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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"."
Aren't the dutch representatives (the ones beeing sued) not the owner of the software (and with it, the newtork) any longer? Well why should RIAA & Friends sue them any longer? Why didn't they already filed suit against Sherman Networks in OZ? Or does anyone know if they alleged them already for copyright infridgement (lol)?
The Web site and the software behind it are now owned by a privately held firm called Sharman Networks, based in Vanuatu, an island in the Pacific.
This promises to be an interesting legal battle, esp. for jurisdiction and enforcement of any rulings. The question is: Will the servers be moved to Vanuatu as well?
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
I haven't finished downloading Star Wars yet !!
...Spy Software companies and makers of other beneficial consumer products wholly unrelated to virus software announce that they expect a downturn in profits and expect to lay off 75% of personnel."
Seriously folks, is this really a bad thing?
P2P software is a nice idea, but I would be more interested in them if they were more user controllable. I'd much rather have a P2P network comprised solely of individuals that I trust than to be connected to a sea of people do not know eating my bandwidth searching for things I do not have and do not want.
Give me a P2P solution that allows me to selectively authorize requests to my system and communicate only with those other people that I wish to communicate with. A mini P2P between myself and my friends.
Once more unto the breach dear friends...
My life is a joke... I spent the last few weeks writing a p2p program.
Just finished, at 5 a.m. Guess I don't want to get sued
It was fun while it lasted...
I'm actually quite taken with Kazaa's strategy. It seems like they're just going to keep "selling" the name and technology to own of their own subsidiaries or spin-offs, then fold whatever part of the company is currently being sued.
Of course, it's a scam, and the [MP|RI]AA can just pursue the new owner... who can just sell on the name and technology, and fold. They'll have to actually go after the owners personally, which is a completely different proposition.
I'm not exactly enamoured with Kazaa (gnutella for me, thanks), but I think they've hit on the only possible defence to the "litagate them into submission" tactics that the [MP|RI]AA are increasingly turning to. However, it's yet another indicator that if you want to start an innovative business, don't do it inthe USA, or in anywhere with strong treaties with the USA. That part is very sad.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Well, not really. On a good quality sound system, MP3 is a far cry from CD quality - on an average sound system to average people, it's pretty much the same. I suspect that a very large majority of people would fail blind tests judging between MP3s and CDs playing on their own sound system. Heck, most people would fail when played on a top quality sound system - they listen to Britney Spears for goodness sake! :)
CNet has a longer article with quotes from testimony, etc. @ Kazaa, Morpheus legal case collapsing.
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.
Using your logic here are RIAA's next targets:
Every web server creator since they allow people to post listings of songs they have
Sue wc3 for their html that allowed you create the html used on the formentioned web server
Perhaps IEEE and IETF and whoever else is responsible for tcp/ip without which these web servers couldn't run so we must stop the use of tcp/ip
Come to think of it, the cable companies and phone companies and every ISP in the world for providing the physical transport for these evil p2p networks, yes I realize that some people actually use the internet for real work, sucks for them we have people stealing songs here people.
You have to go after the users, its the only way that anythign will be accomplished. YOu shut down one p2p network, 3 more will spring up.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
Copyright laws can change tomorrow. Some artists and all record companies will want 100% control of their product - the DVD regions system is racist as it discriminates against people in other countries and thus inhibits free trade, violating WTO regulations, even if you're willing to pay full price for the product, they still want to control who buys it, where and when. This shows me there's no middle ground with these people - it's CDBPPTA or nothing, and they'll use the most expensive lawyers available. The outcome of legal action is a combination of Poker (cheaper to fold instead of raise, even if your own hand is better), luck and who's right and wrong.
Everybody that I know that went to court "on principle" has lost their house, car and life savings as a result, despite the fact they were right. Losing everything to lawyer fees when you are 60 years old is NOT funny. This system is just plain wrong.
I wish binLaden smashed planes into the Supreme court instead of WTC. Amen.
Honestly, when I look at Sharia law I can see why the Middle East supports it, looked at objectively it as a whole at least gives the impression of love and caring for the average citizen, together with the accruing of large amounts of money being an abominational and disgusting act of selfishness. I dunno man, I can't help feeling that there's something there that we've lost.
Sharman networks should move to Dubai in UAE, Towry Law is based there and it's a beautiful place, everybody has a Mercedes. The servers can be housed in Saudi Arabia, they have no IP laws there, but they'll need one big air conditioning unit. Why don't people locate server farms in Greenland, Norway or in the Arctic? No air conditioning costs whatsoever, just a few fans.
Cheapest model in IT:
Servers in cold countries (e.g. Norway)
Coders in cheap countries (e.g. India, China)
Consumers in rich countries (e.g. America)
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Absolutely. I don't condone any kind of porn, that said, I think people in China should be immune to US laws.
For instance, should a Dutch citizen be prosecuted in the US for smoking drugs, even though his country has de-criminalized it? No?
Should he prosecuted for smoking drugs in the US? Yes?
Now, perhaps more interesting... Should a US citizen be prosecuted in the US if he smokes drugs whilst on holiday in Asterdam? This is the grey area, as things like espionage, treason, murder all probably would cause him to be prosecuted by the US.
Now, back to this Chinese guy with his kiddie porn... If he physically sends mail to the US, he clearly has intent to break US obscenity laws. If US people take things withouy his knowledge from his server (which remember, it is legal for him to have running), how has he broken any US laws? For a start, there is absolutely no intent.
If the US has problems with this, the correct approach is for the US to impose sanctions, e.g. creating laws requiring the firewalling of offending machines out of existance. Something hard to achieve? Not really - if it starts being hard to maintain, it's easy to employ a draconian firewall everything. If this upsets China's economy at all, then it'll in turn start having a good reason to implement obscenity laws of its own. Welcome to the world of trade sanctions.
A final note. Given that China is fairly keen to stop pretty much all internet traffic to and from China anyway, I don't think this is a great example.
And there goes my karma for replying to my own posts...
You have to go after the users, its the only way that anythign will be accomplished.
And this got a score of 4 for insightful?
Think about this for a moment, we had roughly what, 50, 60 million people worldwide using Napster at its height? At any given time, Kazaa has a couple million on, so we can assume their average daily user list is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 - 30 million people. Morpheus/gnutella has good numbers, as do several other networks. Then we factor in IRC, usenet, etc.
So you, a large corporation, are going to begin suing some 20 - 60 million people? Ok, let's assume the RIAA and MPAA join up in some joint venture created specifically to pool all their resources for this.
Lawyers needed? Somewhere between 40 - 100 million. Assuming they'll work for a sum of $75/hr (a bargain) on average, that brings us to an approxamate cost of $5,250,000,000/hr. (yes, that's billion with a B) The newest star wars installment made about $130million on the first weekend, and that would cover your legal fees for about 9 minutes. So then you say, "well, silly, they wouldn't sue them all at once, they'd spread it out!" What a great idea. Assuming 70,000,000 lawsuits at 100 lawsuits filed each month, you would spend the next 58,000+ years prosecuting people. Now, I'm no doctor, but I don't think people live that long. In any event, the cost in legal fees for suing even 1% of the users is so astonomical that not even Bill Gates could fathom doing it in his wildest dreams. But there's more.
Two problems relating to one another: 1) Consumer backlash, 2) government backlash.
Now, when you and about half your friends are being sued by a major corporation, I don't think you'll be jumping to buy their product. The roughly 70 million people (a good 40 - 50 million are US citizens) that you're suing are going to be pretty pissed, and will start organizing to fight you. This brings us to our next problem. If I were running for office, (let's say... President?), I could get myself somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 million votes simply by taking a strong stance against "the evil corporate empires" of the entertainment industry. And if I were going for re-election, I'd start issuing EO's (executive orders) like they were candy effectively putting an end to major media companies. But just in case you thought that might not do it, next we move to Congress. Same thing, they all want re-election, and with millions being sued, this becomes a major issue. Now, do you go to your district and tell people that it's all their fault and they shouldn't have been stealing content? Well sure, if you don't like your job. What will really happen? They'll take a firm stance against the media companies and legislation will be passed 10 times faster than the laws passed following Sept 11. The entertainment industry will be so incredibly screwed by the new laws that they won't be in business for long. No amount of money talks to a congressman when their constituents are up in arms about something.
So where does this leave the entertainment industry? At an impasse. They have a few options here: 1) continue suing P2P networks, which after a while they'll start losing the cases, but no matter what, it will never end file sharing. 2) Come up with better digital rights management technology, which will cost millions in research and be broken by a 15 year old kid. 3) Sue ISPs, server owners, etc, whose legal teams in many cases match those of the RIAA and MPAA. 4) Lobby for legislation, which is getting less and less likely to work, seeing as tech savvy folks are now mainstream for the most part, and will fight things like the SSSCA whenever they come around. 5) Relinquish all rights to copyrighted works and go into immediate Chapter 13 liquidation, (just kidding). 6) Change their business models to use the internet for their benefit.
I'd like to take option 6 a little further for a moment. Assume this, the entertainment companies offer reasonable licensing terms to webcasters, somewhere around the middle between CARP's recommendations and what the webcasters asked for. They then set up internet sites with both streaming and downloadable music and movies, offering them in secured formats, but giving the OSS community access to the information about the formats required to build players and ask for their help in building secured players for Linux/*nix's. Offer these movies and music at either pay-per-use prices or as a straight download price. Say a dollar per song downloaded and $3 or $4 per movie downloaded, with the streaming PPV costs being mere fractions of that. Offer a complete linup of music, starting with the most popular and adding music as quickly as possible with easy to use searchs for song names, artists, and lyrics. Do something similar for movies, allowing searchs for movie titles, stars/co-stars, producers, etc. Offer the movie for download before it's even out on DVD, thus steering many people towards the internet service. Offer a simple web interface similar to P2P apps currently out, and use a simple account management system allowing for an easy download/stream of content. (ie. you point, click, watch) You'd instantly see a drop in piracy to the tune of probably 70% or better for music and movies. At the same time, the amount of money coming in would be incredible, and lawsuits against P2P networks etc could be dropped, thereby lowering legal costs. Easy to get, readily available, reasonably priced content is the way to stamp out piracy. Who the hell would search for 20 minutes to find the right version of a song they want to download when it's just $1 to get it from the music company, giving you a legitamate, high quality copy of the music? Who would spend 10 hours downloading a lousy copy of a movie when they can find and get what the want for $4, not have to worry about poor quality, and have it download much faster? Just an idea, but I think it's one that would make billions for the entertainment industry, and would silence most of their P2P-using critics.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."