubt for so long before deciding that you're being scammed and are never going to see one penny. Ironic, nes pas, that Kazaa kick of Morpheous for freeloading on their work and IP, when the vast majority of Kazaa's income is coming from serving ads to people making copies of copyrighted material (self included, I'm not being pejorative)?
Who there, conspiracy theorists. The "setting" is question is probably just the "bool bClientIsAuthorised" flag based on the reply from the Kazaa authentication servers. There's nothing sinister going on here. This is the way the Kazaa network is supposed to work (now). Authorised clients paying for connection to the Kazaa authentication servers. Since they went authentication to throw off giFT, Kazaa has been a client-server/P2P hybrid. Maybe Morpheus didn't get that, but I'm sure the giFT team can explain it to them.
Translation: "Those bastards actually make you pay to play! I mean, they expect us to hold up our end of the contract as well as them holding up theirs. What's with that?"
Sure, or you could have subpoena'd the giFT team to tell you that... ;-)
What you absolutely must understand is that Morpheus is a commercial service. The "100% spyware free!" boast was a marketing plot. They thought they could make money off of freeloaders (like me, remember?). Trouble is, Kazaa had the same idea, and Kazaa own the keys to that particular part of the Magic Kingdom.
Now Morpehsu is going to try and make money off of Gnutella. Well, here's a pretty pickle. Does the Gnutella network want a for-profit service in there, attracting the ire of the MPAA and their bought politicians (and judges who, lest we forget, have an eye on promotion to the Supremes, and can tell which way the political winds are shifting)? I doubt it. Can Gnutella do anything about it? Of course not. They can't pull a Kazaa and block Morpheus, either by force majeur or through obscurity.
Screw who said what to who between Kazaa and Morpheus. That's yesterday's news, it was doubtless all about the bottom line, and given the characters of the organisations in question (proprietary, commercial, legally dubious), we simply can't expect anything like honest answers from anybody. It's "Morpheus versus Gnutella", or "Morpheus with Gnutella" that's the issue now. This is shaping up to be the first big test of how well open source can survive in a hostile environment, with layer upon layer of juicy morality quandaries to pick over.
Is it wrong for Morpheus to "freeload" off of Gnutella? But they're license compliant, and they bring a whole lot of content with them. And the whole Gnutella network is - de facto - already about freeloading. But making profit off of it just fuels the MPAA/RIAA's law-buying machine...
This one is going to run and run. I for one am going to settle down with some popcorn and enjoy the (truly) free show. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Can be found here. I think you'll find it quite useful and user friendly. Tell all of your friends about it.
There's a name missing in this debate: Gnucleus.
Some of you might not realize the depths of sleaze to which Morpheus has descended. To make their latest "preview version", they took an open source Gnutella client named Gnucleus (http://www.gnucleus.com), added their branding and annoying popup ads, and redistributed it as the new version of Morpheus.
They did not even contact the developers of Gnucleus before they ripped off their software. And they ban anyone from the Music City chat room who even mentions the existence of Gnucleus.
The "developers" of Morpheus are not people who deserve your loyalty or concern. My advice to everyone is to immediately delete Morpheus and and install Gnucleus. It's the same program but without the advertising and popups. And by doing so you'll be showing a little respect to the people who actually wrote the program, rather than the pieces of shit who renamed it and are attempting to pass it off as their own.
Gee Whiz! I hope that all of this gets resolved before the new Britney Spears album comes out. What a predicament!
Is KaZaa still a Dutch company (according to the CNET article) if they are now in Australia?
Or are they talking about a different kazaa?
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
gnucleus
Kazaa, et al DOES NOT have control over the network. The only thing they control is the authentication mechanism. Once you're authenticated, you have complete, unfettered access to the network and Kazaa has no control over what you do/don't share.
With Napster, it was different since Napster *did* control what files were/weren't shared. With fast track, however, all they can control is whether or not you get on the network. So (and IANAL) as long as they can show that there are legitimate uses for the fast track network, I will be surprised if they get shut down.
To liken it to the Betamax court case that everyone likes to toss around, Sony had control over whether or not you could buy a VCR, but once you owned that VCR, Sony had no control over what you could or couldn't record.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
May I suggest this site.
There is a way to eliminate all of the spyware (even Cydoor) from Kazaa/Grokster and still have it run. I would love to tell you how, but I have a very pressing engagement for which I am late. You can find it on the Internet somewhere. Try Google.
As everyone else has stated, KaZaa and Morpheus can't play nice together. I think everyone else is overlooking the fact that somewhere, there is a server that controls login traffic, and THAT is what the courts will nail Morpheus for. KaZaa has nothing to lose, even if it's their server. My $.02
-------------------------------------------
Saving baby carrots around the globe.
heaven
Lots of thanks to everyone in this list, none of us get paid, we do it out of creating something for the greater good.
Developers
John Marshall - Gnucleus Author, from New Hampshire in the USA
Jacques Exelrud - Created self saving statuses in the transfer window
Thomas Hille - Working on the Plug-In System
Darren - New Icon look-up system
DA - Fixed some bugs in the transfer window
Sascha Nitsch - Fixed a couple memory leaks
Jerry Smith - Working on an internal web server
Andrey Klinger - New search code and fixes to file lists
Herve Le Breton - Oasis developer, plans to do some Gnucleus engine work
Sven - Fixed refreshing of all the views in Gnucleus during resize
Niderost B.U. - Revised CVS update instructions
Arun V - Working on a version of gnucleus for U2 fans and had the cool idea of simplifying the connect screen
Mark Dennehy (retired) - My C++ / MFC mentor in my first month of creating this project
Aaron Putnam (retired) - Opened my eyes to the wonderful world of STL
Scott Kirkwood (retired) - Lots of quality work, new list box classes and drive space info
Nathan Brown (retired) - Protocol and grunt work in the beginning
Justin Marrese (retired) - Hashing, hash, hash, hash
Graphics / Web
Gus - Created the cool new XP compatible icons
Bernard Lee - Made the big logo over at SourceForge
Derrich Hafemann - Did some graphics on this page and in Gnucleus
Jared Tomlin - Web design support
Roger Ryder - Working on getting some Gnucleus T-Shirts out!
Shawn R. - Created the current gnucleus logo with the molecule looking effect
Testers
Felix Ordelheide - Runs a large private Gnucleus LAN over in Germany
The new version of morpheus on the gnutella network is awful. After 2 hours of trying, i had not one successful download. You can't search by file type, bit rate, etc. Grokster's spyware can be "neutered" - follow instructions here.
Seriously, Mod this up! People need to know.
It's because Morpheus sucks. The client, which Morpheus STOLE, is wonderful. It's called Gnucleus. It's open source, free, and the future. Try it here.
Morpheus SUCKS. Gnucleus totally deserves all of our support. Let KaZaa die, for all we care. Open Source is the future, and so is Gnucleus.
Gnucleus 0wnz!
I do know one thing, Kazaa will NEVER be installed on my machine... spyware watching my internet activity PLUS the admitted ability to modify settings on a users machine at will? no thanks.
The "new" morpheus may not be as easy to use as the original but at least Morpheus has never modified my registry settings on its own.
They advertised "Morpheus users come on over" on the front page , but they took that down after a while.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Every P2P service claims to be unshutdownable then... Shutdown... oops, someones been lieing.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Isn't this the point of open source? The ability to reuse code? To save yourself from reinventing the wheel? Or is there some big respect thing hidden behind the curtains that must be played out to the originators of the source code? This would seperate you from making "ripped off" software as opposed to.....
#1) Morpheus had more traffic than Napster did at its height
#2) Morpheus is an extremely popular name
#3) Kazaa just made themselves the prime target of the RIAA/MPAA
Basically.. Morpheus had some sort of contract with Kazaa. Morpheus was paying its monthly bills to Kazaa until they were big enough to part and survive on their own. So now Morpheus left, they maintained most of their audience, they still have their extremely widely popular brand name, they're saving themselves money from having to pay Kazaa any longer, and Kazaa will most likely be taken to court, while Morpheus is/should be a less attractive target now as far as RIAA/MPAA is concerned.
Way to go Morpheus, you're still #1!
I use giFT. It's coming along nicely. Still a few snags now and then, but quite good. It's already better than gnutella, imho.
You didn't once mention Gnucleus , the fine open source structure that Morpheus lifted to keep up there ad revenues.
I bet $100 you work for Morpheus.
FastTrack was upgraded to a newer version and Morpheus clients were the only clients affected by it (because there is no newer version!)
How costly is it, really?
Besides, there's another approach. Plus they can just take a lawyer and go to ISPs and start talking about filtering incoming connections requests.
At least cable providers don't like incoming connections at all, so they won't need much prodding. Especially once congress is done discarding the CLECS, the Baby Bells don't like DSL at all, so they may not take too much prodding. There go the high-bandwidth users, the ones people would prefer to download from. Next start going after the biggest dialup outfits, like Earthlink.
The key point here is that it's not a battle the RIAA actually has to win. They just need to make the other side feel enough pain and inconvenience. I'm sure that p2p could be encapsulated and run over UDP, http, ICMP, or what have you. The point here is that it's getting slower and more difficult to run. Plus as it gets slower, and the border filtering gets more annoying, some number of people will just give up.
They really don't have to completely eliminate filesharing, just drop it to some level below their attention span, and that is possible, and I honestly don't know what the cost is. I also fear that the higher the cost, the more WE pay.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
A shame, really.
dinner: it's what's for beer
Face it people, name it Morpheus, name it Kazaa, name it something else.
What shuts such network down?
It's the money, always.
Who is pissed off in the end?
The user, always.
So, what is the solution to all this?
Gnutella, always.
I know, my post sounds something like a troll, but please, think about it.
Let's all migrate to gnutella, fire up you favourite client and let's start sharing.
We will se how gnutella scales, how it evolves. I think if we all pull over to the only true p2p architecture, we will shut out the MPAA the RIAA and all other stuff that bothers us.
Yes, maybe people with 56k modems won't be very happy with this. But to speak in the words of a modern time, the collateral damage is everywhere.
And as time goes on, everybody is going to be on a better connection.
So, let's shape up, put your middle finger in the air and use gnutella...
Just my 0.02
You say Napster did control what people shared? Based on what, they could filter the search queries?
Well, I think Kazaa can too. Even if the query is not routed thru a central server, Kazaa's client could download from time to time a compressed file with information about what files cannot be shared.
It can be done, same argument that the "justice" used to stop Napster. But instead of filtering on the central server, you are going to filter on a client-basis.
Not trying to give anyone (ahem, RIAA) ideas, but I think we should be prepared for Kazaa's shutdown, really soon.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
VA Software yesterday admitted to everybody that it was behind the shutout of linux from the maintstream market. Their reason? The company didn't pay its bills. Still, there has to be more to it than that for everyone with an ounce of fucking sense to cut them off so quickly and unexpectedly, especially since an operating system's power lies in the size of its userbase. There is some weird homosexual play going on here that can only be damaging to both sides of RMS's anus in the upcoming fucksession with the RIAA and MPAA in California.
update comments set karma=-1, reason='offtopic' where sid=26315
Sorry, while technically accurate, it's unrealistic and unfeasible. The problem is that you presume that all the industry can do is merely shut down the daemon, there by allowing others to merely popup in its place. But this is not the case here. All the copyright holders have to do is use their influence more effectively to penalize the people that are sharing the files. The penalty need not be legal at its head (as opposed to its legal origin) to be effective. For instance, if the company strikes up an explicit or implicit deal with the cable modem and DSL companies to shut off the internet access of any individual found sharing pirated material for, say, 1 to 2 months. This would be plenty to deter those people and it would be quite simple to impliment.
What you must remember is that these filesharing services do not offer the sharer anything and, even without any sort of meaningful enforcement today, have significant drawbacks (e.g., lost resources, bandwidth, etc). In other words, the costs exceed the benefits somewhat. This is why we have the so-called "Tragedy of the commons" today on most file sharing services. The leaches far outnumber the sharers. Now when we toss a large helping of risk in there, you'll see this cost vs benefit ratio change significantly for the worse and a mass exodus of sharers. The industry need not be able to reach every last one of them--just enough to raise the level of risk to a sufficiently high level. Nor does every last individual need to change his habits, the combination of the excessive demand and the potential for additional measures (legal, political, and otherwise) is more than sufficient to bring the service to an effective halt.
From Wired, a judge has refused to dismiss the case against Streamcast,Kazaa, and Grokster...looks like Morpheous got out just in time. Kazaa probably did them a big favor by sending em to Gnutella (and further weakened Kazaa's own case in this lawsuit to boot)
Jury to Hear File-Trading Case
I think we all are watching a grandiose play.
Essentially, the IP faction has already bought out KaZaa, under one condition: that they first kill off Morpheus. Witness the obscure and unexplained sellout of Kazaa to a mysterious foreign company nobody really knows. Witness the sequence of events. Witness the actions of Kazaa completely damaging Kazaas own legal standing, while only beeing of limited use to them.
The Kazaa founders probably got enough money and a promise not to get sued personally for pulling of this stunt.
This just has waaay too much "random" events to be normal.
You're right that it's not like Napster, but it's not like Sony either. Remember, judges have an eye on the supremes, and they know which way the government and their paymasters in the MPAA/RIAA want them to go. All a court has to do is to push the Napster ruling a little further and ask why, if Kazaa has servers, they can't monitor the transfers.
And when it comes down to it, there's no reason other habit. That works for incumbent telcos and ISP's, but Kazaa is new to the party, and the rules haven't been set in stone yet. This one could easily go either way, but I fully believe that Kazaa are boned.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It may not be fair use, but it may also not be copyright infringement. In fact, it's a grey area. According to ChillingEffect.org, deciding whether something is fair use or not involves (among other things):
So it could be argued that limited copying for personal use provides negligible impact on the overall market, and is therefore fair use. It could also be argued the other way, but it's certainly not as black and white as you make it seem.And if it is copyright infringement, the owner of the copyright may not be entitled to any remuneration:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/504.html
A reasonable discussion of Fair Use, with considerably more thought and insight than the parent post is available here:
http://www.arl.org/scomm/copyright/uses.html
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
People - so what if you can't get someone else's music? Just buy some CDs, or pay for some MP3s from emusic, or listen to some free-as-in-cheapskate shoutcast streams. TANSTAAFL.
Pay the fuck up!
haha, Sounds like my old roomate! (yea, im still bitter lol)
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
Can Gnucleus do other files appart from MP3s?
It looks a nice simple clean client.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
And when it comes down to it, there's no reason other habit.
Huh? Habit? There are several technological reasons why Kazaa cannot monitor the network. Number one is the software isn't programmed to do that.
OK, so you can change that, but then there's the issues of servers -- Kazaa doesn't have enough of them to implement monitoring on a global scale. That's one of the beauties of P2P networks is that the load is distributed across thousands of servers. (and yes, it's one of the drawbacks, too)
Then finally, there's the issue of bandwidth, which isn't free. Currently, Kazaa, et al only have to maintain enough bandwidth to do a one-time authentication of their users. If they suddenly have to monitor each and every file that gets shared, you're talking about a massive amount of additional bandwidth that they'll have to procure (and pay for!!)
Napster was ordered to filter files because they could, based on their current technology base. Sony was let off the hook because they couldn't. (gross oversimplification, but it's still applicable)
Napster was certainly boned because they were a wholly-centralized network. Kazaa may be boned, because part of their network is centralized (though I don't think they will be). Gnutella is boned because they run into scalability problems with traffic spikes, but their network is *entirely* decentralized. It's only a matter of time before some innovative entrepenuer comes up with the right balance that will keep the courts off their back and still allow a scalable, free P2P file sharing network.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
If it had been an Open Source client you would have had the ability to make sure there *are* no backdoors.
Or to put it another way - if you want to be sure that the software you run doesn't change your settings only run open source software.
Is that a phony page? News.com.COM ?
Seems fishy but maybe I'm just paranoid.
OMG... RIAA has just released a press announcement about all P2P technologies. They have bought and paid for the original patent for Point to Point networking. Simultaenously they have announced the first step in a crusade against P2P file sharing, with the FBI and USSS leading the way by tapping into major internet ISP's and even backbones and doing traces on traffic to track down violators using the copyrighted software. Their combined might puts 260 agents in the field, along with another 1000 cooperating police officers from 15 cities.
8 0. html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/98
I don't think that comparison is valid. It's like saying, well, Sony COULD come into your house and destroy any illegal tapes you made with their VCR, right? The point with Napster was that the indexing was taking place on servers they ran -- with FastTrack, the indexing is going on on individual users' machines.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
It's not about being 'right' or 'wrong' or some kind of moral platitude. It's about whose ego is getting stroked.
-
Even so, Kazaa still can manage to prevent this indexing of allowed files to be shared, by updating this block list from a server from time to time.
It's technically possible.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
"As a result of MusicCity's breach, Kazaa BV did not provide version 1.5 to MusicCity. Kazaa has also terminated MusicCity's license." (from the cnet link)
while TheRegister reports that the plug was pulled bc of attacks on the morpheus network:
"It appears that the attacks included an encrypted message being repeatedly sent directly to your computers that changed registry settings in your computer," a statement by Griffin to users on the accelerated availability of Morpheus Preview Edition states.
"Confusingly, this had nothing to do with encrypted messages" (also the reg.)
so i guess my take is:
Confusingly there isn't conclusive evidence as to what actually happened
Why would KaZaA shutdown Morpheus, decreasing the number of people who use the FastTrack network and the amount of files available to *ALL* FastTrack clients. It doesn't make sense -- they're just shooting themselves in the foot.
Also, in order to accomplish the DDoS attack they are admitting to having broken into several computers. By modifying the registry entries of user's PCs they are showing themselves to be untrustworthy (imagine what trojans lurk inside the KaZaA client....?)
I actually hope the RIAA shuts KaZaA down. They're bad news all around.
You know, conservative Senator from Utah, former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee? I believe he even helped write the DMCA.
Go look up Hilary Rosen's Senate testimony regarding Napster, and read the exchange between them. Orrin says basically "is it fair use if I make a copy for my wife to play in her car?" Rosen hems and haws, and Hatch says something to the effect of "It is."
Now, sharing anonymously over a network is a whole different ball of wax, and that's what's got the RIAA and MPAA in a tizzy.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Of course it's technically possible, the question is whether or not it's their responsibility. Their case is that because all the infringement taking place does so on other people's machines, it is not. Technical feasability isn't the question. In the case of Napster, they couldn't solve the problem technically, so they were forced to shut down until they could.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Just for me, does anyone actually have any proof that Morpheous doesn't use spyware?
.gif file on their website supposed to make me believe that absolutely no information was being sent without my knowledge?
Is the little
And before anyone says "but their source code is on the website dumbass" consider what it is you're saying - dumbass.
What they mean is KaZaa has shown that they are able to stop the network. In the dutch case they claimed that they were unable to stop users with the program from using it.
Try your local record store, if you can't find it there, Amazon, CDNow, bn.com all have this disk.
Just browse over to http://www.freenetproject.org and see what they offer. All this gnutella/kazaa/morpheous/whatever stuff is a thing of the past. Evenmore so when they start to fight like that.
This is not true at all. They DO control the network precisely because they control the authentication. The only clients that are allowed to log on the network are the clients that license FastTrack's code, and they have full control over that code (see big fat agreement to license FastTrack's code).
The proof: FastTrack doesn't allow people to share MP3's encoded above 128kbps. How ? Because the restriction is encoded in their library, which is used by the clients they control.
GiFT is another example. All FastTrack had to do to shut down GiFT forever was to boost up its protocol version number and change the authentication mechanism. They definitely have control over their network, which is precisely why they'll loose the legal battle.
My biggest hope, is that GiFT and OpenFT will eventually take over as a true Open-Source alternative to the FastTrack network: a completely decentralized 2-layered network which will become the true successor of Gnutella.
DZM
Okay.. Company 1 licenses its peer to peer file trading software, catered to the distribution of media without concern for copyright, to Company 2, for a fee.
Company 1 doesn't get paid by Company 2. The irony is just killing me, here. You mean, they distributed your valuable, copyrighted software, and used it, without paying you?
Bwahahahahahahahahaha.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Do either of these have Linux clients? Have not followed the p2p communitty much since Napster. Do not have windows machine at home..
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Morpheus - You shut down our connection!!
Kazaa - Yeah? Well, what are _you_ going to do about it?
It's fairly easy to prove legitimate uses for Morpheus. So a for all the music that would have been public domain if it weren't for the Sony Bono copy protection act. It's likely that the copyright extention of existing works will be struck down, so music from the 1950s should be legitimate.
Do a query now. There's *a lot* of it.
This doesn't even get into the grey area of music *that you can't buy anywhere* because CDs are no longer sold, or artists that don't mind one way or another, or artists that *want* their work to have publicity over Morpheus because they have no other way to get people to know about them.
As for the mob analogy, I'm sorry, but I don't know about any existing law that could prosecute the restaurant owner any more than they could prosecute the taxi cab driver that drove some of the gangsters to the restaurant.
People need to start using these networks to trade material legally. For example, put the source code to open source projects on P2P networks. Things like the Linux kernel, XFree86, KDE, etc. are fairly large downloads, and this would take a lot of load off of the mirror servers.
It would be neat if you could run apt-get on a P2P network (falling back to the regular servers for files that are unavailable), downloading the md5sums from official servers to make sure nobody modifies the packages. At every university with multiple Debian users, you have a huge amount of wasted bandwidth, and P2P would help prevent that waste (if enough people used it legitimately, it could actually reduce the school's bandwidth costs, and admins might consider unbanning P2P apps). Unfortunately, I don't know of any P2P system smart enough to detect when peers are on the same LAN, and use them instead of internet peers (it would also be nice if they could detect Internet2 peers - that's a bit harder, but you can do it using the data from www.routeviews.org).
There is no clause in fair use, there never has been one, that allows fair use for anything other than: (1) criticism and comment, (2) parody and satire, (3) scholarship and research, (4) news reporting and (5) teaching. To qualify for consideration under the fair use defence, your use must fall into these categories. You don't even get to argue the "negligible impact" until you've shown that you qualify. There is no case zero. There is no case six. Personal/friends/family use is not one of the five cases.
Bull. You completely misinterpret the "such as" wording of the law. According to 17 USC 101, "The terms 'including' and 'such as' are illustrative and not limitative" (emphasis by yerricde). The fair use law (17 USC 107) opens by stating: "the fair use of a copyrighted work ... for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright" (emphasis by yerricde). Nowhere does it limit what may be considered as fair use. It then goes on to list the four factors that figure into a fair use defense. The judge in a fair use case must base her decision primarily (if not solely) on those factors. This non-limitation of fair use explains why the Sony v. Universal decision "contradicts [your] black and white stance a little."
Additionally, your CBS v. DNC quote may pose an argument against encryption of non-subscription broadcast television.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Although most people aren't aware of it, this is not the first time kazaa has done this. They implemented a new encrypted authentication system which shut out the giFT project (an opensource fasttrack node). The problem with this whole network is that it relies on kazaa's authentication server and, to the best of my knowledge, there are no working clients other than those liscensed by kazaa. Translation: RIAA goes after kazaa, network gone. Plus there's the whole spyware, etc thing. I would be interested in some more technical info as to exactly what kazaa did to shut down morpheus, if anyone out there knows. The article was pretty vague (as usual).
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
It needs to be stressed that control of who gets on the network, and knowledge of what goes on inside the network, are two entirely different things. Napster's downfall was not that they had the ability to shut down the network, but that they knew people where trading copyrighted material, and they could also step in and limit what material people had access to inside the network. The Fasttrack network is an entirely different beast. Kazaa may be able to decide who gets in and who doesn't, but once a user is on the network they have no ability to directly monitor what material people are trading and have no ability to limit what people have access to.
Kazaa is providing a network, but have no involvement with what users do inside the network. Napster lost their case because they did have an involvement with what happened inside the network.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
The proof: FastTrack doesn't allow people to share MP3's encoded above 128kbps. How ? Because the restriction is encoded in their library, which is used by the clients they control.
Actually the restriction is in the registry, and it's simple to change. More importantly, the restriction isn't imposed by any other computer on the network - it's imposed by the software on your computer, not a central server. They could have their software to ignore files that begin with the letter b, but this is hardly control over the network.
There are several technological reasons why Kazaa cannot monitor the network. Number one is the software isn't programmed to do that.
That is an implematation problem not a techological one.
Kazaa doesn't have enough [servers] to implement monitoring on a global scale.
If they are forced to monitor they will need more servers. Surely there is not a technological problem with buying servers.
Then finally, there's the issue of bandwidth, which isn't free.
That is a financial problem. If you can't afford to do business legally you can't afford to do business.
Napster was ordered to filter files because they could, based on their current technology base. Sony was let off the hook because they couldn't. (gross oversimplification, but it's still applicable)
All of the "problems" you have cited are really "choices" that were made by the implementors for the explicit purpose of not being able filter files. The question I have for you is, does that make their case stronger or weaker?
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
I'm sure that some new file-sharing network will spring up some day soon that forces you to share (and does check). That service would grow sharply in popularity because there would be more files available.
But if you force users to share, you introduce an entry barrier. Assuming that you cannot download unless you are sharing at least one resource, how do you get that first resource?
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is not true at all. They DO control the network precisely because they control the authentication. The only clients that are allowed to log on the network are the clients that license FastTrack's code, and they have full control over that code (see big fat agreement to license FastTrack's code).
Actually, it is true. Kazaa controls *access* to the network. They do not control the network itself. They may be able to code their software to not allow any MP3s higher than 128kbps, but they cannot say, "Allow freemusic.mp3, but don't allow metallica_sucks.mp3" (I'm not saying this couldn't be added -- of course that's technically possible. However, it's not possible with the way the Fast Track network currently operates)
Fast Track is like a giant road system and Kazaa is the toll booth. They can charge you to get on and they may even be able to impose a speed limit, but they can't control which roads you travel over and what turns you make.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
I'd send you a coupon good for "one clue" but I don't think you'd be able to figure it out.
The issue is whether the network can be controlled, not how precise that control is. If they can stop the network by refusing to authenticate clients, they can control it. On or off. That is control.
...when they claim that the P2P technology that they use cannot be interrupted or stopped by legal means since it is decentralized, out of thier control, blah, blah, blah...
MPAA/RIAA/whatever response - "you did it to Morpheus, now do it to yourselves"
Bye bye KaZaA... nice knowin' ya!
You definitely have a point.
:-)
What i meant was: if you control how people access the network, and if you control the tools that people have to use to access the network, that's awefully close to controlling the network..
Technically, you don't have to go trough a FastTrack machine to download a file from another node (unlike Napster, which required a query to obtain the client IP address, IIRC).
HOWEVER, if FastTrack decides it doesn't want people to download files called "metallica_sucks.mp3", they can do it! They can code the restriction in they library, and force people to upgrade to a new version of their client. I hope you see my point here. After all that's what they did to disable GiFT.
You can of course hack the binary client (or registry entries) to lift some of the restrictions, but that's not for the average Joe user. In effect, the 128kbps restriction works, MP3s above 128 are extremely rare on the network (I've only seen it happen when the MP3 is encoded in VBR...).
DZM
I think what it implies is that Kazaa/FT has the *ability* to turn off their network. Even if they do not control what goes in or out, if they have the ability to forcibly remove everyone from the network then the judge won't let them use their "we don't have control" argument.
Of course, they can always have their next auto-patch permanently disable the auto-patch feature, but I doubt they want to intentionaly lose control of their network.
Each company has contended that the networks are wholly decentralized, and that the companies could not exert any control over computer users' actions. But the failure of Morpheus' network appeared to indicate that at least one control point existed that would allow part of the network to be shut down. The RIAA reacted to this development quickly last week. "We have been saying all along that they control the system, and this proves it," RIAA Senior Vice President Matt Oppenheim said in a statement last week.
:-P
looks like someone just shot themselves in the foot... napster all over again..
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Don't delete that Morpheus folder just yet! Use this hack I thought up last night for my Invader Zim fan friend who has dialup...
Download and install Grokster. If you really do have unfinished downloads from Morpheus, there will be files in My Shared Folder (from morpheus) with all of your MP3s, copies of Photoshop 6, and porn MPEGs, that look like this:
(yes, kazaa.)kazaa78952048753245.dat
Move those dat files into the new Grokster shared folder, and fire up Grokster. You SHOULD see those downloads continuing (in the grokster traffic window), but when they're done, they'll save themselves to their original location, c:\progra~1\morpheus\myshar~1\
You know what I mean. Anyway, just copy those Invader Zim episodes and fake AdultCheck keygens into your grokster shared folder and don't be a dick about it, share with everyone else. And that's my hack to keep those fasttrack downloads going.
You might want to point people at this thread for discussion on this very subject.
rooooar
With all of this talk going on about the Fast Track network why has giFT not been discussed? (http://gift.sourceforge.net). giFT is an open source implementation of a Fast Track like network. At the current time the program is in a rather rough state (it does work however) but the network is really small... usually around 80 people or so.
:(
Why don't we all start using giFT and show our support for the developers? If the open source community had a program that worked as well as KaZaA, had no spyware, and didn't rely on any type of authentication to get connected to the network then wouldn't the network be virtually unstopable?
The reason I refuse to use the gnutella clients is because (at least when I last tried them) none worked nearly as well as KaZaA (or the other Fast Track clients).
Would anyone be interested in helping these guys out? I have dropped them a few emails, but because of my relative inexperience I don't believe they want me.
here is the url again http://gift.sourceforge.net
Seriously, Mod this up! People need to know.
This is no way like a VCR or other piece of hardware. They can, via their auth mechanismn, force people to upgrade to a new version.
Fast Track demonstrated this so very nicely when gift managed to connect to the network. Everyone on the network upgraded to a new version within days.
To shut down this network, all it requires, really, is that the auth servers refuse all clients. A court order could force them to do just that. Or a court could order them to make a new version that allow content control, and force them to deny any user that did not upgrade to this new version.
Either way, the music industry gets what they want, and the network dies/gets controlled.
Just replace a few version strings and you're back in business.
to keep up.
Besides as far as the WTO is concerned, member countries are only required to have civil legislation concerning copyright infringements, not criminal legislation, just like patent law.
This means (AFA the WTO is concerned) govts don't have to do anything but not get in the way if a copyright holder decides to sue a copyright infringer, by which time they have moved on.
I'd say less than 1% of people who use opensource code add to it.
Not that I believe any /.-er worth his or her salt would need step-by-step instructions, but go HERE for a tutorial on installing Grokster sans spyware. I'm told the same procedure works for KaZaA but I haven't tried it.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
You're referring to the BSD license.
Only that they provide source which they do.
Why are you so fustered about all this, as if it means anything?
Ig Gnucleus wanted credit they should have used the old BSD license or created their own opensource license.
& stop spitting the dummy
You are going on about this as if it effects your survival or something.
Stop being silly & move on
who cares?
If Gnucleus wanted credit they should have used the BSD license
Hey, Why couldn't users contend that we had our computers changed/altered without our permission. The last time I checked that was still illegal. If we're not supposed to breaking into them - they should reciprocate and not break into us. By altering registry setting without asking, they have effectivly broken into my computer. Nothin better than a /. class action suit.
MB
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
It's purely ease of use... I started using Gnutella clients, lots of them, but found them all to be painful to use, and all to have the feature I most like about KaZaa, and the old Morpheus, and that's the automatic resumption of partial downloads when I reconnect to the net... I don't want to be tied to the net just because I'm 70% through a 500Meg download... I kinda might want to take my laptop to work.
And then there was the reliability aspect... As the fastrack system had the fantastic concept of downloading from multiple sources, instantly it bacame far more reliable, and you pretty much always got what you started downloading, unlike Gnutella where if the person you were downloading from switched off their connection, then bye bye download.
Now, I haven't used anything other than Morpheus for quite a while now, so it might have all changed in the interim, and dammit, I hope it has, and someone can point me to a better client, cause at the moment I'm downloading KaZaa with all of its shite spyway... I don't want to, but I just can't stand Gnutella... I like ease of use in my applications, as does my girlfriend, and she loves to use Morpheus/Kazaa et al....
So perhaps someone can point me towards a better client.... please?
I don't know about anyone else, but i've been useing the beta of winMX and it does the job quite nicely even with a extremly small userbase due to beta status. But it does have the option of connecting to open nap servers which relaly makes it great.
I like the GUI interface to Gnucleus.
Sure the biological install and update is neat.
But if I type in "Andromeda" and get "0" results then its completely useless.
Of course KaZaa is getting so overloaded now that I can't download anything. Looks like I'm going to have to buy a bigger harddrive and start recording the stuff myself.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Ok so if/when the RIAA/MPAA win their lawsuits, it will just be shut down. What's so hard to see about that? Just because they can't filter out copyrighted materials isn't going to stop these suits. They want blood.
by changing the version number with a resource editor. Quite simple, really.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I mean if they DID change registry settings on my PC to shut down Morpheus, then they attacked MY pc! If they shut down servers, then they attacked the servers with malicious intent. They pretty much spread a virus around, didn't they?
I'd love to, but Gnutella is crappy. The network is filled with bad and incomplete files, most stuff is misdescribed, and searching is totally lame. The gnutella folks really need to work on the availability and quality of content in the network.
I think maybe Gnutella is a good starting user base for some new evolution of the system, but right now it doesn't hold a candle to Morpheus (or especially, Napster).
IANAL and I have question about Gnutella. Assuming the new Morpheus takes off or there is a similar and sudden mass migration to Gnutella, could the RIAA or whoever just get some people to sit on the Gnutella "network" and glean IP addresses from users, trace them, and start arresting people and make those arrests public to instill fear? That wouldn't be hard as they control the media. But then, would that be possible/legal? Would a P2P network that encrypted everything be safer? Would the RIAA agent collecting IP info be irrelevant because of entrapment or similar? ::Insert similar questions::
Q
Well, in my limited experience with the new Morpheus Preview software, I'd recommend deleting it too - but dunno what alternate client I'd recommend.
I grabbed it the first night they made it available, to see what they'd done to it. Fired it up and decided to let it run overnight, to see who would download my files. The next day, I found the Morpheus Preview had completely shut down on my machine. I tried to launch it again, and it refused to run. I had to reboot my PC (running Win2K SP2) before I could make it run again.
If it's that unstable, people aren't going to be sharing many files through it.... I can't say if the stability issues are rooted in the Gnucleus software it came from either. (Never tried Gnucleus.) But it's rather suspect.
The reasons below have occurred in the last quarter:
1.) A false (and major) security flaw against morpheus found, yet not in kazaa browser(which is the same code). Kazaa then tells users to convert to kazaa for security.
2.) Morpheus falls off fast tracker network. Kazaa immediately appeals for users to download kazaa. Siting the benefits that they can keep their usernames. (already indicating that they have no intention of morpheus coming back.)
3.) Kazaa admits responsiblity for knocking morpheus off network. But for bills only. Despite the fact that the short terms history shows that kazaa has been trying to get more and more people infected with their bundled spyware.
4.) Kazaa suffers less and less users as people run popular AdAware software on their computers. (Which removes kazaa spyware, which kazaa checks for on each load, otherwise disables itself.)
To me, it's obvious.
the fasttrack system is based on a http server running on port 1214 if i remember right. :)
so find an open port port 1214, type the address in your browser, and there you are, almost as good as open ftp, to whoever was missing it
i have only tested with grokster, but i doubt kazaa and morpheus are any more secure.
A firewall like Zone Alarm or Tiny Personal Firewall will easily block the ads and render the cydoor stuff useless. Then you can still delete the AdCache folder. I noticed that registry entries will continue to return if you delete them, but then I also noticed that you can change their values to whatever you want and they will stay that way (I set alot of values to 90210 :P). Basically, all you need to do is have 3 rules present: 1) Block all TCP out from any port to any address on port 80, 2) allow TCP out from any port to any adress on port 1214, and 3) allow TCP in on port 1214 from any address. I've noticed that some people seem to use ports other than 1214 (1033 is one I've seen - is this a Grokster option?), so you may wish to modify the 2nd one as you see fit, but port 1214 covers 99% of everyone I've seen. With this method, I have a nice blank spot in the bottom left hand corner of my Kazaa window! Note that if you run Kazaa with your firewall disabled, the adcache folder reappears almost instantly, so remember to keep that firewall up.
Now I can't really argue anything about fair-use case laws, but there is one thing you're wrong about. Supreme court Justices are appointed for Life. They cannot be 'initimidated' by RIAA goons, and accepting bribes from the RIAA is one of the few ways that a justice could actually be removed from a life long job on the supreme court.
As far as murdering a justice goes, well They get death threats all the time and generally have to have 24/7 protection from crazy people pissed off over abortion or other spark issues. So no, the RIAA will Never have a supreme court justice's head 'on a platter.'
Of course the supreme court probably wouldn't condone 'digital theft.' There is still some hope that they could decide that the artist and not the labels own the digital rights to music much as they own the rights to radio. They could also strike down the contract-writer portion of the DMCA which prevents the copyright on songs from ever reverting to the original song writter.
If artists own the rights to music then they could well sign on to a p2p system that was ad supported and paid them fractions of a cent per download. It has to beat what the labels are paying most artists, and the service could even integrate virtual tip-jar to make it more appealing to struggling artists.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Actually, it's easy to share above 128kbps. Look in your registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Kazaa. There's one key named "limit bitrate" and it's set to 1. Edit it and make it 0, and voila. More morpheus people had this set than Kazaa (I think one version of Morpheus disabled the limit, and it stayed that way forever), so don't expect to find many high-bitrate files. I realized that and switched back to Audiogalaxy, which is much faster than it used to be.
I think not.
Napster controlled what files could be searched for. However, once you'd identified a Likely Hard Drive, all you had to do was add that person to your hotlist and you could browse their shares.
This is how I found an awful lot of stuff. Including things which failed to appear in hits from the central server.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
I think the KaZaA people are cowards. I believe the reason they are doing this is because Morpheus was getting more biz. than they were and they panicked(sp). It's always about making money, and the fear of losing that money by losing advertisements and sponcers made them do this.
you seem to have a "stating the obvious" problem.
Sure, Music City may be in compliance with Gnu Public Licensing now, but what about the future? As so many have reminded us, Morpheus is/was commercial.
What I find insidious about Music City's move to rebranding Gnucleus is that Music City has promoted this "new" version of Morpheus as if it were something they developed. While it has been pointed out by others that the open source community was credited I saw no such claim on Music City's web site when I downloaded the new client. As far as I was concerned it was something they were in the process of developing. If I represent even a fraction of Morpheus users, this is not good for the open source community because it means that there are a whole slew of others who believed the same thing - that the new version of Morpheus was something developed in house.
It seems that Music City should be paying the open source community something of the revenues they derrive from this misappropriated version of Gnucleus. Rebranding is not redeveloping, but consumers are on the whole being mislead to believe that this beta Morpheus is a new product. If payment is not made in cash it should at the very least be in ads served up for the open source community.