KaZaA Collapses

MikeKD writes "according to SFGate, KaZaA has announced that it will fold due to the cost of defending itself against the RIAA & MPAA. The timing is notable since on Monday, Altnet (owned by Brillant Digital) announced plans for "sponsored listings in peer-to-peer search" on its "separate [and] secure P2P resource-sharing network"."

Comments

Re:"In a related story...

[Beliskner]

set up an ftp server, give the address out to your friends, and have them set up ftps and give the address to you. simple

This is exactly how it was done in the past, friend - FTP. Oh man, I've been trading files since you were just a twinkle in your parents' eyes kiddo. 5 years ago in my day it used to be www.audiogalaxy.com as the search engine (like Fast Networks www.alltheweb.com FTP search). It spidered FTP servers. You'd type in the song you want and get a list of FTP servers matchig with their IP address and login/pass (usualy mp3:mp3). They'd usually be running warftp daemon, have an upload:download of 1:3 usually so you MUST upload a song to be able to download a song. Unlike Kazaa if you upload a song the guy doesn't want he takes it personal and *kicks* you from his ftp server. In other words you spent 1 hour uploading a song over a dialup connection just to get kicked after 1/4 of your download, and maybe get your IP address shitlisted (if the song you up'ed was that bad). This is why in my winamp 40% of songs are incomplete, ftp server admin kicked me. Sometimes you'd do a reverse-DNS and see the FTP server is in Russia, where it's 5am, so the FTP server is unmanned. This is when you have fun and upload win386.swp and kernel32.dll to get download credits. If you want to download a 5 Meg song, and the FTP server has a 1:3 ratio, you have to upload at least a 1.8 Meg song so you'd always have your mp3 portfolio in windows explorer arranged in size order. FTP admins got pissed off that only small songs get uploaded, but in dial-up days this still took an eternity.

These were the days when CuteFTP was unstable and kept crashing. Ahhhh, those were the days when song-swapping was personal. Some people with me got kicked from the FTP server in mid-download, got pissed off and ping-flooded the FTP server for 10 minutes. It was all so personal.

Usually the FTP servers would be busy with >50 simultaneous users so you;d have to hammer the FTP server with a 3-second wait timeout. Sometimes I'd use my own PC to hammer, and I'd ssh into my friend's linux box and use it's ftp to hammer also, and then use the first one to connect. Trouble is if you hammered to hard they'd ban your IP address for 15 minutes to 1 day. With DHCP just hang up and dial up again to get a new IP address. These were the days when a static IP address (like with ADSL) was something to be avoided at all costs.

Sometimes I reminisce about the good old days by downloading from Kazaa and opening up an MSDOS prompt and typing netstat to get the reverse-DNS, makes things feel a little personal again for a few seconds. But I suppose old-timers like me with the personal touch aren't wanted any more *sniff sniff*.

So when you kids point and double-click on Kazaa, remember us, the pioneers who did things the hard way.

Score:5 Historic, pre-P2P era dinosaur, modded up out of feeling of respect for your elders, when everything wasn't as automatic as Kazaa