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More on Kazaa and Brilliant Digital Spyware
Vertigo01 writes: "There is an interesting article from CNN.com on the current state of the Kazaa controversy, and Brilliant Digital's plans for the future. Interesting quotes from the article include a statement saying that 'Altnet's seeded software [will be] awakened some time in May' and that 'Brilliant is negotiating with music labels and movie studios to market their material as well. The files will be copy-protected in some way, using Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology.'"
Imagine the fun the likes of Brilliant Digital could have when the courts force Microsoft to release their full APIs. Whole new ways to sneak their filthy cancerware onto our machines.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Just get Kazaa Lite and stop worrying about all this.
Where to get Kazaa Lite? Well, on Kazaa, of course.. or you could be a weenie and go to their web page.
Am I reading that all wrong, or do they seriously want to piggyback a legal filesharing scheme on the back of Kazaa? I can almost see the argument of saying "Don't trust that file you've just found? Why not fork out for the real version?", but on the other hand, are the RIAA going to come within a nautical mile of something that also does illegal filesharing.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
that kazaa is moving ahead with these plans
:)
I am sure that they know how bad PR it is
Just checking, I use kazaa lite - is that part of this altnet network?
I hope not
I'm really getting fed up of companies not treating us like human beings - but just doing everything they can to squeeze every last bit of profit out of us
Whatever happened to common decency in this world...
Well, there's nothing to worry about then, is there? Given Microsoft's track record with "copy protection" and "product activation" technologies the patch will be widely available before the official launch date anyway. ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
So maybe they did listen to everyone after all? I await to see what "warnings" are given and how easy the opt out is...
Thinking of this - I have a question
How does altnet know what is "unused" in bandwidth terms?
as far as I was aware there was no prioritising in the windows tcp/ip stack where by one application does not get any bandwidth while others wish to use it
That would imply to me that they will just use ANY bandwidth they can - not just "un-used bandwidth"...
... just go ahead, get kazaalite (http://www.kazaalite.com/) and start sharing.
I don't care in which way they will copyright their material.
Let's just enjoy it as long as it lasts, we can move over to gnutella anytime we want. Since kazaa, etc are aware of this fact they will go on like they do now (not suing kazaalite) as long as possible...
To cut a long story short: Don't freak out when someone points out a problem we already have the solution for.
considering the fact that most people use kazaa to illegally download music, which does (!) harm musicians, using your spare CPU-cycles and bandwidth to pay these guys isn't even that ridiculous.
With all the communist lunix types here, why is everyone pimping Kazaa Lite? Should't you be ofering me "the way in" to Gnutella???
Does not KL only run under windows?
I found this interesting, although not surprising... If companies such as Brilliant and Sharman Networks were to release 'clean' versions of their products, and they were totally upfront in an easy to read EULA (who reads those anyway right?), would you use it? Would you swap bandwidth and disk for the privilege?
Furthermore, would the 'average' person? Spyware, what's that? etc...
They won't realise that their bandwidth and disk space is eaten away slightly, they wont care when they do cos they're still getting free music. It is far too hard for the average user to install a new sharing program let alone find the name and site of one. "It's all too hard and this program works and im confortable with it."
Anyway if they are using Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology then I look forward to having a look at what they send.
The best targets for Altnet are those corporate PCs left on overnight to suck in those MP3s etc. On that kind of bandwith you won't notice. They prolly couldn't care less about 56kers, though they are the ones that suffer.
Then again, perhaps it only activates when there are no other applications using the network.
XP has QoS enabled by default, though, right? It can be installed on w2k too.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
How can I remove that fu****g spyware?
Ad-aware doesnt find it..
'Altnet's seeded software [will be] awakened some time in May'
:)
Skynet 5 years late?
Once we have networks acting independently of the owners of the machines, what's to stop someone putting in a bit of self-preservation and random activity into the distributed processes...???
deus does not exist but if he does
Sounds like another job for AdAware!
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
If Gnutella didn't suck goats, yea, I would supporting it. More then half the time the download I request dosn't go through. Whats up with that?
If you check the legal bases for copyright, you will see that it is granted by the public representatives as a trade-off for the "trouble" of publishing the works.
Never forget that IT IS A GRANT type of right and, that the work is in the public domain after the grant elapse.
If the work is published in a crypted form (whatever the mean), they are forfeiting the "public domain" part of the grant and thrus are forbiding it.
Of course, they aren't strictly forbiden to crypt the content. BUT THEY ARE OBLIGED to publish the algoritms and the keys of it before it is published (as one can't assume that the publishers will survive until the end of the grant to "free" the content to the public domain).
Cheers...
It looks like all the rats are getting together... Only senator Hollings is missing.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Within weeks, KaZaA users will see the premiere of ads offering Altnet audio and video content for sale. The selection will appear alongside -- but distinguishable from -- KaZaA content on the KaZaA Media Desktop
I don't think this is a bad idea at all.
If there were a way to discern reliable, high-bandwidth servers with complete files from Joe's Dorm computer, that would be a big plus.
It would be nice to have cheap (read: free) and possibly unreliable sources for experimenting and sampling things, and also in the same interface, be able download (and even pay! I would!) a batch of songs by a particular artist quickly and reliably.
I don't use Kazaa. AudioGalaxy doesn't seem to work for me on RH7. Gnutella is the only P2P I've used recently, and it can be frustrating when you want *this* song right *now* and you can't connect to a hit.
I can tell you I'd happily pay 25-50 cents a song for the LOTR soundtrack. Prolly the Spider-Man soundtrack, although I haven't heard it yet, but it is by Danny Elfman. I'd have to hear a few tracks first.
$5 for a modern CD is wonderful. $18 for a modern CD is a joke -- especially paying $18 for a disc that only has two or three good songs.
Other things I'd pay (and have, and will) for:
Flesh Field
Faith And The Muse
KMFDM
I'm actually going to buy a Flesh Field disc this weekend. I'm paying cold,hard Visa for a a disc. I discovered Flesh Field while listening to Digital Gunfire. Great music to code do. (A fan plug. I don't know them.)
Yes, that's me. I use Gnutella, I listen to Internet Radio, and I buy music.
Software Wars
File sharing doens't mandatorially damages the authors nor anyone.
Don't mix correlation with causation please. I'm as most tired of having that kind of "trues" thrown at my ears.
And you can't prove that all downloads from kazaa are illegal (i could download a music of which i own the cd. under the fair use and format shift resolutions, it is legal for me to do it - at least in US - other countries may have legislative environments to the contrary).
I'm perfectly aware that the majority of the kazaa users use it illegally, but there are legal uses of it as well, they aren't just the "mainstream"
On the other hand, a download isn't mandatory to mean a cd that isn't brougt (even if some would like to make that relation).
Most people will use kazaa to download music to preview it before buying it. It more pratical then go to the disco and preview the cd there. There are more offer for preview.
Those that like the music and that can aford it, will eventually start to buy the new found authors music (another falacy is that everyone that downloads music can afford it and thrus represents a forfeit cd sell).
But i digress... Mayhappen some should go to economic universities and study macro-economy... Mayhappen they start to understand what a market is!
Cheers...
P.S.- And... what on the hell has spyware to do with "harm musicians"?
As a generic moderator-on-crack appears to believe wholeheartedly that the juxtaposition of this news article and a previous one is 'Offtopic', I feel it best to explain a potential 'Nightmare Scenario' on the horizon...
.exe itself hasn't changed, just a shared library that the exe uses.
Assumption One: Cancerware authors are amoral miscreants. Given the track record of the likes of Brilliant Digital, we can safely say that this is a given.
Assumption Two: One of the biggest advantages of a modularised Windows OS appears to be the ability to switch out the insecure MSHTML renderer as used in Internet Explorer to replace with Gecko and their ilk. Forcing Microsoft to publish the full API would enable a seamless changeover between rendering engines.
Let's follow this closely. The rendering engine runs as locally executed code, which brings with it additional security issues. I imagine, when push comes to shove, there will be plenty of Microsoft oriented warning messages along the lines of "It may be dangerous to change your rendering engine!" should a user want to make the switch.
However, fully expect the AOL / Netscape hegemony to complain loudly to the courts that this is FUD, and that it is PERFECTLY safe to switch to Gecko without notifying the user short of a generic EULA type click-through. Microsoft, having received a battering from all corners, will be forced to comply and take the warning out.
Which brings us back to Assumption One - Cancerware. Cancerware authors are forever looking for increasingly sneaky and devious ways to install their filthy code onto previously stable computers.
So, take one 'killer app', currently a P2P client, but who knows what the next one will be. Add a clause during installation that some vague 'browser enhancement' software will be installed as a requirement of the killer app. Many people will click through without reading, or just think "Enhancement - Cool!" and let it install.
What does this browser enhancement do? It acts as a fully functional replacement for the MSHTML module. Thanks to the efforts of Microsoft's competitors, it will install seamlessly, running code with local privledges.
What can it do? Anything that cancerware does already. Spying, gathering important data like CC numbers, taking control of your machine, uber DDoS, etc. etc. The possibilities rest purely with the devious malevolence of the author. It will, of course, be auto-updating, so even if it's caught out initially as being just another Purple Ape, it can download enhancements to itself to get past most security problems.
Remember that NO-ONE in the hacking community knew about Brilliant Digital's plans until they made their press releases. Sleeper cancerware, ready to awaken when the stars are right. As MSHTML is part of the Operating System now, for good or ill, it will be loaded on startup, even if the user doesn't open a browser.
But won't this be noticed by firewall software? Well, assuming consumer-grade firewalls work like Zonealarm, then no. Zonealarm checks for EXE files attempting to access parts of the net that they shouldn't be. But of course, Internet Explorer, being the most common Internet application, will be allowed through. The
And of course, the only way to uninstall this version of MSHTML would be to delete it, thus breaking anything that wants to use it. Like, err, everything!
Regardless of any non-Microsoft eliteness, the fact remains that Windows is the most popular PC Operating System for now, and shall be for a long time. This scenario outlined above is one of many potential fallabilities. I can assure you that minds far more devious than my own are concocting their own plans.
Cancerware is nothing more than barely-legitimized cracking. It seems that replacing "3133t hax0r sp33k" with the terse pseudo-legalese wording of EULAs makes this all acceptable. It isn't. And the sooner more people realise this, the better.
Of course, any company releasing something like this shall eventually become a target for the authorities. But the arrest of the author of the Melissa Virus didn't magically undo all the damage it caused, right?
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
apt-cache show winxp .ico converter
W: Unable to locate package winxp
$ apt-cache show windows
W: Unable to locate package windows
$ apt-cache show windows_xp
W: Unable to locate package windows_xp
$ apt-cache show windows xp
W: Unable to locate package windows
W: Unable to locate package xp
$ apt-cache show WinXP
W: Unable to locate package WinXP
$ apt-cache search windows xp | grep window
xpm2wico - an xpm to windows
Have an encrypted file that you need decrypted? Not a problem at all... hack into altnet and have 10 million unsuspecting users brute force the password for you! woo hoo! :-)
Have a website that you just abhor? Again, not a problem... piggypack a little DDOS app into altnet and watch the fun. And you thought the slashdot effect was bad!!
I seriously distrust the security for altnet. They claim its 100% secure, but I'm not buying it. Hell, microsoft says their products are secure!
If you haven't already checked out giFT check it out. It is an open source fast track network implmentation. It is no longer able to connect to the Kazaa network because they changed their protocol to come encrypted stuff, but it still rocks.
Yes it is still under heavy development, and last I checked you still had to grab the code out of CVS.
Their network needs a lot of users to test the software etc... go head and grab that source!
Using The Fish I was able to find two separate translations:
one: "All your base are belong to us!"
two: "Resistance is futile!"
This means something, I just know it.
The only thing, and by only, I don't mean it is not a biggie. In fact it is huge! But the only thing they did wrong in my opinion is not be up front with people. Spy-ware, ad-ware, and whatever you want to call this (bandwith-ware?) are all resonable ways for free software to make money IFF they are completely and clearly up front about how, what, why, and when they are doing. Not just at the beginning, but for as long as they are doing it. I have no problem with that.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
remember when you thought the idea of *them* being able to track your every purchase was some Orwellian nightmare that should never see the light of day? Skip forward to 2002, and you will see the majority of society blithely going about their day to day business, blissfully unaware of the implications of cash and credit cards being the tools that map -you- onto any given barcode. Permanent records of your habits and tastes are steadily being built up. Perhaps the spyware people ought to take a look at how history has made the formerly horrific into a tranquil reality.
I don't understand this at all. When a university student launches a program out into the net, and that program sneaks onto your machine and mucks with your registry and steals your CPU cycles, it's a "virus." The kid is labeled a hacker and is arrested. And now, thanks to 9/11, the kid has the additional dubious classification of a "terrorist."
However, if this EXACT SAME THING is done by a corporation, in the name of profit, it is viewed completely differently! Why? What's the difference? It's a VIRUS! Software forces itself onto your machine and changes things without your permission. That's a virus. That's illegal. Why are we tolerating it???
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
HiwaBumGa! Ill get the teenage ninjat turtles in they will sort kazaa out, once and for good.
Hey, everyone knows that Gnutella doesn't scale.
If you're the adventurous type you can get it to run under wine, but I've only gotten it to work when I had a full windows install on another partition and kazaalite installed there. And it was still quite a bit of work.
do not read this line twice.
Visa's not cold and hard, it's warm and comforting. It's the *bill* that's cold and hard. At least that's how it works with my mastercard. Oh yeah, and the Spiderman score by Danny Elfman is friggin' amazing, but hey, so's everything else of his.
How many times have we heard that same sentiment, that people would readily pay 25-50 cents (or more) per track for music they liked, so long as they didn't get stuck with a disc full of absolute garbage? Why is it then the suits only half listen, and give us shitty swapping services (pressplay, the new napster, and so on) with "high quality" 128 kbit fucking encoded trash? Of *course* your service will fail when you only offer top 40 at low bitrates. Either these people are really really stupid, or they're really really smart - I just can't figure out which.
do not read this line twice.
The RIAAs claim that people are stealing music...
OR
Another company making a profit off of this supposed theft?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Most worrisome part of the article: Nikki Hemming, chief executive of Sharman Networks, advocates a copyright tax on all ISPs. So all ISP users will be forced to pay the RIAA!
And on the copying and fair use front, Hemming is lobbying Congress for an Intellectual Property Use Fee to settle the quandary of responsibility for distributing copyrighted material. The proposal calls for charging ISPs a fee to compensate copyright holders.
The IPUF would be a "universal levy that would be applied to everyone in the value chain that benefited from the content available" on the KaZaA network, Hemming says.
In an open letter to Congress, Sharman Networks writes:
"We suggest that it is time for Congress to step in and halt the 'whack-a-mole' litigation excesses of the music and movie industries through new legislative initiatives that compel content availability, while establishing a compensation scheme that requires a contribution from all the many industry sectors beyond P2P [peer-to-peer] software that benefit from content availability."
ZOIKS!
Appartently the sleeper will awaken.
-Runz
At first, Altnet will market video and audio clips. Brilliant is negotiating with music labels and movie studios to market their material as well. The files will be copy-protected in some way, using Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology. Restrictions could vary with the type of file or its source; a record label may let you copy a file once (onto a portable player, for example), or play it only a certain number of times.
It's good to see that record labels have finally come to their senses and are starting to use the Internet as a marketting tool. An example of this is how silverchair released their single 'The Greatest View' as a digital download to great success. However it is a pity that such downloads usually have some form of DRM like they stop playing after a certain date, but I guess some record labels aren't prepared to hand out freebies even if it means potentially increasing sales through exposure. On the otherhand other labels, usually the smaller/independent labels are quite happy to hand out free tracks with no constraints at sites like Epitonic
Speaking of Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology, I wonder if Microsoft have released a patch for it since it was cracked last October
aus.music.scrapbook
And where will it be downloaded from?
:D
YUP! Kazaa!
How many times have we seen this happen? This tactic is so old it's pathetic-- Provide your service for free then try and sell it for a buck when you think you have enough users. And as old as it, they never seem to realize that it never fails to alinate their user base to no end. And I may have missed something, but since when was Kazaa's service up to the quality of something you'd pay for?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Speaking of Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology, I wonder if Microsoft have released a patch for it since it was cracked last October
Yes. It came out about 1-2 weeks later. It's amusing to hang out on bulletin boards and hear people complaining that freeme doesn't work on the DRMed file they downloaded, or the DRMed stream they ripped off.
If you agree to let Altnet's partners download to your hard drive multimedia-rich advertisements for later playback, you can earn points redeemable at e-merchants toward purchases.
This is exactly the scheme tried by all the "free ISP's" of a coupla years ago. "Watch my ads, and you get something in return."
How many of those guys are still around?
I'm sure the point system will go over quite well in dot.com land *cough*flooz*cough*...
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
And the below would be the vaccine that they're not really giving your army and your rich, right? And we should all sit back and not worry that corporations will or won't honor the vague commitments in their press statements, like the story carried here yesterday about www.flogo.com, i think it was?
SNIP
Bermeister says he hopes to strike deals with companies like United Devices, Entropia, and Parabon, which recruit PC downtime to process data for various projects, some of them charitable and many of them scientific. For example, United Devices participates in the Anthrax Research Project, which is seeking a vaccine for anthrax poisoning. In that project, you download a screensaver and donate your PC's spare resources to participate in a virtual supercomputer that can analyze billions of molecules in a fraction of the time it takes even a standard supercomputer. Whenever your screen saver goes on, your PC goes to work on an anthrax vaccine.
SNIP
This wouldn't happen to be the DRM that has already been broken?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
My business model is failing too, can I get government sponsorship?
Has anyone figured out the TCP/IP specifics of the spyware? I'd like to figure out if I can block the spyware and not Kazaa from my campus network.
... at least the copy protection will be easy to break. I was worried for a second. Whew!
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
I've been dedicating my cycles voluntarily to UD for many months now. It's a great cause and they seem like a good and upstanding group. If they end up partnering with these bozos and allowing their research to be turned into an involuntary virus, I'll certainly pull my machines from the pool. It's important work that they do, but there are others to choose from.
Josh Woodward
Too bad they keep trying to sell the stuff that is incompatible with my hardware. If it won't work with my in-dash MP3 player, my RIO and my CD burner, then you can't sell it to me.
The truth shall set you free!
I have been waiting for Linux to come out with a Kazaa client, but as usual they are well behind the cutting edge in the Windows world.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I know Brilliant have gone about this all the wrong way, but the concept of paying for quality content with cpu cyles sure sounds like a great idea to me! Its certaily sounds better than paying for it with real money... is there anyone else that has tried this approach? How much is once cycle of my processor worth and who wants some?
hmmm.
Don't worry. Once Kazaa drives themselves out of the picture like they are, more people will be making the switch and the Gnutella network will grow (and hopefully be as fast). But as long as Kazaa has more of what people want, no one is going to abandon it.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
It warns you (if you set it to) to warn you of any application attempting to access the internet. You can even set it to always block a certain application from accessing the internet. Not bad.
I summary: he uses his cable to be online-always-but-not-much traffic, and he uses the modem for downloads. It's the cheapest for him.
I for myself am on ADSL, which is very expensive in my country (compared to the neighbouring countries), but at least it's unmetered (unlike in neighbouring countries)
Now if my Bulgarian friend had (has?) KaZaa installed, this means he will be screwed indeed...because how could he turn off the scumware while he is on Cable? Just think of it...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
But the problem is that this vunerability would affect previously trusted applications. Obviously, you can have the security settings up to maximum paranoia, and have it warn you very time you start up Internet Explorer, but that would quickly get in the way of general web browsing.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
What is to stop Kazaa and Brilliant Digital from using their software to scan the music & movie files on your hard drive, develop a signature and transfer that back to the RIAA and MPAA? Could Kazaa be a trojan horse company set up by music companies to spy on the p2p habits of music lovers? If they now claim that using the bathroom during a commercial break is a technical violation of the copyright laws, this doesn't seem to far fetched.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Why? Well, because you can choose not to use it for starters. Didn't anyone read the Entire article? This is what you should concern about.
"And on the copying and fair use front, Hemming is lobbying Congress for an Intellectual Property Use Fee to settle the quandary of responsibility for distributing copyrighted material. The proposal calls for charging ISPs a fee to compensate copyright holders."
If hemming, or whoever call-me-a-thief-when-I-am-online, get their way, you'll all pay. To think, are these media moguls interested in selling their products, or just scheming through the law to collect on everyone, not just their customers!?!? Moreover, do not think that once you pay extra to your ISP, you'll then have the right to download whatever you want legally. There will be more laws to come that will dictate online freedom.
One must pay corporate taxes to have "freedom."
Erm, call me crazy, but why is Nikki Hemming, the Kazaa CEO, lobbying congress to try and get ISPs to pay the RIAA for their users' running her software? Pass the buck much? So she doesn't need to pay for the piracy herself. This is a sure-fire way to get Kazaa universally blocked.
Mind you, this is not to say I'm in favor of the RIAA in any way, shape, or form, but come on... ISPs have enough to deal with without having to pay royalties that they are completely not responsible for, thus driving up user prices, when a good proportion of their users (myself included) don't even use this software.
Lame, Nikki. Lame.
-Jason "too lazy to set up an account" M.
in the scenario he describes, the overall EXE will not change - it will still be IE. only the rendering engine has changed: a DLL or two that runs in the EXEs address space as part of the EXE. all internet accesses still appear to be coming from IE. the firewall doesn't know anything about which DLL within the EXE is making the call.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Since GNUcleus is the standard P2P tool I chose for my home network, my sister has to use it instead of anything she ever heard of. (Bearshare, Morpheus, Kazaa and whatever she wanted...don't recall) She is into alternative music, and I though she might be disappointed. Well, she is *not*. She is very happy with what she can get. She never complains. So the more peope participate in Gnutella, the better! Promote it! :-))
And I'm *not* a communist linux type...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The average user may also have problems locating the power switch, plugging in the keyboard, and connecting to the Internet.
Give us some credit... we're not all opinionated 14year old americans
Don't give me that. Files are available when you make them available. You don't need to start whining until you're making your own files accessable on it.
funny munging
kazaa has a good amount of files and reasonable performance, gnutella lacks both
Never having used Kazaa, I have regularly seen over 2TB available on Gnutella using Phex. Is that really "lacking" compared to Kazaa? Amazing.
I can agree that the Gnutella network performance is severely lacking. Even on cable, its annoyingly slow. I often wonder if smaller networks using alternate network names would improve performance. It also seems that a GetRight feature stapled on top of Gnutella might improve gets. Phex is halfway there, identifying identical hits on multiple servers.
And finally, if Linux update tools were modified to optionally search gnutella for updates (available only if GPG is installed for verification) that would save tons of work on the standard, albeit short list of mirrors and bring an enormous amount of legitimacy to the network.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Matt Oppenheim, RIAA senior vice president of business and legal affairs.
"If I rob a bank, the fact that I haven't been arrested yet doesn't mean I haven't done something wrong," Oppenheim says. "Sharman Networks should take no comfort in the fact they haven't been sued yet."
Perhaps a better analogy would be...
Person A works in a bank. Person B is a friend of person A and says "Can you give me some of the money from your bank". Person A says "sure, come on over". So person B drives to the bank and person A gives him some cash from the vault.
The FBI decides that a theft has taken place and imprisons the Ford motor company for making the vehicle used by person B to drive to the bank.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Yes, but the RIAA clearly stated in the article they were against this tax, becuase they realize that one you tax the ISPs for the p2p content, you've lost your claim that it is illegal to share content.
Whenever you buy blank media you are already paying exactly this type of tax. The argument that you are then free to copy -- since you've already paid -- hasn't worked yet.
Nope, no sig
I see everyone recommending Kazza Lite but I use Grokster. It uses the FastTrak network and doesn't use Brillant Spyware. Grokster does have a lot of bundled junk but you can uncheck it in the setup program.
//m
Yes, it is. When the Linux Kazaa client worked, I would quite frequently be able to find multiple sources for even the most obscure file. In contrast, I frequently fail to find any results on gnutella for even files which should be common. I won't go into details, and I'm aware that this is anecdotal, but that is my impression.
Perhaps it is due to problems in the gnutella protocol? I recall there being issues with scaling, and it could just be an effect of inferior search handling.
I might look into Phex, though I have been as happy with gtk-gnutella as can be expected.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Pointing people there could save hours of explanation...
"The files will be copy-protected in some way, using Microsoft's digital rights management encryption technology."
Hahahahahahahaha (wipe tears from eyes) Hahahahaha.
Microsoft and digital rights. OMG, that has to be a mis-print. Tell me it's a mis-print. I can't laugh enough about the irony. And honest to god, does anyone want to take a bet how many hours it will take to crack the code and spread it throughout the world? I'm thinking less than one work day.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
or the new morpheous? or even bearshare, for that matter. do any of the other P2P clients have software like this included? comments?
The term gradually came to include the connotation of "lacking common sense", as in "over-educated idiot", and finally has come to simply mean "lacking common sense", as in "What an idiot!".
It seems that "Brilliant" is going down the same evolutionary path. I mean "He's brilliant!" becomes "Geez, that's f--king brilliant" to finally, " That's just brilliant. ".
Am I wrong, here?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
but by the same token I should then be able to go get an OS browser and be sure of being safe, err as safe as can be on an M$ OS....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Blame it all on Metallica they started it! All this will end up as bad as Social security, cable Telivision, and the war on drugs. I can see it now, ISP charged per user tax that never make it to the artists who are promised ads on filesharing software only to be replaced by infomercial-popups, while the feds go busting down doors cause little Jill Downloaded a song off the FBI's Bait peer, only because dad wouldnt cough up 25$ for the new nsync album because his ISP bill is too high this month.
Actually, Zonealarm 3 Pro does know about all the components and DLL's in my computer. It even stores MD5 sums of them. I get this info from ZoneAlarm:
Inside the program alert
Program name: ADs Router Layer DLL A program or a component running on your computer which either attempted to send an IP packet over the Internet or is waiting for an incoming packet.
Filename: ACTIVEDS.DLL The filename that ZoneAlarm Pro found on your computer.
Program version: 5.00.2195.2778 The version of ADs Router Layer DLL running on your computer.
Date Modified 2aa86000 The date when ACTIVEDS.DLL was most recently created.
Program Size 178960 The size of the program executable file in bytes.
Program MD5: 7627ca35c07142ef3c6ae4a850c1de34 The MD5 hash, or number, that uniquely identifies the file.
Program CRC: fbb8c868 The Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) checksum for the executable. This is the result of an algorithm for ensuring data integrity.
Warning: Paranoia proximity detectors are off the scale!
Thank you, drive through.
Originally read "Brilliant Spyware" as the spyware being brilliant? I nearly dropped a load when I thought /. was complementing the sneaky bastards.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
You, obviously, have not tried to remove this stuff from your hard-drive. I have. The crappy uninstallation program leaves hidden registry entries (including commands to reinstall the spyware even after the main program is gone) and 'abandons' files everywhere ...like windows registry needs extra help corrupting itself.
If you find this on a corporate system, sue Brilliant Digital under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, for "exceeding authorized access". If they claim their access is "authorized", demand to see a document signed by an officer of the company. Some random employee clicking on a dialog box isn't enough. Only someone with authority to bind the company can authorize access. It's a straight "hacking" case.
Yes folks, money makes the world go round. Its easy really, its the the principle of recursion writ large. The most important thing in the universe is money, its far more important than gravity. The way to get money, is to have money, then using that money, to make more money. So the reasoning being offerered to all those people who ask why do they want money, its because if they can get some money, they can use that money to get some money. Well really, you dissagree with me do you? Look money - money is not a symbol, its actually real. Its God the great accountant in the sky. The holy dollar ruleth. The answer to all your problems brethen, more money, more holiness in other words. Sing after me brethren God's wonderful hymn 'Money makes the world go round' Money is God's love and we can't have too much of that can we? Its all a game really. As long as we have enough money we are in front. Problem is, all the while some one else has some money we are loosing. The name of the game is monopoly, winner takes all. Ah money, don't you love the sound of that word. Ah you at the back there, what was that you said? "Life" Good point good point, but you forgot the proviso, only as long as it can be bought and sold. I want money thats what I want. Oh give me money thats what I want. All the best things in life are free, I'll leave that to the birds and the bees, Oh give me money thats what I want
Hereby I forbid the installation of unwanted, by me or by anyone else, software.
;)
Even if I blindly click 'yes' or agree to the most obsture terms, the above ALWAYS aplies.
Violation of this WILL cost you.
Hmm. For a first attempt it's nice
Privacy is terrorism.
^
|
1) Spamming the spammers
2) Bouncing known spammer posts
3) Removing local spyware
4) Checking / Advising local user of system flaws
5) Displaying usable Open Source alternatives for locally found software
What you describe can be done with current Windows. You don't need any ability to switch renderer. If the user allows you to install any executable, you can inject a DLL into some other program's (say, IE) address space by using a hook function. Any access to the net from the DLL would then appear as from the target program.
In short, the modularization of Windows does not affect the situation a bit in this respect.
Before, I was totally against anyone using CPU cycles on MY machine to do their work, or "manage my rights", on data stored on equipment I own.
However, brilliant IS offering something for CPU cycles - redeemable points to purchase stuff.
Now, I don't really find this useful, because I would much rather they just paid flat out cash for it. In which case I would set up a few spare machines for brilliant's sole use - all the CPU cycles and harddrive space they could need.
To quote my Kazaa lite screen as of this moment:
1,650,984 users online, sharing 299,786,663 files (1,807,648 GB)
So yeah, 2TB is miniscule (about 0.1%) in comparison.
One thing I have been noticing more and more about Kazaa however is that compared to the heyday of Napster and Scour, finding what I want is not nearly as easy as it used to be. Not to mention getting good high speed downloads and uploads is becoming all too rare as well. Guess the signal ratio is getting a little low.
If one gets kazzalite off kazaa, that means that he/she already has kazaa. Will uninstalling kazaa(original) get rid of all the extra crap. I bet not, but what if one also runs ad-aware, will that take care of everything. Maybe someone who knows about spyware/kazaa can answer.
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
Sorry to respond to my own post but I've been working on the problem myself. Adware full scan before removeing kazaa 105 items, after uninstalling 89 items. Almost all are brilliant digital stuff, a few that are from random web sites, I think are just cookies. I think most of the 89 left still came aboard with kazaa.
A side note, I have noticed that IE seems to crash more when kazaa is running. Is it becuase of something sneeky that its trying to do, and doesn't do it well?
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
There is no such thing as unused bandwidth. Someone is paying for it. Using some extra may not cost you, but if, for example, everyone on a cable internet provider starts using all the bandwidth available 24x7, there would be major problems for the provider.
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All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
http://javacool1.freeservers.com/
GNUTELLA clients will overpower your system...sap up all your CPU cycles. GNUTELLA (and all it's clients) won't allow for information that's needed. It won't show bitrate (128,160,192,etc), won't show ID info in general. I trully detest the entire network. I hope it doesn't resort to having to GUetleelelellellalala.