Kazaa Lite: spyware-free version

Pig Hogger writes "According to this VNUNET article, KAZAA-Lite, a new hacked version of spyware-ridden KAZAA file-sharing software is being circulated, sans spyware. The new, improved version has apparently been hacked by a russian programmer, as a matter of course."

Comments

Oh the irony!

[Anonymous Coward]

A program used primarily for copyright infringement has been reverse-engineered and redistributed. Does this mean that the DMCA has officially cancelled itself out? :)

yeah thats what I want...

[notsoanonymouscoward]

software thats been hacked by a friendly neighborhood russian hacker. its new kazaa light, with new and improved spyware, and a few extra trojans as an added bonus!

Re:yeah thats what I want...

[glwtta]

Yeah, we damn russian hackers just can't knock it off, I mean I even hack into my development server every time, instead of just logging in. It's a good thing I'm a lousy admin, though, so it's usually pretty easy.

Kazaa Lite

[mikers]

Been using it for 2 weeks now.

Boy is life good without tons of popups.

And my firewall hasn't busted Kazaa Lite doing anything funky either.

Low popups, low funk, all good.

yummy.

mirrors

[DanThe1Man]

There are some mirrors at http://www.kazaalite.tk/ when kazzalite.com crumples under the slashdot effect.

I'm at 50, so I'm not karma whoreing.

Re:mirrors

[advid]

In a similar (although completely different) vein, might I recommend Gnucleus, which is an open source fileshare program (whose code was recently appropriated by the well-known Morpheus).

as a service to those who didnt make it in....

[Brightest Light]

Here's the text.

Kazaa Lite is 'spyware free' says creator
By James Middleton [19-04-2002]

Hacked version of file sharing software Kazaa users can now get hold of a hacked version of the peer-to-peer file sharing software which claims to be spyware free.
Earlier this month Kazaa users discovered that the client software includes what is effectively a Trojan program which connects to another network called Altnet and taps the user's processing power and storage space.
Brilliant Digital Media, the company behind the stealth peer-to-peer software, plans to activate the software on users' machines in the next few weeks and sell the resources to be used for distributed computing.
But recently released Kazaa Lite software is a hacked-up version of the Kazaa client without the third party software or banner adverts.
Created by a Russian programmer known only as 'Yuri', the illicit Kazaa Lite was developed as an alternative 'non-misleading' version of the software.
Kazaa Lite has also caught the attention of Sharman Networks, the developer of the original Kazaa software. Sharman said that it will vigorously defend its rights but has not said that it will take legal action against Kazaa Lite.
It would be difficult to block Kazaa Lite clients from accessing the Kazaa network simply because of the openness of the system which lets millions of users log on simultaneously.
KazaaLite.com has reported over 80,000 downloads since the program was released and no interoperability problems with the Kazaa network.

More info can be found at Kazaalite.com.

How long will it last?

[martissimo]

According to this this article Sharman Networks is planning on taking action against Kazaa Lite...i figure it wont be long till their network wont work properly with the program (much like Morpheous).

Oh well im sure those fun-loving Russians will fight back when it happens, should be fun to watch

Spyware

[olman]

For the DIY-crowd, ad-aware will clean up the mess Kazaa leaves behind without too much hassle. Grab it here. It's quite nice package, too. I have it running at every startup and it's not that rare to get a "visitor" regularly. In fact, it's so nice I've been thinking of investing the $15 for the plus-version.

Is it actually SPYware?

[EggDye]

This is something I've been wondering about this Kazaa controversy. Sure, an unwanted program designed to take up your hard drive space and CPU cycles is "bad"-ware. It is certainly "undisclosed"-ware and "unwanted"-ware. I would even go so far as to say it is "Flushing Kazaa's reputation down the toilet"-ware. However, is "spy"-ware the right term? While a distributed computing program probably does report a fair amount of information back to the main server, it isn't usually designed to spy of the user.

What I find very strange about this whole thing is why Brilliant Digital Media wasn't more upfront about their program. Would the average computer user totally reject the upfront trade of "You get to use this neato-keen file-sharing network for free, and all you have to give us is a little bit of the computer time and space you aren't using"? I guess it would have just killed them to be honest and straightforward about the deal users were making. To paraphrase a saying "The respect you give is the respect you'll receive".

Two common misconceptions in this thread..

[Yakman]

I've noticed two common misconceptions - that the people running Kazaa (Sharman Networks?) can block this client easily. And also that they can stop the client being hosted on websites.

First, it's not that easy to block the client because the client is the same as the one you get from the Kazaa website, it's just had all the spyware and other crap removed. So basically the only way Kazaa could block it is by releasing a new client version and blocking all old versions.

That'd mean all users would need to download a new client (not just the users of Kazaa Lite). Plus the guy would just remove the spyware from the new version and put that up as Kazaa Lite again.

Secondly, if they somehow get the guy to stop allowing people to download from the website the guy can just go and stick it on Gnutella or another P2P service and magic - suddnely it's on 1000s of computers out there.

Basically, as someone else has said, the cat's out of the bag.

Re:Two common misconceptions in this thread..

[Skirwan]

Secondly, if they somehow get the guy to stop allowing people to download from the website the guy can just go and stick it on Gnutella or another P2P service and magic - suddnely it's on 1000s of computers out there.

Is anyone else out there chuckling at the shear meta-hilarity of this whole thing? You're talking about using a peer-to-peer network used primarly for piracy to distribute an illegally modified binary used to connect to another peer-to-peer netowk which is also used primarily for piracy.

We're rapidly approaching the point where the effort it takes to pirate something is less than the effort of going to a store and actually buying the damn thing.

--
Damn the Emperor!

Warezdot.org???

[WhaDaYaKnow]

WTF? I mean, are we going to see front-page links to warez copies of AutoCAD here soon, just because we don't agree with the way Autodesk wrote their software?

It baffles me, because the link is obviously to a piece of software that is not legal, no matter what license agreement or personal feelings.

For a site that is supposed to be so Open Source aware this seems especially strange. Open Source does not condone piracy. Instead it allows for alternatives. So why not have an article about a good Open Source alternative, instead of linking to illegal software?

(Yeah, I don't like spyware either, but if people are stupid enough to install it, then that's there bad. It's an other thing for the company to make it clear that the spyware exists, but these are law-technical issues. Which should be dealth with seperately.)

Re:Warezdot.org???

[_Sprocket_]

WTF? I mean, are we going to see front-page links to warez copies of AutoCAD here soon, just because we don't agree with the way Autodesk wrote their software?

You have a valid point tossed in with all the blame towards Slashdot. That point being the question of how legal and/or moral it is to hack and distribute freeware to remove undesired functionality (and would it make any difference if the app in question wasn't freeware). But I have to disagree with the overall tone of the post.

First, this is a valid event. It is part of the backlash towards Kazaa for their business practices. And it is a popular action too, judging from the article and the fact that the last few times Kazaa has been the subject of a Slashdot article, Kazaa-Lite gets multiple mentions.

For a site that is supposed to be so Open Source aware this seems especially strange. Open Source does not condone piracy. Instead it allows for alternatives. So why not have an article about a good Open Source alternative, instead of linking to illegal software?

Let's not confuse issues here. This has NOTHING to do with Open Source. Heck - Kazaa has nothing to do with Open Source software itself. Though the suggestion to mention Open Source alternatives is a fair one.

Re:Warezdot.org???

[tftp]

There are however MANY people here that insist that P2P network are very useful for non-illegal means, although I've not really heard a lot of good examples...

An example you want? Here is one, judge for yourself how good it is.

There are countries other than United States, and those other countries often have sane copyright laws (probably because they didn't have legislature as corrupt as US one). In those countries music and other works of art fall into public domain much faster than in USA.

Some works were always in public domain. Take, for example, songs of Vladimir Vysotsky, even when he was alive. Other works, of other artists, were copyrighted but became public domain long ago, according to laws of that country.

It is a big mistake to treat the whole world as an extension of USA. The world is much larger, and it is not obeying the same insane laws that americans do. Most of the world does not even care about american "top 40" or whatever it is called. Most people on the planet would not listen to those sounds even if they are paid to do so. Finally, most artists in the world have nothing to do with RIAA.

Re:wine

[Osty]

has anyone have any sucess running this under wine? since this is now the lite version, i doubt that it needs IE and should therefore work?

"Lite" in this case means removing all the scumware from Kazaa, not removing IE (because it uses IE for content, and while you may think IE is "bad", it's not typically considered scumware). Thus, it still requires IE, and if that keeps the normal Kazaa from working under WINE, this version will be no different.

How do I know kazaalite is not malware as well?

[stain ain]

It took a while to realize what kind of spyware kazaa was, even with lots of people using it for a long time.
Now we have this 'hacked' version with the spyware apparently removed. I don't know the author, there is no company behind it, it is not open source... and nonetheless we all jump over it, trusting it does what it says...
How do I know it doesn't contain some extra spyware?
I have not any indication that kazaalite is not a legitimate software, but again, I have not any indication on the contrary... I think there is something very wrong in the way we accept and instantly trust new software.
My question is WHY should I trust this more than kazaa?

Re:Exactly!

[big_hairy_mama]

Hmm, can somebody post their favorite gnutella clients for Linux? Personally, none of them are nearly as nice, usable, and feature-friendly as Gnucleus and Bearshare (and Kazaa), which is precicely the only reason why I still run Windows in a VMWare VM.

I've searched and I've searched, but

* Limewire is the only one that cuts it in my book, but it has become too simplified (I no longer have the power to watch connection statistics or have good control over downloads, in the newer versions).

* Qtella is nice, but missing major features like auto-selection of multiple hosts for the same download. It also has a few rough edges; for example, on my box I have to kill it manually to really shut it down after closing the window.

* GTK-Gnutella is nice, but the interface is clunky, and seems to have stagnated.

And most of all, none of these clients have the ability to "set it and run", downloading large files over the course of a few days and from many different hosts. Napshare (based on GTK-Gnutella and designed to run unnattended) tries, but succeeds more in downloading lots of pieces of random files overnight than the one file I want. The windows clients seem to have all implemented things like automatically re-searching for new hosts in order to get the remainder of a failed download. This, in my book, is the number one feature missing from all non-Windows clients, AFAIK.

Also, basic niceties like auto-detecting the "forced IP address" (the IP of my router/firewall, rather than my private subnet) so that I can receive push downloads are missing, something which I love about Bearshare.

So if anyone can correct me, please do. Otherwise, this is a call to arms to Linux Gnutella developers. Forget innovation -- until the nicest features of the Windows clients have been implemented, nothing else can happen.