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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"."
"The collapse of Kazaa, however, is not expected to slow trading activity on the company's network, one of the most popular file-sharing sites in the world. Kazaa said it has sold the network to another firm that the music and film industry has not sued yet. " They sold off all their assets and now they're cashing out. Big deal.
Kazaa no longer owns the client or the website. It sold them to a Vanuatan based company called Sharman Networks (originally thought to be based in Australia.)
So, basically, Kazaa BV sold the application to Sharman to sidestep the lawsuits. Action failes and Kazaa BV goes down anyway.
I spose they've just put Sharman on notice.
Janie took my gun...
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Check out scumware.com and Parasiteware for more info on these. Another case for AdAware!
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Just because you're right doesn't mean that you aren't going to lose in court. See the McLibel case for a demonstration of this. If someone else has enough money and you don't, then you are almost definitely going to either lose the case, or are going to end up settling out of court because you can't afford to carry on. It's nothing to do with right or wrong.
I'm not claiming that Kazaa are right, but their moving to Vanuatu proves nothing.
when kazaa users switch to gnutella after the kazaa network dies (eventually those login servers will go bye bye) they will bring thier files with them. In turn, gnutella will have the same file selection as kazaa. and many gnutella clients allow you to download from multiple sources.
CNet has a longer article with quotes from testimony, etc. @ Kazaa, Morpheus legal case collapsing.
this works for me:
mldokey open source edonkey client for most unix platforms.
hopey
many gnutella clients allow you to download from multiple sources.
Which, specifically? If I like it, then this Kazaa user will bring all his files to Gnutella.
My experiences of Gnutella recently (using Limewire) have been that there are few files, most of which you can't even begin to download (file unavailable, retrying in 10..9..8..7..etc), when you are lucky enough to get one, it's incomplete, or not what it says it is. It's okay for music, but even then doesn't have the selection that's available on Kazaa.
Compare and contrast to Kazaa from which I have recently got RTCW, Spiderman (movie and game), Fifa World Cup 2002, Freedom Force, Jedi Knight II, and am currently getting GTA3.
Copyright laws are pretty much standardized internationally through the Berne Convention, which says that any signatory nation must grant foreigners the same copyright protection which it grants its own citizens. There's another treaty that additionally specifies minimum standards of protection, and all members of the WTO must comply with both of these treaties.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Hasn't anyone here heard of AudioGalaxy? If I want pr0n or movies, then I'd have used Kazaa, but for music I always use AG Satellite... surprisingly their music dBase is a LOT bigger, plus they actually host indie artists whose music you are free to download without ANY copyright (ok, I might not be using the right term here so no post-whippings! :) )
Put it this way... if you want commercial stuff, look on Kazaa. If you want that, plus lesser-known, indie, underground, or even oldies, go AG.
You can always go old school too, since AG has a "backup plan" in case somebody goes after them for their sharing. They've been offering an FTP search database as well. I still remember that back in the day when it was called the Borg Music Search.
Mouse, Mice. Goose, Geese. Moose... Moose?
WinMX slaps the shit out of Kazaa any day of the week, for selection, for not discriminating against high-bit-rate MP3s, and for fitting on my screen in its entirety, without obnoxious lateral scrolling. Now that it has "swarm" downloading, I expect it will far surpass the old WinMX 2.6 in terms of DLer satisfaction.
But as to the question of content available, I've always found the WinMX network to be comparable to, if not better than, Kazaa. Just my experience, but I'd suggest that it's worth a try.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Napster, scour, kazaa... all it goes to show is that commerical p2p has its flaws. The problem from what I can see is that they try to retain some control of the network, at which point RIAA says "Hey, you can stop this at anytime, do it!" and they have to. However, I'd love to see them go after gnutella. With dozens of free (beer and/or speech) clients and a pretty much completely decentralitized network there really is nothing they can do about it. Unfortunately there isn't too much on gnutella (content wise, as compared to fastrack) but when they're the last game in town I'm sure it'll get better. I'm sure limewire (the commercial gnutella company and yes they give it away, but they still sell stuff) loves this. They easily have the best gnutella client (morpheous has some stuff to work out) which is multi-platform and would probably love to have kazaa's share of the population.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me