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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."
"...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...
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.
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.
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.
No, not really.
They demonstrated that they can stop large segments of users (such as users using a given client) from using the network.
What they have not shown is that they have control over what files are being transfered over the network. That's the thing that got Napster.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ok. But why is that effectively any different? A court can still order them to shut down the network by shutting down morpheus clients, Kazaa clients and grokster clients.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
gnucleus
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
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.....
Here's the danger.
Can you see the way this would look to a court? Picture a restaurant where mobsters meet, cleaning their guns and jawing about how many cops they've whacked. The restaurant owners hear that the FBI are filming the restaurant, ready to make a bust. So then they put on blindfolds and earplugs and say "Oh, but now we don't know what our customers are doing. I think we've got a large party of nuns in tonight, I can't really tell with this stuff on."
Pretty weak defence? I think so. And the nasty-nasty is that now Morpheus is just another Gnutella client, so if Morpheus does go down, why should any client - or specifically any client developer - be let off. Because they're not making money, I hear you say. Because it's just like making copies for friends and family. It's fair use.
No it damn well isn't. If I hear one more Slashdotter claim that personal/friends/family copies are "fair use", I will quite seriously bust a gut. Here are the allowable purposes for making a copy of a copyrighted work: (1) criticism and comment, (2) parody and satire, (3) scholarship and research, (4) news reporting and (5) teaching. Don't argue this with me, quote a specific case of a court saying that copies for friends and family are OK. Any judge that drew the line in the sand and said that Gnutella was OK because it's not commercial would have the MPAA/RIAA would asking for his or her head on a plate, and I'm not talking rhetorically.
Morpheus joining the Gnutella network is the best move possible for Morpheus - and the worst move possible for Gnutella. This one is going to get ugly.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.
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/
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.
I'm risking a major flame, here, but...
I wholeheartedly disagree with you on the issue of personal copies being "fair use." As most everyone here will point out, and that courts have determined, time-shifting or media-shifting is most certainly allowable under the fair-use doctrine. Remember the RIAA vs. Diamond Multimedia in regards to the Rio MP3 players? Remember the Sony Betamax case? Remember the stink about Tivo and other PVRs? These are just 3 examples that I can think of right now (feel free to add, anyone) of how our legal system views personal, fair-use copies.
Besides, this whole thing isn't about fair-use, anyway. It's about control of the distribution networks, physical or otherwise. Don't you think that the RIAA and the MPAA have a little too much at stake to lose control over their profits from distribution? It's not even about the technology. I'm sure that if you asked any of the executives at the RIAA or the MPAA about what they thought of the technology they'd reply favorably, as long as they still had control over it. Until they get a digital distribution system in place for people to access, they're going on every witch-hunt they can muster to shut down the competition. You want to talk antitrust measures? These people aren't even allowing competitors to get started, much less become a threat. That's some real anti-competitive behavior.
I suggest that we attack the problem at the core, not from the outside. We should be allowing the RIAA and the MPAA into everything they want access to. Let them think they have control. Get the distribution system online. Get people to start downloading things from it. Then strip it away from them like the children they're acting like. Shut them out of the network like Kaaza just did with Morpheus. Get access to everything then shut them out.
My point is that we've proven we can't defeat this menace head-on. And certainly not in the numbers we've been "attacking" them with lately. Too much of the US is perfectly happy getting their music, movies, TV, news, etc., in a highly polished, sanitized form. Sure, you can find out what's going on if you dig a little bit and do some homework. But who's got the time, anymore?
Granted, the RIAA and the MPAA aren't stupid by any means. But they need to eat some humble pie, IMNSHO. I want to listen to my music on mp3 (160+ or hq variable bitrates). I want to record TV shows on a hard disk to watch at *my* convenience. I'm not a slave to the technology, but I may wind up that way in the future if these companies have their way with the legal system. Under fair-use, I'm allowed to all of this. If they'd have anything to do about it, I'd have to pay each time I wanted to listen to anything. That's just not cool.
Enough of my rantings for one day. I still have some real work to do.
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
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
I never thought people were claiming it was fair use to give their friends and family recording. I've heard fair use applied to changing formats: e.g. from CD to MP3 or DVD to MPEG. I've also heard people apply the Audio Home Recording Act which says that "No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings". Basically saying there is no copyright infringment if a consumer noncommercially makes a copy.
It's possible that there are mixed up people saying "Fair Use" when they mean "Audio Home Recording Act", but that doesn't make the actions of music file sharers illegal.
-no broken link
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.
You might want to point people at this thread for discussion on this very subject.
rooooar
The problem with peer 2 peer networks is that they are only as useful as the content shared on them.
And the content shared depends upon the number iof people using the service.
It makes sense for Morpheus to switch to a P2P which has a known audience, so that they don't have to start "from scratch"
I would like to hazard aguess that the gnutella network is slowly but surely becoming more mature, and more capable of handling large loads, with the addiiion of ultra peers or whatever they are called in Limewire, In other words, the mathematical arguments againsy the gnutella network are being worked around, instead of being ignored.
At the moment, I do not believe that Gnutella is the best network out there. However, it does seem to be the only one that is actually advancing with new features.