Kazaa Continues to Evolve

Zephy writes "The New York Times (free registration etc.. ) has an article about a new partnership between Kazaa, and Tiscali, the European internet access provider. Seems that Kazaa will carry ads for Tiscali's broadband services in return for a cash 'bounty' when a user signs up for broadband. To quote the article, 'This gives legitimacy to KaZaA.' Also, Cnet has an article about the new Kazaa version which has features designed to help users avoid corrupt or wrong files such as those spread around p2p by the MP/RIAA."

Comments

Finally

[batboy78]

I like to have all of my pr0n named properly

The clock is ticking

[Njoyda Sauce]

How soon till the RIAA slams Kazaa as long and hard as Napster? Surely they don't think that joining forces with European companies somehow protects them from the long arm of the RIAA?

Re:The clock is ticking

[SirSlud]

> Whine all you want, but it is justifying theft, one way or the other, to think that it is ok to have services such as Kazaa.

We should shut down FedEx too. Last I heard, they had delivered lots of illegal things to sketchy people. Clearly we must ensure that people are on tigbht-fitting technological leashes so they don't have to think or act accountable for their actions. Welcome to utopia, where, if you can physically do it, it must be okay! Never think about the consequences of your individual actions again!

Would you be the first to turn in your friends and family, or are the people that made the tools responsible for bending and warping their puny little minds into acts of wonton piracy?

Re:The clock is ticking

[Bamfsog]

The difference between FedEx and the Kazaa/Napster networks is that the MAJORITY of the file sharing network's content is a problem. Their primary business and attraction to end users is the illegal content.

There was an article in the news the other day about a guy selling weed at KFC, and slipping it into the orders. The majority of the business being done was still tasty chicken, so KFC wasn't the problem. If they had removed 90% of their menu and replaced it with Weed, then they would be shutdown.

Re:The clock is ticking

[Planesdragon]

1: It's "wanton", not "wonton."

2: FedEx and other true "Common Carriers" have no way to tell that the contents of one wrapped package are illegal--and if they do (i.e., it's got a "do not export" label on the outside and is being shipped to Iraq), they've probably allready been sued to stop & check.

VCR recorders were declared legal because a significant legal use was declared--and then followed through on. What's the significant legal use of KaZaa, again?

Observation

[poot_rootbeer]

'This gives legitimacy to KaZaA' means the same things as 'This paints a big bulls-eye on KaZaA's back for Rosen & Valenti to shoot at.'

How does this give legitimacy?

[BoomerSooner]

The line is what? "Sign up for broadband and you can steal even more music online!"

Sounds legit to me. (end sarcasm)

Legitimacy, arrrrr

[tuxedo-steve]

To quote the article, 'This gives legitimacy to KaZaA.'

Yes, and to quote the KaZaA CEO:

"Arrr, me harties! This be giving us legitimacy! We sail for New Orleans, with our bounty of broadband gold and pirrrrated MP3s!"

Just because you're the King of Spain's privateering vessel doesn't mean you don't have a peg-leg and a parrot. Get me?

Don't download it!

[Mr_Silver]

Obvious point for some, but still I'll make it.

Wait until Kazaa Lite is released before you go downloading it. Unfortunately www.kazaalite.com doesn't work any more but doa2.host.sk (which is where www.k-lite.tk points to) does.

At the moment they only have 1.7.2 up there, but give them a chance and check back next week.

Rating System

[SealBeater]

Quick question on the rating system. What's to stop the same people who are
saturating KaZaa with false files to simply rate good files negatively? That
way, they don't even have to flood the network, all they have to do is stomp on
a file at a time and nobody is going to download it to see if it's good or not.
Is the rating system simply going to make it easier for companies to steer
people away from good files?

SealBeater

Tiscali == Full of FTP Abusers

[Frater 219]

Perhaps this will cut down on the number of port-21 scans I see from Tiscali. At present, they're one of the largest sources of scans for open anonymous FTP servers, right behind Wanadoo. The abusers are looking for FTP servers that allow both upload and download in the same directory. When they find them, they fill them up with warez, porn, and movies.

Now, you may think, hey, free warez, porn, and movies ... but I'll bet you don't work for a site with a few hundred technically bright but security-dumb scientists. These folks like open FTP because it makes it easy to collaborate and share data, but they don't like having their disks fill up with blowjob MPEGs.

So if Tiscali can get its warezers and pr0nsters running Kazaa and shoving spyware onto each other's systems all day, maybe they will go away and leave my users' port 21 alone.

I'll be glad when kazaa dies..

[Suppafly]

As someone who has to do network support, nothing is worse than a computer which has had kazaa and the accompaning spyware installed. That new.net crap ruins the winsock stuff forcing a total reinstall, and those spyware proxys have people complaining about QoS when its the proxy which is providing the crappy service. I await the day we come to /. to bury kazaa, not to praise it.

Interesting developments

[Scarblac]

There are several interesting developments here. For one thing, Tiscali allies with Kazaa - a natural step for them, because after all, they want to sell bandwidth, and why would people need a lot of bandwidth, if there weren't any applications like Kazaa?

Then in the second article, one of the things that's mentioned is that they partner with a music company for which Kazaa is actually the only way it distributes its music. This may be good for Kazaa's legal case, after all Napster seemed to lose mostly because they couldn't show that their networks were used legitimately at all.

On the other hand, I wonder what the judge will think of the new feature against 'bogus music and video files', that are inserted by the record companies to make the network useless. Almost all of those files will make themselves look like songs that are actually illegal to trade, so making a feature to stop them, however useful and natural to make, could be seen as actively helping to download copyrighted stuff.

But I can't really see them winning the case in the US anyway, after Napster.

How odd that an ISP wants warez kiddies

[vidnet]

Most ISPs seems to want to block or limit throughput for heavy traffic apps like this. What exactly is Tiscali trying to do?

Are they trying to round up all the kiddies on their network, driving bandwidth costs down?

Re:How odd that an ISP wants warez kiddies

[SirSlud]

Maybe Tiscali recognizes that if Kazaa has been downloaded 120 million times, there can't be that many Kazaa users that are full blown warez kiddies.

Most of the people I know who p2p (I don't out of sheer laziness, but then again, I've stopped buying music due to the crappiness of product right now) were not bandwidth guzzling warez monkeys but just wanted a recording of a top 40 song that they could have taped off the radio twice an hour anyhow.

So maybe Tiscali sees p2p as broadband's killer app, and has taken a more objective analysis of how their bandwidth will be affect by this partnership rather than just assuming that they'll only attract the types who throttle the pipe.

First impressions

[EpsCylonB]

they are promoting bands and videos on the search page but to play them you need to update your DRM software.

seems to me that kazaa could be trying to set it's self up as a media delivery system when palladium and all the copyright protection is implemented.

Re:I take it from the summary...

[NineNine]

No need to wait. The lite version has been out for quite some time... http://www.kazaalite.com

Re:I take it from the summary...

[ncc74656]

FYI... if you use Ad-Aware to remove the spyware components of Kazaa, it kills the program.

IIRC, Kazaa needs Cydoor to run. Fortunately, there's a dummy Cydoor DLL available. (Can't say that I've used Kazaa or Kazaa Lite in a while, though...I started running Shareaza recently, which is spyware-free, ad-free, and works with a true decentralized network.)

Don't use Kazaa, try Edonkey

[Jacek Poplawski]

I think Kazaa will die like Napster or AudioGalaxy did. Don't use Kazaa. Please try edonkey2000 network. It's free, it's available not only for Windows, and you don't need to watch any commercials.

official (closed source) client: edonkey2000
free (GPL) client: mldonkey
free, Windows-only client: emule
ShareReactor community: ShareReactor