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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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