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Spyware Makers Resent Cleaned-Up Versions
Tri0de points to a ZDnet artcle on a programmer who's taken it upon himself to release spyware- and adware-free versions of popular file-sharing programs. "'He's done Grokster and iMesh. And he's not alone. His work, now available through the Grokster and iMesh networks themselves, joins that of other programmers who have previously "cleaned" programs such as Kazaa and Audiogalaxy in a campaign against "adware" and "spyware."
Is the shoe on the other foot?'"
Where's the funding going to come from?
I'd be very suspicious of 'cleaned' applications floating about on p2p networks.
Whilst it's likely the author had your best interests at heart there's some chance he didn't.
It wouldn't be too hard to build a trojan into one of these, and if it were done well you could have your trojan version of kazaa send requests onto the network that immediately identify to anyone watching that it's an infected copy.
That'd would mean that the trojan wouldn't have to either 'phone home' or be detcted by randomly portscanning subnets.
however this still might be the lesser of two evils.
Great. Spyware makers resent cleaned up versions. But guess what? CONSUMERS RESENT SPYWARE!
In my own opinion, spyware makers have no right to complain. Is there something I'm missing?
1)Create client for swaping music
2)?
3)Profit!!!
P2P networks complaining that their software has been ripped off, and that pirates -- ermm, users -- aren't treating their intellectual property fairly. Har.
wasn't that a south park episode.
1)Steal towns underwear.
2)?
3)profit!!!
Veramocor
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Though I despise RMS, I am sure the Free Software Foundation would like to have a few words with you.
good for them.
Im sure the manufacturers of these p2p softwares that prefer to spy on thier customers or make it a mandatory defect in thier product will surely lash back with the same force that the media companies have done over sharing of thier content.
I may be in the minority, but regardless of the security and method for providing spyware and adware programs, but i will always opt out of any program that includes any such feature.
There will always be an option that does not require a user to install spyware.. as long as there are watchdog groups to keep us informed of these little unhyped "features".
LW
between ad-ware and spyware.... especially since the spyware in RadLight uninstalls Ad-Aware. Sure there's something saything that it will disable Ad-aware buried somewhere in the EULA, but we all know how long and complicated those things are.
It wouldn't be too hard to build a trojan into one of these..... however this still might be the lesser of two evils.
Yeah.. I'd rather have a message come up on my screen once a month saying "You have been Own3D!!" then have any god damn popup ads over and over and....
=-Jippy
What would happen if someone were to release a version that created bogus and unreliable information making their data collection unreliable and worthless? The data would have to be indestiguashable from real data or at lease hard to distiguish and yet provide enough noise to make the current collection of data unreliable.
Certainly an interesting concept.
These companies are trying to advocate that it is fair use to take something you paid for, rip it into another format (removing some of the superflous data), and trade it on their networks... [personally i agree with that]
Yet it is wrong to take something you paid for (remember they provide it FREE - they dont provide it in exchange for spying on you and stealing your cpu cycles - they say FREE), rip it into another format (removing some of the superflous data), and trade it on their networks.
Get real, this is going to cause more damage to their legal cases than anything else.
Of course you mean free software, as in beer, not Free Software, as in speech. I wouldn't really be interested in these programs until I can download, modify, and compile the source myself. In the end, your privacy is only limited by your ability and the ability of those you trust. This spyware debacle is yet another reason to promote the issues tackled by the Free Software movement. Even if you aren't a software programmer, having the source available allows for public review, and tons of intelligent information on which to make a value based judgement. Spyware, or even cleaned spyware with a closed source does not allow this.
It appears Ockham lost his razor and grew a beard.
I was wondering if thes Kazaa-Lite/Morpheus-Lite etc. programs were truly ad free and bundle free? I would like to know the truth from other people besides the maker of the software.
Now if only someone would write an integrated client that works across all the p2p networks.
Some helpful legislation regarding the matter passed down from Windhoek:
"... futhermore that it is unlawful to include features in software which circumvent the users privacy without express permission from the user, methods of automatically obtaining permission (such as the inclusion of excessive end user license agreements [EULA]) are also unlawful unless done so in such a manner as to cause hot grits to be poured onto a naked and petrified natalie portman."
Those popup ads are the most annoying feature thats has ever been added to a web-browser.
I just tried out this new tool called Stumbleupon which lets you websurf with a single click, and after only about 20 stumbles I had 10 popads on my screen.
Curse the person at netscape who thought pop-ups would be a great new feature to add...
I think it's very funny that it took another hacker to figure out that kazaa etc. could be disabled in this way. If the RIAA had any brains at all, they would have figured this out and ... uhh ... wait a minute, maybe Yuri == RIAA?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
isn't it obvious that the days of tech workers getting paid are over? we work for free now... because there is too many of us. competition is fierce...
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Why doesn't someone come up with a hack that fills the Spyware home Database with useless information? I mean the data fields that phone home should be easy to fill with meaningless information but seamingly valid data?
This would render any information gained worthless until scrubbed of the offending dirty data. And the scrubbing of dirty data would leave dirt, and/or scrub valid data.
Another option would be to Flood the home servers with pure junk traffic. Or maybe even both?
How about sending home a destructive payload? It should be easy to hack the data fields of the database so that it ends up running the DB server into the ground.
Any other ideas?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Get mozilla. It has popup filtering built in. Trust me, it is a *godsend*
Whilst it's likely the author had your best interests at heart there's some chance he didn't.
Some chance, but in my opinion very very little. Even virus writers and whatnot love P2P networks. Users are what allow these networks to exist, ergo, it doesn't make sense to attack them. I doubt someone would be willing to sacrifice access to music and warez just to see some trojan or virus succeed. And I don't think this is naive; after all, the networks haven't self-destructed thus far.
The coolest voice ever.
As for myself, I agree with spyware-cleaned software. We could all do without "Big Brother" watching our every keystroke. However, I'm just slightly concerned about some user we've never heard of distributing software, doing who-knows-what to it, as it could just be opening another door to trojans. I mean, come on, which would you prefer -- spyware or a posibly backdoored/trojanized version of a program? I'd stick with the spyware.
Live or die trying.
"They're essentially hackers and rippers," Hemming said. "Basically our brand name is being damaged quite significantly by these activities."
Yeah I can understand that. After all, consumers have associated the Kazaa brand with intrusive spy software. Removing the spyware does great harm the Kazaa brand, which everyone knows and expects to be full of it.
Edith Keeler Must Die
That's hitting the nail on the head. Who do you trust more? Do you trust the original authors who hid the spyware in your program but are possibly giving some legal notice in the EULA (bleh), so they aren't completely rogue, but are ripping you off? Or do you trust the rogue programmer who claims to have fixed the spyware but maybe has slipped his own trojan in instead?
In the case of Kazaa Lite, I trust the rogue coder but I won't have that attitude on patched software for long. I think I would rather wait for my Slashdot peers to "beta test" these patched versions and find out if their computers die, before I even consider downloading patched up pirate software
I'm glad someone has realized EULA's are not a good method of obtaining permission. IMHO it seems that one should have to obtain written permission to get personsal information like that. I wonder what kind of backlash we will see from companies due to their neutered programs? Possibly like the Napster version?
This is actually what happens in some industries: publishing, film and the like. That especially in the lower levels, people are willing to work for free or close to it, so that it becomes impossible to make a living in it. (How do they do it? More often than not, the ranks of publishing houses and indie film studios are filled with trust-fund kids and rich kids whose folks are willing and able to underwrite the first few years of their careers. The publishing industry in particular is ripe with rich girls who are keeping busy until they get married.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If somebody took out my soruce of income I'd be pissed... However... it's kind of a moral empass. Spyware isn't moral, but neither is sabotaging somebody else's code. If it was taken to court I would believe that the Manufacturer would win... EVEN if it is a filesharing ap. However, it won't go to court due to the deception and other revelations that will come to court.
For on of the few times, the consumer's win. They get it all.
This opportunity for the RIAA to make
predictable remarks would not exist if
there were a good open source file
trading network. (Not gnutella, which
hardly even functions).
File trading networks seem perfect for
distributing i.e. linux ISOs, taking the
load off organizations like Debian that
don't have the money and don't deserve
to have to pay for a lot of bandwidth.
bag over here cat WAY over here!
In the case of Kazaa, its actually quite easy to make your own 'lite' version, there are plenty of sites with instructions on how to do this. Taken from a post to usenet:
/* Install KaZaa 1.6 */
1) Install the new KaZaa, then close the application when all finished.
/* Begin Brilliant Digital Uninstall */
2) In Control Panel, click Add/Remove Programs and find "b3d Projector".
Uninstall this application (make sure all browsers are closed or it won't
work)
3) Find a folder called "b3duninstall" located usually directly in your
Windows folder. Delete this folder.
4) Locate the following files:
> bdedownloader.dll
> bdedata2.dll
> bdefdi.dll
> bdeinsta2.dll
> bdeinstall.exe
> bdesecureinstall.cab
> bdesecureinstall.exe
> bdeverify.exe
> bdeverify.dll
They are usually located in your Windows/System, Windows/System32 folder.
Rename each file adding a ".bak" to the end. (or Delete them if you don't
care about backing them up)
-->Note to Borland users: Borland software creates files that start with
"BDE" as well, so be careful.
/* Brilliant Digital Uninstall done, proceed to Cydoor crippling */
5) Download the dummy cd_clint.dll package at
http://www.cexx.org/cd_clint.zip
6) Go to your Windows/System32 folder. Find "CD_Clint.dll" and rename it to
"CD_Clint.dll.bak"
7) Extract the "CD_Clint.dll" file from the package you got in step 5 into
the Windows/System32 folder (thus replacing the old CD_Clint you backed up
in step 6).
/* Cydoor crippled. */
I.O.U One Sig.
Apparently the whole Brilliant fiasco didn't damange their brand name. Nor did getting delisted by Download.com. Nor did being accused of being unethical by most of the major tech news sources in the United States.
The Kazaa brand name apparently came out unscathed by all of this, but just may be damaged by people using Kazaa Lite. Apparently, having a better user experience is going to lessen Kazaa's value in people's minds.
I am sure I am missing something here, but I just don't know what.
--- Biffster.org
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
Mozilla's works good, but Opera's had that for a long time too. Prefer using it most of the time :)
sure is funny how the p2p application owners are whining about protecting their IP and copyright when their software is used, primarily, for the sharing of the same type of material.
now they know exactly how the MPAA and RIAA feel.
But as the hacked software movement grows, it is being forced more deeply underground. Already Dr. Damn's ISP has told him it will no longer host his files. He's looking for another provider.
:-)
He could put it on the P2P network
But then, who can tell if the source is trusted? If I do a search and would receive a reply with "Hello Friend, Use This To Strip The Adware Of Your Client", I wouldn't download it in a million years.
But then, why keep all these attachment-viri floating around?
Edwin
bash$
Hello kind sirs, and madams. I am a karma whore. I have karma of 50 and it has been at 50 since they enlisted the karma cap. I have been posting on slashdot for years, most of my comments are moderated up, or left as-is, in fact, I don't think I've ever been moderated down. Here is my question, should I throw this all away and troll on my account?
P.S. Posting about my moderation success, has reminded me of an old slashdot user who always karma whored, and everyoned hated him for it, then he became a troll and went to K5 instead, anyone remember who he was?
its not cool or legal, but if these companies somehow got versions of kazaa lite out there with trojans that did minorly scary things like change your background to a skull and crossbones with the moniker "shouldn't download random software from file sharing programs...buahahaha", i think the masses would start seeing the value in corporate distributed setup files, and not think the spyware was so bad.
on another note, i wonder what it will be like when all these services go to crap because noone will let them have a revenue stream.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Viva La Revolution!
I love this stuff. Screw those companys, they where tring to screw the user in the first place. I look forward to Windows without the spyware, maybe word without the talking safety pin, Mensa without the ego! I say we backwards de-compile everything from cars to movies to the whitehouse.
UpEvil.net reporters have just discovered a completely foolproof method for getting around adware and spyware in file/music sharing programs! Even better than the method described in this
Step 1: Uninstall all current file sharing progams on your PC
Step 2: When finished, simply start accquiring your music/movies through ethical and legal methods, like Emusic.com, or through an secret, ancient technique from the Far East called "Bu Yingt Hecd" (note from UpEvil medical staff: if you experience discomfort at the thought of supporting the corporate system through the given methods, we have found the best way to alleviate this pain is to cease the purchase/accquiring of corporate-produced music altogether)
(optional) Step 3: As an added bonus, install a Free operating system and avoid having to pay for Monopolyware too!
This has been your daily UpEvil "Kazaa-whores-are-a-bunch-of-cheap-whiny-fucks" post of the day. Thank you, and good night.
The Free desktop that Just Works
Yeah, releasing a version of their software that doesn't crash, doesn't have annoying blinking ads, doesn't modify web pages you visit, doesn't send all your personal information back to them, is damaging their brand name.. I used to use kazaa, then they started adding spyware, I, and almostHotGritsHotGritsHotGrits everyone I know stopped using it at that point, I think the spyware is what is damaging to their brand name. Now that there is kazaa lite, I useHotGritsHotGritsHotGrits kazaa again. I definatly have to agree with you, how does it damage a companies image to have your software made usable, maybe they should pay these people... sheesh!
Mozilla is _free_. Opera is free with ads. hmmm. ads? what?
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Maybe a little off topic but I thought it worth mentioning.
;) -- which was in "my documents" - an unshared directory! This pissed me right off as the document had both my postal address and mobile phone number in it.
;)
When I set Kazaa up I shared several directories in "my documents", but not the "my documents" directory itself as there is personal stuff in there. I was very careful about this. So then I queue up a load of files and leave it to do its thing. When I check back on it a few hours later I notice that two people had downloaded my CV, or resume for you Americans
I no longer trust the Kazaa client further than I could spit it, so I created another user account with heavy restrictions and carefully set file permissions on the directories i wanted to share and those I wanted to hide. I run the Kazaa client under this user account all the time now and have no longer had any problems. But I think this is worth doing these days with all the spyware that's floating around. Just make sure it can't access any more data than it needs to. I'm thinking of extending the Kazaa account to be a general "untrusted software" account. Like the security zones in IE. Hey, now there's an idea for the next version of windows... Bill, you listening?
Kiss the frying pan! no it's hot. Kiss! the frying pan!....too late Frying pan kisses you!
To answer question 1: Yes you should throw it all away and troll. But do not post crap and get modded down to -2 before you know it. I suggest a long steady karma burning of not posting crap, but of pissing people off, trolling, and posting flamebait all ontopic. Along with karma whoring to keep your +2 bonus. There are too many good people in the world today and us trolls would be glad if you joined us.
To answer question 2: That troll was Signal 11. Right?
sssht! :-)
shut the fuck up! i am trying to score some chicks here.
damn, good memory, yes that is who I was talking about.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I just tried stumbleupon as well. I tried it first in windows and did have a few popups, but not nearly as many as you mention. I signed up for mostly computer categories mind you, and for advertising/business pages I imagine the likelihood of having a popup on it would be greater.
Now I've switched to using Stumbleupon for mozilla and its much, much better. I've found lots of cool sites but haven't had a single popup... I suggest you switch as well.
Where can I get these programs, maybe I just missed the comment listing the address because it got filtered out, but the news story and this story don't list how to get the programs them selves, or the webpage of the programs so we can read it.
You are missing something. "Apparently, having a better user experience is going to lessen Kazaa's value in people's minds." thats completely true. Kazaa's customers are NOT the users of its software, their customers are the people who pay them to include spyware in the product. If people are removing the spyware than Kazaa's image IS hurt, at least the image that the spyware people are seeing.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
"They're essentially hackers and rippers," Hemming said. "Basically our brand name is being damaged quite significantly by these activities."
if anything, their brand is being enhanced. i for one would never use a piece of software i knew to be spyware...
It's quite unfortunate that they use this as an example of "without the advertising revenue [from spyware], people can't create free software any more"
They're right that "without this spyware advertising revenue, commercial advertisers can't continue giving their commercial software away without charge", but it's quite insulting to see it compared to free software
Quite, but what is Kazza if it is not a network for rippers who want to get toons for free. The whole Kazaa business model is to help people take the property of the music industry for free. So just why do these guys get suprised when their not-so-honest customers decide to deprive them of their revenue stream as well? Like just why did they ever think there was a business to be had out of infringement-ware?
The legalistic approach is somewhat humorous, while they might have a case it would be interesting to see how they would intend to bring it. The problem is that it is rather difficult to bring a suit in a jurisdiction while you are simultaneously evading a suit in the same jurisdiction.
Another problem they may have is that there is a longstanding principle that the courts do not arbitrate disputes between criminals, nor do they get involved collecting gambling debts or resolving a host of other issues. The defense might well be able to argue that the courts should not intervene in this type of dispute as a matter of public policy. Kazaa is arguably a program to facilitate contributory infringement for which there are no (or marginal) legitimate purposes. So it is iniquitous for the US taxpayer to arbitrate a dispute in which Kazza is attempting to protect its illegitimate revenue stream.
If the RIAA had a clue they would be in there handing the court an amicus brief.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
What would happen if someone were to release a version that created bogus and unreliable information making their data collection unreliable and worthless?
The data would have to be indestiguashable from real data or at lease hard to distiguish and yet provide enough noise to make the current collection of data unreliable
Play Command HQ online
click here to jump!!!
Actually, this doesn't nullify the original poster's concern. Deleting files won't introduce a trojan, but what about this new, patched cd_clink.dll file?
Is it a patched version of the original?
Is it a new program that got compiled by the author? (If so, he should open the sourcecode so those concerned could compile their own.)
Or does it, as the original poster feared, contain other malicious code?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Can't be all that difficult in this economic climate. As I understand it, they are parasites who use the distribution method of paying the file-swapping networks $ to carry their programs... well, where are the spyware companies getting the $ from -- is their ad revenue really enough to sustain them?!
I'm hoping not, and that therefore, they will soon wither and die, just another dot-com casulaty.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
P2P companies complaining about their intellectual properties being infringed?!?!?
HAHAHAHAHA... LOL.
I'm still an atheist, but if God keeps things up like this, how will I have any choice but to believe?
download the .zip .c file.
see cd_clint.c? compile that in borland as a dll, rather hard for malicious code to exist in a what 3kb
I think the cd_clint.dll file may actually be in the \Progra~1\Kazaa\ directory, if it is, replace it as stated above. There are also a couple registry hacks to allow you to search for audio files with quality above 128kb, as well as allowing you to raise the limit for search results up to 400, above the usual limit of 100.
g e "MaxSearchResult" to 190h
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\software\kazza
change the "LimitBitrate" to 0.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\software\kazza\advanced
chan
I.O.U One Sig.
In any case, I'd have to say I'm pretty much against people modifying Kazaa's program and redistributing it, legally this is no better than a GPL violation, even if it might be a bit cleaner ethically.
The solution to the spyware problem isn't to strip out the spyware, its to avoid these programs in the first place. Use a free alternative...If there isn't a free alternative, use a paid alternative, if there isn't a paid alternative, go without or live with the spyware.
But I think that, for the most part, that no one will disagree that there are people using p2p networks for the wrong reasons. The spyware makers have absolutely NO RIGHT to complain. Here's a simple analogy: Guy meets girl with boyfriend, guy steals girl, girl cheats on him, he gets upset. I've got one thing to say to the people who write the spyware for kazaa, you want to swin with the sharks prepare to get bitten.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Kazaa's agreement, for example, states: "Except as expressly permitted in this License, you agree not to reverse engineer, de-compile, disassemble, alter, duplicate, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, make copies, create derivative works from, distribute or provide others with the KaZaA Media Desktop Software in whole or part or transmit the application over a network."
are NOT your friends.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
By brand name, they mean "the name by which we are trying to find investors".
It's not hurting their "name" any, but it's putting a serious dent in their "profitability".
Good.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Grab both ad-aware and it's reference file updater to stay better protected. 'Better', because it always seems like something gets through, no matter how well you maintain your system.
Get Firefox!
1. get Debian CD. 2. boot result of step 1 3. follow directions and liberate XP, w2k, w9x encumbered machine. 4. enjoy a virus free, ad free computing environment.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
For those interested, there's an interview conducted by Zeropaid of Dr. Damn. In related news, Zeropaid recently added several interviews, including: Pablo from Blubster, John Marshall creator of Gnucleus (victim of Morpheus PE rip off), the Limewire Team, Team XoloX, and Travis Hill of MediaEnforcer. Interesting read, a while back Zeropaid also reported on Sharman Network's attitude towards Kazaa Lite, the spyware-free Kazaa by Yuri.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
Well, if they provide source, and it compiles into a 3K binary, and the source isn't unnecessarily obfuscated, it's very unlikely there's a trojan inside! :-)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
gnucleus.org, why go through all that trouble when there is this free, open source client that Music City INC. STOLE SOURCE FROM FOR A MONTH WITHOUT SOURCING OUT THE SOURCE LIKE THEY WERE LEGALLY BINDED TO DO SO. This is what morpheus preview edition is based on, oh, and guess what, no ads.
It does work on gnutella and not fast trak like morpheus used to and kazaa still does, but hey, for not having to worry about ads and not having to configure the program other than installing, and supporting open source, this works out pretty well.
Podunk, Idaho (Reuters) Slashdot readers around the world have taken notice to the tragic decline of the once entertaining and enlightening website, SLASHDOT.ORG.
"The fact of the matter is that I just don't feel up to the job anymore," CmdrTaco said, on condition of anonymity.
"I used to wake up in the morning and be realy excited about the days work. I'd hop out of bed and put on my leather bondage get-up, and prepare to render the day's submissions into submission. But I lost the leather mask, and the rest of the outfit just doesn't work without it.
"I have this old bull whip, and after every anti-microsoft submission that was accepted, I would yell 'Who's Yo Daddy!' while cracking the whip. Sometimes during these celebratory episodes I'd even run around with a broom between my legs, pretending it was a horse.
"But without the outfit and mask, the whip isn't as exciting, the broom is just a broom, and I just can't do it anymore. Now I just accept the first submission on the list now, and don't bother reading it."
Actually this is easy to answer. Crackers are less likely to include malware in their products than commercial vendors.
Cracker groups release thousand of key generators and patches every month. MS wants you to believe that these are full of trojans and whatnot, but afaik there has never been a single reported case of a scene group deliberately releasing an infected crack.
All the shit that people are getting is coming from legal software, either as spyware or through outlook.
I noticed that after running the newest ref file from Ad-Aware that Kazaa Lite stopped working. It gives the message: "You have uninstalled a part of Kazaa that is required to run". I thought my system was clean until the latest update where it found more BDE stuff. I assume that's what made Kazaa Lite stop working. So, it appears that the Lite version isn't as ad/spy-ware free as I thought.
Jason
"FORMAT C:" - Kills bugs dead!
Never mind the irony of posting during the blackout -- how did this get modded insightful? Everyone who uses P2P networks is a pirate? I don't think these people should bitch about people removing spyware either, but not because I think everyone who uses them is a pirate.
I'm pretty sure that very shortly after Music City released the "preview edition" of the new Morpheus after being reamed by Kazaa they made the source code available for it (as I remember, a face lifted gnucleus). So how did they steal source for a month ? You don't have to release source until you release the binary. And if you don't release the binary you never have to release the source.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
Or you could just go with IRC (obligatory link for newbies) and screw all that schmansy luser "p2p" crap. :)
And how would one meet these nice ladies in the publishing industry? ::WINK:: ::WINK::
What do most of them do in the industry?
ya fucking idiot... what a lousy troll. can't even call it a troll, really.
should be Score: -1, Lame!
feh.
damn straight, mozilla is bloated and butt-ugly shitware...
Edonkey, anyone? I'm open to any comments anyone would has towards this end.
Move faster
For everybody who jumped on the bandwagon about the evil in the replacement dll for cydoor I went and did a little research..the code is distributed with the binary and all it is is the Cydoor SDK implemented except all the functions just do nothing or return 1. (www.cydoor.com/sdk helped them out on this one)... If your really that worried about this then just recompile the DLL on your own. The source is in www.cexx.com 's ZIP file of cl_clint.dll... The only thing I've found is that the version of KaZaa I have crashes if I try to use the DLL althought I haven't tried compilig it myself yet... They refer to this as the "AdWare Condom"
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
AquaLime, free and cleaned... and, LimeWire sucks anyway. so does AquaLime, but at least it is cleaned... cleaned clients, get them all here!
It includes the source, and you don't have to be an elite C++ programmer to realize that functions which are either empty or only have "return 1;" in them aren't going to |-|@xx0r j00.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Do you have a 'POKE' for the Amstrad CPC to allow this too ? ;)
The beauty of Kazaa Lite is that is works (more or less) under Wine: chroot jail + Kazaa Lite is pretty sweet for safe file sharing. Now if it just wouldn't constantly chew up 100% CPU...
Didn't they stop for two seconds and think, "Gee, we run a filesharing servide, don't we?" They don't seem to have realized that the easiest way to get 'Kazaa lite' would be THROUGH THEIR OWN SOFTWARE. I wasn't convinced by the Brilliant fiasco, by Cydoor, or by that strange dispute they had with Morpheus.. I still thought they might be sane, until this. But when a filesharing company tries to get software taken off the web, you have to assume that they are totally 100% nuts.
They are pretty much looking for blue-blooded smart-but-not-bookish ivy-league comes-from-a-good-family globe-trotting outdoors-going art-savvy second-home-in-the-Hamptons liberal-yet-sensible sons-of-the-American-Revolution. Trust me, almost no one posting on this board would qualify. I definitely don't, and I suspect I might be closer to it than most.
I'm actually better at reading Perl ;-)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
This sounds like a very good solution. I'm suprised that it hasn't been moded up a bit more. It seems that making the data collected useless or at least making it very hard for them to find usefull data would be a real "stick it to the man" kind of way aof saying we don't want this. What kind of data is collected? How could this be done?
Anyone care to comment on this possible real solution to the problem?
Here is a copy of part of my hosts file, taken from a program that blocks ads. It works for most sites, I surf ad free, mostly, that hosts file and a few things to block popups, I see nothing. Some people should use 127.0.0.1 for the 0.0.0.0 that I have there, and some people may experience a slowdown on their surfing if using some windows versions, but I haven't seen that on w2k using this hosts file (the hosts file can be found on windows (2k/NT) systems in your "winnt/system32/drivers/etc/" dir - if I'm wrong someone will correct me) linux users know where it is...
http://www.codewolf.com - Just good stuff to waste time
What most of the /. and *nix community in general tend to forget is that for the rest of the world free software is just that, software they don't pay money for. So for example, while AnalogX's programs are 100% free for me to use, they don't fall under a small minority's definition of "free software" just because it's not open source. Everyone needs to realize that software isn't free because it fits under the GNU "perfect world," It really is "free software" because the end user wasn't charged anything for it and that is not degraded in any way. I would say a good definition of free software is any software that's free to use and has no ads.
-- "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" -Optimus Prime
Furthermore, the company that developed the FT tech has, AFAIK, disbanded, and development is over. These guys were pretty bright: in order to avoid a Napster-type fiasco, they decided to just develop the software and make others take the risk of running the servers. Kazaa just licensed the software and is now attempting to milk it for cash.
Frankly, Kazaa is run by a bunch of sleazebags and I wouldn't want to give them money in any case. They've done amazingly unethical things. They're like the anti-Google. There's the obvious: installing of spyware, trying to run a distributed network behind people's backs, and basing their business model on running a piracy network (though this last point is not considered unethical by some).
But the worst is what happened to Morpheus. You may have heard of it: it was a FT client identical to Kazaa in every way (being the same licensed software). Although they tried to keep this under wraps, here is what seems to have happened: Kazaa, wanting to grab ad revenues from Morpheus, released an "upgrade" to Morpheus which had the effect of destroying it. Their trick worked, too.
This is $$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$ level sleaziness here :). I hope Kazaa dies, and good riddance.
Didn't you mean Gentoo CD?
Yeah, sure, I'm gonna be flamed. But how is it possible for "the original authors" to be "ripping you off"? They wrote the code. Not you. How is it a rip off? Do I have a serious logical gap? It seems to me that the reverse is true. I don't like spyware/adware/whateverotherinsidiousnameyouwantto callitware. So I use linux and avoid such program completely. It seems to me that people using programs like adaway/adaware/whatever are in fact ripping off the original programmers. As are the people who designed said programs. If you don't like what these companies (e.g. the Kazaa people) are doing with their software, don't use it. The chief principle of the GPL is almost entirely that. If you don't want to use it as they say you can, you cannot use it. If someone violates the GPL there's a general uproar. Yet someone violates a different software license and people are complaining about the writers of that license? Stop and think about what I'm saying for a minute before I get mod'd to never-never land. That's all
Spyware is not the same as simple advertisement...
"Just Ads" are ok with me....
Although I resent the idea of spyware in the software I may use, there is a fundamental difference between the file sharing programs and the spyware free sharing programs.
File sharing programs can be used by users for copyright infringement, but are by themselves not a form of copyright infringement. The spyware free programs however, are by themselves a form of copyright infringement. In order to make it legal, their programmers should consider writing spyware remove installers for the programs they wish to see spyware free. That way there is no case of copyright infringement, and the same end result is being achieved.
Good thing our senators and representatives are looking out for us. This is a clear violation of DMCA, and it's a good thing that guy stayed anonymous.
From http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/
The DMCA contains a limited exception to the ban on circumvention, which permits reverse engineering of the technology by specific classes of people for limited purposes [17 USC 1201(f)]. The exception allows reverse engineering of computer programs if the reverse engineer lawfully obtains the program, seeks permission from the copyright owner, only uses the results of their efforts to create an interoperable computer program and does not publish the results
Can you say "lobbying"?
-- jbl
all I can say in the words of a 5th grader is: "We'll duh." Can this be any more obvious? Anyone would be pissed if people released modified versions of their software without permission.
but Free software is specific in its definition. Just like capitalizing Citizen of the United States of America signed our rights away to what was once the greatest country on Earth(TM).
put the what in the where?
You should try popnot
I really hate Dan Patrick.
just for refrence Kazaa lite is NOT lite at all.
Ad aware 5.71 found the following in it:
C:\kazaalite\cd_client.dll listed as cydoor spyware.
so not all authors have the best of intentions.
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
Lemmy...
Nope, I just can't accept that a guy named Lemmy even comes close to that.
>Although they tried to keep this under wraps,
>here is what seems to have happened: Kazaa,
>wanting to grab ad revenues from Morpheus,
>released an "upgrade" to Morpheus which had the
>effect of destroying it. Their trick worked, too.
Bzzt.
Morpheus didn`t pay the bills to kazaa, so kazaa cut them off.
Underhand way of cutting them off, maybe - but valid all the same
redikim
but afaik there has never been a single reported case of a scene group deliberately releasing an infected crack.Neither do I but since they did already code the crack/keygen, why would they want to infect it with something that would be picked up by a comercial virus scanner. They could add all kinds of functionaltiy that you may or may not consider wanted. But hey, all these diffrend groups of experienced anonymous coders who crack comercial software using debugers in minutes, why would there be one cracker among them who would add those few lines of asm to their code just to make your pc download and run a fresh exe from geocities every day?
I was going to port my zx81 `poke` across to cpc, but the ram pack wobbled and I lost my data. Always remember to backup kidz!!!
If you run the normal version of Kazaa and use adaware to remove cydoor it will refuse to boot up anymore. The included file is nothing more then a dummy file. If you read the installation instructions of Kazaa Lite it says that when Ad Aware finds this file to ignore it because it is nothing more then a dummy file which i have personally verified.
How is it a rip off?
I was referring to embedding extra features (aka spyware) into their product without making it clear that they are doing so (except in a EULA less clear than a tax form). I consider a rip off is when you don't get what you bargained for and that is how I view Kazaa today
In a world where the vast majority of individuals have never heard of GNU, Richard Stallman etc.etc. this product is free.
Yes it's free as in "free beer" and not "free speech" but the reality is that the masses don't give a flying fuck about the "free speech" bit.
For them, the criteria for something being free is:
If both answers are "no" then it's free. Period.
Whereas we like the idea of having the source code, being able to modify it and pass it on, your joe sixpack just wants to know if he's going to get the police come chasing after him if he gives it to a load of mates. He doesn't care about the source code (mainly because he can't read it and wouldn't know what to do with it) and he's certainly not interested in making any modifications and redistributing it.
Under this, the following products (and many more) are considered free:
and so on and so on.
So the point here is that although it's not "truely free" it can and will still be considered "free".
And until the GPL is known to the majority of the people in the world, this is the way "free" is always going to be considered.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
This is a great example of the 'net acting like a biological organism...routing around censorship, and developing its own defensive mechanisms against unwanted intruders. The image of the Internet community as a giant "blob", slowly flowing over, bypassing, and eventually making irrelevant the obstacles created by others reminds me, too, of a volcano - locally powerful, representative of tremendous potential.
Your post echoed my sentiments almost exactly. Free means just that to the general public.
-- "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" -Optimus Prime
yeah, sure you could buy limewirepro (and i know they've opensourced at least some of their stuff, only joe average user doesn't want to hack away all the ads which are there in their opensource version, too)
but then again there's gnucleus (GPL), which i have found to be the best windows gnutella client, which doesn't have any corporate shit in it, and there's other opensource gnutella clients for windows and some for linux, and possibly other OSs, too.
i mean there really is enough free-as-in-speech filesharing software out there, quite a buch of the programs are easy to use, gnutella with supernodes rocks, there's the openFT effort (though not finished yet), there's freenet...
what i just hate are users bitching about companies which they really don't need to have any business with, there are enough alternatives, if nobody uses ad- and spyware-enabled apps these companies just die, exactly what they deserve. you can make the difference, and it won't even hurt (quite the opposite in fact)
Here's a response I was given to an email I wrote the Ad-Aware team about the issue:
"We have taken steps for this, Please update your reference file for AdAware.
Current Version
AdAware 5.0 release 5.71 build 2899
Current reference file 108-23-04-02 This update targets Radlight"
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Excellent point. I haven't explored gnucleus yet, but I'll give it a shot.
Did someone just mod your sig +1 funny? That thing must be a karma GOLDMINE!
I was at 15 before I added it 5 weeks ago. I just capped with this +1 funny. Somewhat ironic.
First, IANAL. But I do recall reading that (at least for Canada), copying music is not illegal. That's why they have the extra media charges on blank tapes and CD's. If you copy the music and transfer it to someone else, then you break the law. If you copy the music yourself, for your own use, and put the music on media for wich the tax has been levied (like a blank CD), then it is not illegal. Even if you do not own the original. It sounds to me that with P2P, I am the one initiating the copy, therefore I am not breaking any laws. The person making the music available is the same as loaning it to a friend. So go ahead and share, just put it on a CD. For more info see Copyright Board of Canada
Be aware that Ad-aware will hit on the new cydoor stub - don't let ad-aware remove it or your new, fixed, kazaa won't work.
Build a "phone-home" trojan into a modified p2p program and distribute it? To me, that sounds like a job for the Copyright Police.
In the version 1.0, they get rid of the spyware and open the door to later infection and shutdown when the evildoers decide to walk into their underground command center (directly under RIAA headquarters), and push the "shutdown" button.
If my business model was threatened by technology and I wasn't smart enough to adapt and sell what the customer wants, I might be motivated to attempt this "replace spyware with virusware" as a desperation tactic. It might keep my investors happy for 3 to 6 months.
I don't know of any spyware that can get around it.
Startup control panel will allow you to get rid of anything already set to run on startup. Get them here
If you don't have a firewall, get ZoneAlarm while you're at it, and you will receive a prompt any tima a program tries to use the internet. I've killed spyware without any complicated install/uninstall procedures, just by using these programs.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
How about charging some nominal yet affordable fee?
I'd gladly pay $1 - $3 to download a utility like Bearshare or Kazaa that is completely spyware free.
How much can the spyware people be paying per download?
I prefer to use Bearshare simply because they give the me the option to opt out of installing the adware... they make you feel guilty about it, but they give you the option.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Yeah.
I used to use patches from various 'rogue programmers', or 'rogue groups', until I learned how to do it myself.
Equip yourself with a decompiler, a hex editor, and knowledge from the various FRAVIA'S REVERSE ENGINEERING LAB mirrors.
Go fishing and stop asking for fish anymore.
I believe the "Citizen" thing the poster was referring to was the establishing of United States Citizenship via the 14th amendment (as opposed to citizenship of individual states).
As I understand it, the major reason this was done was because many states refused to grant citizenship to freed slaves and other non-whites. There were no laws that said that the states had to, since at the time we had a very different political configuration (the Federal Government was _MUCH_ smaller, and less intrusive), so the Federal government saw an opportunity for a power-grab and created a second-class "Citizen" (National citizen) which technically is not afforded the specific protections of the Constitution that would be afforded to the state citizens - inalienable rights aside, of course.
From that point on, all people who have not specificaly petitioned for, and been granted state citizenship after denouncing their federal citizenship are under the 14th amendment's Citizenship from birth, or the age of 18, I don't recall which.
Anyway, my memory isn't the best, don't take my word for it - go read the 14th amendment.
Okay, I wasn't fussing about the definition of free software, my point was them saying "without commercial advertising, nobody will write free software"
Well I write free software. And it doesn't advertise. And I don't get paid for it. So do thousands of other people, and it belittles all of their work to compare them to advertising supported loss-leaders
That's the key point I was trying to make though. Yeah, they make their EULA's as unclear as they possibly can. If it's too unclear though, then there's a chance that it's not legally valid. In contractual issues, a judge generally favors the lessee over the lessor if the terms are unclear. Up to a point anyway. But if you don't like/can't understand what their license is saying then don't use it. Accepting these wretched licenses only emboldens them to continue to create them. And just because a license is disagreeable to and/or unreadable by you, it is not legally invalid if you accept it. Anyway, that's the only real point I was trying to make. Go with the old U.S. anti-drug slogan and just say no.
How long before the RIAA releases a client that send info about what you download to some huge database and then sweeps in and arrests you.
Whatever you do, don't use your real name. I always use something like meisner, ro hrosen
you realize that by disassembling the program to skip the license agreement you just broke the law right? reverse engineering software is not quite legal. ;)
If they put Scumware onto my system, then they lose any and all potential respect. I'm using Audiogalaxy as my example here, which is a shame because its actually a damn good program. I specifically went carefully through each and every page of the installation procedure to avoid spyware. I then had to manually remove a very stubborn app called "whagent", a.k.a WebHancer Customer Companion. I thought I was clean until the above story appeared on
As it is, I'd be happy to pay a reasonable fee for AG without spyware, since it is a very useful and easy program. I don't mind supplying a little non-personal info such as basic system specs, rough location (UK), maybe some simple program logs for development purposes and the like. I'm happy to reveal info to assist the development of better products that people are happy to pay for, but what sorta whacked-out crackhead-run company makes money like that? ;-)
Ali
"Windows and Linux can co-exist on the same machine." - Microsoft Corporation.
And a guy name Qrlx does?
Uh, the FT people didn't invent distributed distributed filesharing. I believe they just flat-out copied Gnutella by Justin Frankel, the winamp God. Please don't call them "pretty bright" for copying someone's idea for personal profit.
Heh.. Ok.. Yeah. I agree. They have a right to make money for providing a service.. Absolutely.. I guess I'm just living in a dream of the 1998 Internet.. Bah...
Cheers,
=-Jippy
No i wouldnt... and you would find so many other people wouldnt either.
Where did you get the idea that reverse engineering software is illegal? (I assume that is what you mean by 'not quite legal')
It's completely legal to reverse engineer anything, unless you have some contractual agreement to the contrary.
You may be thinking of the clean-room techniques used to reverse engineer, then re-engineer software to build a competing product... but that's another story altogether. Those results are simply to show that none of the original work was copied. You have one team rip something down into a spec, then a totally different team build a product from that spec. And that's legal.
Patents can get in the way of course....
I mean legal penalties. Just because they wrote something down and I didn't obey it, doesn't mean they can make me pay them whatever they want. What legal basis do they have to enforce any license? If I have bought the software product, what need do I have of a license?
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.