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Distributed Computing Program Hidden in Kazaa
The_THOMAS writes: "A federal securities filing Monday revealed that the hugely downloaded Kazaa P2P (file sharing) software contains a piggyback program which will create a second, new, network controlled by Brilliant Digital. They plan to awaken the software, already on millions of computers, within the next four weeks. The program will be used to host and distribute other companies' content and may be used for distributed computing. Read the details here."
While ignorance is no excuse, that seems the only one given that Kazaa/Brilliant apparently tip users off to this crazy strategem in the user agreement. That said, I can't understand how this isn't a trojan -- installing an app with no explicit warning on a third-party computer? Shame, shame.
According to their licensing agreement, they're allowed to use any extra storage space and/or cpu usage. What happens if you run out of space on your HD because of this and delete their files? Could they have the right to say that you aren't allowed to delete these files because it's their intellectual property?
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
Deserve to get screwed? Bullshit. EULAs are written by lawyers, for lawyers. Most people who run Kazaa wouldn't even understand that particular clause in the EULA if they'd even gotten to it with all the legalese in there.
Furthermore, contracts aren't legal if one or more of the parties did not fully understand the implications of the contract (read up on cases where people just signed on the X without reading the contract in full view of a notary public--in almost all cases the contract was declared null and void).
If EULAs are found to be legal contracts, this should apply, should it not?
Given that no EULA has the force of contract law anywhere in the U.S., it's rather doubtful that it could be used as 'consent' for utilizing spare cycles in a legal fashion. The company is treading dangerous ground here and just begging to be bitch-slapped with a lawsuit.
While I doubt a serious argument could be made for damages, unless the EULA is upheld by some clueless court then using the spare cpu cycles of personal computers clearly constitutes criminal electronic trespass as outlined in the PATRIOT act. And, as we know, this automatically brands one as a terrorist.
I don't use Kazaa but I can't imagine that very many users will be happy to have their 'spare' cpu cycles appropriated for someone else's gain. Just another reason to dump this software in the electronic crapper.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
"Quickly" is mendatious. The majority of end users will have port 80 traffic cached by their ISP, and you can bet that cache will be juicy-full of DoubleClick stuff. My ISP routes all traffic via my local access point, even traffic to other people under that access point, and they run a cache at the access point. So even if I were to get ads from the guy next door, it would still be slower than getting them from the cache. All this would do would be to cut down DoubleClick's bills for uncached accesses, and (interestingly) stop me blocking DoubleClick using my hosts file. If this latter reason is actually material, then it's a sad indicator that the ad market has given up any pretence that ads are in any way connected to revenue. If I've gone out of my way to actively block your adverts, and you force them on me anyway, what exactly are your chances of gaining one red cent in revenue from me? Farcical.
Hey, opt-in, opt-out, what's the difference, eh? To apply an equally muddled metaphor, they'll probably burn that bridge when they come to it.
Ah. Anybody with a typical residential DSL/cable connection should check their contracts. There will almost certainly be a clause in there that prohibits providing services to third parties, and especially selling services to third parties. Most ISP's have tolerated filesharing up to now because it's (generally) an active use thing. And CETI@home is low bandwidth, fully opt-in from the user side, and non-commercial. But this might be different. It's a commercial company using ISP bandwidth to make profit, and pass some of that (a very, very little) back to residential users, who have only agreed in general to provide services, not on an active case by case basis. This might be where ISP's start to draw the line.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"we're sorry for the spyware"
they remove it
a month later
"We're sorry for the spyware"
they remove it
goto 10.
As much as I love the P2P concept, if these guys go out of buisness or get the crap sued from them, I just hope EFF won't protect them in the name of P2P, because these guys aren't the Good Guys(tm). They are opportunists that are hiding behind ignorants and people that want to defend P2P to play their dirty scheme instead of being just dead honest.
It doesn't kill a buisness to mention any spyware or whatever, if people skip the warning and download it, well now It's their problem, but running it and acting like if you were transparent is just plain unethical, they did it many times, it simply piss me off. That's why I am using winMX since the first time I saw Kazaa doing crap to their users. It's been at least reported 2 times here if not more.
Again, being honnest about it won't change much, it'll just remove a FEW users like me and most of slashdot readers that want their privacy. Most of the people won't give a damn, so why being so dishonnest!? it could just trigger lawsuits against them for absolutely no gain.
The proof to this? well look at how many times you saw kazaa and spyware, and look at their userbase still growing (which doesn't make sense but again, MOST people just don't care, they'd sell their souls for free stuff).
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.