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Stealware: Kazaa et al Stealing Link Commissions
goombah99 writes "We all heard about spyware, well now Kazaa, Morpheus and LimeWire are sneaking a new type of nastiness onto your computer, software that - without you even knowing it - redirects commissions for online purchases you make from other vendors you make back to them. For example, if you buy a CD from an affiliate of Amazon.com, say some charity, the software fools Amazon into crediting the commission to Morpheus, not the charity! The story quotes a LimeWire Developer who admits 'While I agree that this is really a
bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users.' The insidious part is the stealware
program remains even if you delete the original P2P software. And you supposedly gave your permission when you clicked through the EULA."
Gah kazza sucks giFT for evar! http://sourceforge.net/projects/gift
'While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users.'
"While I agree that slapping my wife around isn't very nice, it does get me my dinner on time."
"While I agree that insider trading is against SEC rules, how else am I going to get the 2nd Aston-Martin?"
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I've allways been a suporter of p2p clients and everything, but this is kind of pathetic. If you (as they say in the article) helping a charity or something through your purchase, they are literally taking from people who really need this money. It could be life or death to these people. Britany Spears isn't going to die without the money from her cds sales (although I wish she would). This is pathetic.
Teach someone to use the net and they won't bother you for weeks; show them Slashdot and you may never see them again.
Im not in favor of random lawsuits, but theyve got it coming.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
This kind of thing is getting out of control here. Somebody please tell me this is illegal and will be prosecuted? Interstate fraud would be nice...
I won't dance in a club like this...All the girls are slags, and the beer tastes just like piss! -The Specials
This seems to be quite simply stealing. But then again, the EULA and all that...
IF this is true...
These guys are their own worst enemy. The RIAA doesn't need to do anything. These companies will end up destroying themselves. This is not the type of PR these guys need.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
As a Kazaa employee, I was never happier than when this came out - especially as we get bonuses based on net income.
i just installed Kazaa yesterday,
having ignored p2p programs uptill now..
hopefully someoen will crack this..
grrr...
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
This sounds totally illegal.. In a federal sense, even if you clicked okay on an EULA.. where are the slashdot lawyers who read this...? It's the equivelent of another cpu vendor telling Microsoft they sold x amount of licenses when it was really some other vendor. I would think that would be jailtime.
'While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users.'
That's part of it, it does affect the users - money that they may have WANTED to go to a particular affiliate is now going to these guys. Yay.
The other part is what about the affiliate contract? doesn't this violate it?
Desperation is a stinky cologne
That's why if your going to use Kazaa you should really use Kazaa Lite. It's Kazaa without all the spy stuff installed.
It's sort of a Catch-22 here. The user is using the software, agreeing to the EULA, and "illegally" (it's arguable) downloading music... What person out there would take a company to court that is allowing them to distribute and download music that a lot of the major companies don't want you to do?
I'm uneffected by this because i'm a happy WinMX user. I've never had a problem whatsoever, unlike AudioGalaxy and Bearshare (this is awhile ago) that deleted some of my system files, thus making me have to reformat!
Now everybody go and scrub up for dinner. This is a horrible thing for a company to do but I'm sure they'll do anything they can to make a buck.
That's what open source if for! I'm sure there are several pieces of software avail. that have open code. Also if no one else has heard of it, check out www.neo-modus.com. Very nice! You could call it the underdog of PTP. I believe they are also working on a Linux port.
The dingo ate my sig.
"Now, the company said, the softwareoffers a choice to the consumer before each purchase: whether to give the commission to the affiliate or to himself in the form of a rebate, with a portion of the rebate going to Morpheus"
What would happen if I walked into a car dealership, bargained a nice proce for my new Kia, and told the salesperson that instead of him getting a commission, I'm going to take that money as a rebate? Wouldn't that be stealing, or am I missing something here?
In other news, Limewire captures credit card numbers on the fly and charges 1$ for every purchase you make.
"We do think this is stealing, but they are stealing music anyways so it can't be wrong? Plus it pays our salaries."
One would think that the online stores would get wize to this:
"Last week, Amazon cut off affiliate payments to Morpheus, one site that employs the shopping software, said an online executive. Coldwater Creek, an online clothing store, has also blocked Morpheus."
www.christopherlewis.com
How is this not fraud or theft?
By the way, kinda strange that you can't really BUY many of the p2p apps, but rather they come only as ad/spy ware sponsored by the same few companies. The claim that the developers need to do this to make money is thus utter BS. Make a good p2p client and sell it instead of loading it with crap.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
That is so cool, I wish I would have thought of that idea first, man, I really have to give them credit, cause that'a a sneaky but really cool idea. I definitely support them on their trickyness.
If it's in an EULA, it must be legal.
I mean for crissakes - EULA is an ACRONYMN!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
people with KaZaA actually buy CD's from Amazon??? Hmm... Who knew?
Humor folks, enjoy it. =)
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I don't have a NYTimes account, and don't plan on starting just for this, so I don't know if it's mentioned in the article.
How does this work? Cookie? Hack the browser to rewrite URLs? What?
From the article's side-bar:
A Software Cleanup
Computer users who want to remove shopping software from their machines can do so in a few steps. Instructions for removing three of the most common programs:
BUYERSPORT - The shopping software with Morpheus:
Click the Start button.
Click on Find.
Click on Find Files or Folders.
Type in mbho.dll. Click on find now. When the file appears in the directory window, drag mbho.dll into the trash.
LIMESHOP - The software with LimeWire:
Click the Start button.
Click on Settings.
Click Control Panel.
Double-click Add/Remove Programs.
Click LimeShop.
Click Add/Remove.
SAVENOW - The software used by Kazaa:
Click on Start.
Click Settings.
Click on Control Panel.
Double-click on Add/Remove Programs.
Click SaveNow.
Click on Add/Remove.
www.christopherlewis.com
the moral and ethical rape was at least directed at an appropriate target in the RIAA
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
A while ago a colleague and I wondered about the morality of large companies altering internet gateways to do exactly this.
i.e. Where would LargeMegaCorp stand if they rewrote URLs passing out of the companies firewall to redirect any Amazon purchases to go to a merchant account for the company.
Most large companies have policies on personal surfing, so would the employees have any recourse?
It might not be as fast as the other p2p networks, but Gnucleus is free, open source, and not subject to any malware like Kazaa is...
I am going to sue you for:
A. Software that you gave to me for free
B. Something I agreed to take in the EULA
C. Free stuff I am trying to get from your Services.
I sense a great disturbance in the Common sense here.
Patrick Toland, a vice president for sales and marketing at TopMoxie, said that the company did not intend for its software to displace other affiliates' rights
Like so many claims surround P2P, this claim is utterly unbelievable: how do you build a program that hijacks sales and NOT know you're doing this ?
I just hope Amazon and whomever is affected by this sues their asses off.
Spyware and redirectware are great reasons to use alternative platforms or browsers. I doubt that the redirectware works with Opera or Mozilla, or at all on other platforms. When I use OmniWeb on Mac OS X, I have a lot more confidence in my privacy. Call it "security through not having the same lock everybody else has." I have seen two Windows machines crippled by spyware, crashing all the time with software the user never remembers installing. That pushes me further and further from Windows.
This is more than "a bit of a scam" -- it's immoral and undoubtedly illegal. There are ways to get defeat all their little scams and still use the Fasttrack P2P network. You can try Kazaa Lite, which is Kazaa without the spy/scumware. I'd also recommend using AdAware, a great little program that scans your registry, memory, and hard drives for spy/scum/adware components and gives you the option to delete them.
Using AdAware to delete cydoor.dll will likely leave your P2P client not working. That's where the dummy cydoor.dll comes in. It allows the client to start without providing any of the unwanted cydoor functionality.
For more info on spyware and scumware in general, check out the quite wonderful Counterexploitation site...
Hope this helps...
:wq
It is bad enough that they are stealing other vendors commisions, but I have major issues with people, especially a whole company that would intentionally steal from a charity.
I see virtually no difference between this and reaching into one of those bell ringers donation buckets (even though I find them kind of annoying hehe). I hope they all go bankrupt.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Full disclosure of affiliates at the time the transaction is concluded. If Amazon and the others actually showed which affiliate was going to get a commision, people would spot the monkey business right away. The consumer doesn't have to know the amount, but knowing which affiliate is getting the credit would make this a self-policing situation. If the stealware people are so bold as to falsify Amazon's message back to the constomer, then it's time for the laywers.
I don't know if the big online retailers actually care about affiliate programs or not. If they do, then stealware is intolerable. Otherwise, the programs are useless.
"We knew it was wrong," said one vice-president, "but we had to keep the free snacks flowing for the programmers, or else we were screwed. We couldn't stop -- they'd all jump ship."
The executives insisted they had done nothing wrong. "Those kids are sick! What the hell are they getting candy for, anyway?" he asked rhetorically. "We left them instant cous-cous and bean soup. They've got it pretty good, if you ask me."
FSF founder and computer guru Richard Stallman was unavailable for comment. "He's out redirecting CDNow affiliate refferals to pay for his movie rental late charges," said an anonymous source close to the programmer.
Carousel is a lie!
I'd imagine that Amazon et al will be chaning their contractual terms specifically preventing this sort of behavior. The whole 'affiliate' program is dependant upon the warm and fuzzy feeling one gets by helping out a site you use, giving additional sales to Amazon. If users begin to question who will get the commission, then it fails as a marketing scheme for Amazon (and the others, presumably). I don't think this will be around for long.
I absolutely do not comprehend why people continue to use this software.
The very fact that it WAS spyware has kept me from using, even since they had supposedly gotten rid of it. Of course, I am a fairly paranoid individual. I see this as a good thing, however.
There are plenty of alternatives out there that are not spyware and don't go screwing with things they shouldn't be.
I've installed and removed Morpheus on my machine. I installed Limewire, and it's still installed at the moment.
I can uninstall software; that's no problem... if I can find it. Can anyone direct us on how to remove the stealware from our systems? Oh, and I have Limewire installed on both Linux and Windows machines.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
If Amazon allows software companies to redirect affiliate rebates, the incentive for people to link to Amazon's catalog goes away. I can't imagine they won't shut down the accounts of vendors like Kazaa who circumvent the process, once the practice becomes public (as it now has).
I'd like to point people's attention to furthurnet.com. I'm sure it won't have the popularity of the other sharing systems, but its a legit system and you get unique material.
Furthurnet.com is a system where fans of bands which allow bootlegging of live concerts post full sets from those shows.
Pros:
*Free, no ads, no spyware, nothin
*Legal - music is only by bands who approve
*New stuff - you can get stuff no on CD's yet
*Live stuff - could be a plus or minus depending on the artist, but its a new perspective.
Cons:
*Bigger - they're recorded in a non-lossy format shn, so a full concert is anywhere between 200-600 meg
*Recording quality not as good - depending on the band, the recorder and show, the acoustics and equipment aren't as good as live CD's and certainly not as clean as studio.
*Fewer artists
I just discovered this a few days ago looking for Jack Johnson stuff. I love it. Take a look. Its on Win and linux (maybe Mac too, not sure)
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the most surely the one wasted." -Sebastian Roch Nicol
Amazon: "these comission sales were made against our TOS, so we will be paying NO comissions on those sales."
Wow, that's a pretty shocking accusation, but how did all of the P2P folks get this without anybody noticing?
How does it work? How do you detect if you have it on your system?
While I normally trust the NYT (as much as I trust any paper), I'd kind of like to have some verification of these claims from the hacker commmunity because this sounds way too much like some sort of industry scare tactic.
I read the internet for the articles.
Morpheus referred inquiries to Wurld Media, which operates its shopping rebates program. Kirk H. Feathers, the chief technical officer of Wurld Media, said that it had been wrongly accused of stealing and that the company would readily go to court to defend itself.
Okay, is there someone out there that can explain to me how this is leagal...
Okay, we're going to divert money, that someone should have made through a click-thru ad to our pockets, from websites around the world, all without the customer knowing. Yes it was in the EULA, but something like this should have been a little more publicized. Personally, I feel that this is infringing on the peoples rights that set up the click-thru ads in the first place.
If you're looking here for something insightful or thought provoking, you're probably looking in the wrong place.
How are they doing this?
The article didn't explain it for a technical perspective.
If they are changing things at an HTTP header level, it is worse than immoral, it could break other web-applications.
Its probably not a good idea to be running Kazaa or Morpheus when you're doing online banking, but having a third party piece of spyware mess with http packets that don't belong to them is bad news.
So wait, you steal money from other people so you don't have to charge me more? Well, I guess that's okay than
File sharing companies are, at the very best, a dubious bunch. Experience has shown tht they will try to screw up your machine in some way.
So...let them. They'll find some way of doing it eventually anyway. The trick? Just make sure the 'machine' is a virtual machine. I personally use Virtual PC for Windows, but VMWare would do just as well.
Make a blank virtual machine, install your P2P clients on it and take a back-up of that file. Then use that machine for nothing but P2P. The result? Spyware is useless, because there's nothing happening to actually spy on. The machine gets too spyware-ridden? No problem - delete the current machine and restore from that fresh backup you took.
Cheers,
Ian
"And you supposedly gave your permission when you clicked through the EULA."
You may have given somebody permission as far as your browser goes but that doesn't give you the right to change a link on a persons website... You can agree all day long but it isn't *your* link nor is it *your* commission being stolen.
I find this rather repulsive but I have to admit this is rather ingenious ( in an evil scientist kind of way ). However, the fact that a user accepts it in the EULA doesn't remove the fact that they don't have a contract with the website owner giving them permission to do this.
No-one seems to be looking at the broader picture. The Amazon affiliate scheme is a contract between two parties where one basically says...
They're not saying...Whether the user agrees to it or not, he/she is receiving a service (for example, reviews or links to books they would not normally find or buy), and the payment for that service is being diverted.
As far as I'm concerned that's fraud.
For all the crapware i use vmware. Sure, you've got to pay for it, but then it'll save you lots of headaches dealing with this stuff. Just use a virtual machine for the crap, and the main one for the real stuff. Probably bochs would also do, though i didn't test it.
Digital Logic is easy. Wait untill you get into your Junior year and have to take advanced AC circuits. That class was hard.
Well, guess what folks - stealing is stealing, and once you create a criminal atmosphere, it seeps into everything. Next time they'll be stealing from you, if they aren't already - and why not? Don't the results justify the means?
Durn it! I knew I shoulda patented this business method when I thought of it a few years ago. I never woulda had the balls to replace affiliate ids with my own tho, just tack 'em on when there are none.
I wouldn't be surprised. In this case it's probably easier to quantify the damage done in terms of dollars and cents. In this respect, it's quite different than spyware which steals privacy and bandwidth, but not (directly) money.
I hope that the people at Lavasoft get Ad-aware to clean this up quickly.
The fact that the P2P software people are doing this, or the fact that most people probably don't even care?
Why did I read "an annonymous closed source"?
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
All of them know they are stealing already. The fact that the software they are using is also stealing from others wont faze them in the slightest.
BTW the mentioning of 'a charity' in the article was cheap as almost all affiliates will be merchants. It was mentioned to draw emotion, when the reality is different. Poor form.
------
smokey the bear loves wallpapers australia
I installed Lime Wire for Linux a couple of days ago. It is such a piece of shit, 1/15 of the downloads even start (and now I find out that the piece of shit is riddled wit spyware). Is there a descent GNUtella client for Linux that doesn't include any spyware.
I tried gtk-gnutella and it wouldn't connect, I liked bearshare when I was using windoze, and setup my firewall to prevent spyware traffic.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Here's the link: http://associates.amazon.com/exec/panama/associate s/join/operating-agreement.html/104-2963693-286633 7
Section 5, at the end:
In addition, you may not: [snip] (b) read, intercept, record, redirect, interpret, or fill in the contents of any electronic form or other materials submitted to us by any person or entity;
Desperation is a stinky cologne
'While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users.'
I want to hear these companies explain, without the bullshit press release lingo, how this is anything but a scam. I want to know the bit that isn't the scam, because, that developer's statement to the contrary, I see nothing legitimate about this.
This will never happen with Gnucleus...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Why do people still use this crapware? Try Gnucleus -- it's open source, so they (presumably) can't hide any nasty stuff in it.
Is there any proof that Limewire on linux does this? I've just started using, and suggesting people use it (it is a quality app). But this will seriously piss me off its mangling my mozilla browser in anyway. I love my mozilla the way it is.
Bastards
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
And you supposedly gave your permission when you clicked through the EULA.
Who wrote their EULA? Rumplestiltskin??
Weaselmancer
PS Just because you call your shot, doesn't make it legal. Officer, I'm going to run this red light. Click here to agree.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Without going into whether online music sharing is bad or good, music is a product, and taking a commercial product for nothing is called theft... (and by this description I may be described as a thief myself)
However I am surprised by all the posts coming in a massive outcry. There is nothing surprising : The the whole principle of p2p is based on ignoring traditionnal morality to bring personnal satisfaction at no cost or price. So this is not even taking it a step further it just another instance of a same concept!
So what?
May I use your sig please?
So being sneaky and nasty is really not in their best interest.
It's truly strange to think that the age of Napster was not a portent of the future, but an aberrant burp; that we might be going toward K. W. Jeter's Noir , in which copyright "pirates" are tracked down by bounty hunters who suck out their brains, which are then embedded into radios or toasters for an existence of infinite torment and given to the artist whose works were infringed, instead of Distraction , in which infotech-based gift and reputation societies rise to pre-eminence in a United States, its copyright-dependent economy reduced to rubble when China flooded the world with copyright-free copies of the U.S.'s bounty.
Okay, either future would be strange, but they're excellent books.
Wonder who will get the commission on these links?
Adam Brate (ab at adambrate dot com)
author,
- No Adware
- No Spyware
- No banners
- No bitratelimit for mp3 files
- No irritating websites loaded into KaZaA
- etc.
In addition to kazaa-lite, the following spyware-buster programs are a must to download: (links straight from www.kazaalite.nl):
eDexter
AdWare and its RefUpdate auto-updater program.
I am shocked--shocked, I say--to hear that Kazaa, a fine purveyor of music-stealing software, would behave in such an unethical manner.
Most of the posts I see are either funny or about suing them. These people are not providng a legal service to you. It would be like suing your drug dealer. You try to sue them and the RIAA knows you trade files, maybe they'll start suing users to make a point. Just my 2 cents.
Since this comission theft is apparently legal, I'm going to modify our GL system here at the office to re-code all our product sales as being sold by me, so I get all the commissions. Why should those pesky sales people get any of the money, anyway? If they want money, they should become c++ programmers instead of salesmen.
Then again, when has ripping off/exploiting the impoverised ever stopped a corporate entity in its quest for an extra dollar of profit?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Being a Linux user and hence not used to my computer being screwed behind my back I'm wondering how they actually modify IE so that it redirects sales to themselves. Have they used some clever technique or is it dead simple and just another example of windows being shot full of holes?
There is an old saying that if you lie down with dogs, you're going to get fleas. I don't know why anyone is surprised or outraged that a company who's product allows people to steal music may not be completely trustworthy. You can argue that these p2p applications are file swapping applications and not music stealing tools until you're blue in the face but everyone knows its primarily used to get music without paying for it. Go ahead and mark me as troll
But it's just wrong to do that. Plain old wrong. They're going to destroy themselves if they don't stop this nonesense, because once the general "stupid" public get to know this is happening, then they'll just give 'em the finger and stop using the programs.
I really don't know what to say, other than what they are doing is plain wrong.
Courtesy of the NYT Random Login Generator, here is the article:
E E.html
[Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/27/technology/27FR
New Software Quietly Diverts Sales Commissions
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and BOB TEDESCHI
Some popular online services are using a new kind of software to divert sales commissions that would otherwise be paid to small online merchants by big sites like Amazon and eToys.
Critics call the software parasite-ware and stealware. But the sites that use the software, which is made by nearly 20 companies and used by dozens, say that it is perfectly legal, because their users agree to the diversion.
The amounts involved are estimated by those in the industry to have mounted into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and are likely to continue to grow -- in part because most users are unaware that the software is operating on their computers.
There is no cost to the customer, but those who run small Web sites that funnel sales to the big merchants say that they are being hurt. "It's painful when someone walks in and takes sales right from under me," said Shawn Collins, who runs a number of sites that feed customers to Amazon and other merchants. "I probably saw a drop-off of 30 percent in income for the past six months."
The diversion begins when consumers get software from the Internet that helps them swap music or other files, or find bargains online. As they install the software, they are asked whether they would also like to show support for the software maker by shopping through an online affiliate program. These programs typically give a percentage of each purchase back to the affiliate -- in this case, the software maker -- as a commission.
What the consumers are not told clearly is that if they agree to participate, their computers may be electronically marked: all future purchases will look as if they were made through the software maker's site, even if they were not.
In many versions of the software, a purchase will look as if it was made through the software maker's site even if the shopper came in through another site that has its own affiliate agreement with the online store in question. Those affiliate sites include small businesses and even charities that use affiliate links as fund-raisers.
Some version of the diversion software is used by some of the most popular music trading sites that have tried to fill the void left by the collapse of Napster, including Morpheus, Kazaa and LimeWire. The companies say their software has been downloaded by tens of millions of Web surfers.
Although estimates are hard to come by, those in the business say that the amount of money involved could be large. The affiliate market, in which smaller sites funnel sales to larger ones in return for commissions, accounts for roughly 15 to 20 percent of the estimated $72 billion online market, said Carrie Johnson, an analyst with Forrester Research. A successful affiliate Web site can make $60,000 a month from referrals alone, said Haiko De Poel Jr., chief executive of Abestweb, an online forum devoted to affiliate marketing. He has organized owners of sites to fight Morpheus and others.
A spokeswoman for Amazon, which has 800,000 affiliate sites feeding it customers, said the company worked to protect those sites from hijacking. "We don't allow sites that use a download or a tool to redirect a shopping session to their account if they do not initiate the shopping session," said the spokeswoman, Patty Smith. "We've kicked out a number of sites for doing that."
Last week, Amazon cut off affiliate payments to Morpheus, one site that employs the shopping software, said an online executive. Coldwater Creek, an online clothing store, has also blocked Morpheus.
Some companies that make and use the diversion software said they were rewriting the programs so that they would no longer take money intended for others. But these changes may not affect copies of the software already installed on millions of computers. "We're not interested in stealing any Web site's revenue," said Greg Bildson, chief operating officer for LimeWire. "We know that this is sort of a new and sort of strange area, but we're interested in doing the right thing." He referred calls to TopMoxie, the maker of the software that LimeWire uses to get affiliate money.
Patrick Toland, a vice president for sales and marketing at TopMoxie, said that the company did not intend for its software to displace other affiliates' rights and that his company had altered the software in the last two weeks to stop substituting its affiliate identification code for those of other sites. "The second we realized this is a problem, we turned that boat around and said, `Let's get this out,' " he said. He added that the amount of money involved was minuscule.
Mr. Toland attributed the losses that the Web sites claimed to a tougher marketplace for small players.
Morpheus referred inquiries to Wurld Media, which operates its shopping rebates program. Kirk H. Feathers, the chief technical officer of Wurld Media, said that it had been wrongly accused of stealing and that the company would readily go to court to defend itself.
He acknowledged that an earlier version of the company's software did divert commissions away from other affiliate sites but said that new versions dealt with that situation. Now, the company said, the softwareoffers a choice to the consumer before each purchase: whether to give the commission to the affiliate or to himself in the form of a rebate, with a portion of the rebate going to Morpheus. The software does not misrepresent the user's computer to sellers' sites, Mr. Feathers said.
Arguments that the diversions are somehow the fault of an unintentional flaw do not persuade Erik Petersen, the chief technical officer at an Internet security company, Polar Cove, in Providence, R.I. Mr. Petersen said that he had received complaints about TopMoxie and LimeWire from friends and took a closer look. After conducting a detailed analysis of the software, he concluded that the TopMoxie program was intricately designed to substitute its affiliate identification code for that of other sites as transactions were made. He said that the program remained on the computer even if the user removed the original LimeWire music sharing software. "I don't buy their explanation," he said. "What kind of accident is that?"
Mr. Petersen also pointed to a statement made in an online forum where the technology was discussed, in which a LimeWire developer characterized accusations that the software diverts money as "pretty accurate," but said, "While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users."
A chief executive of one software company was similarly unapologetic about the diversion of commissions. "We look at affiliates as competitors," said Avi Naider, the chief executive of WhenU.com, which makes the diversion software used by the music swapping services Kazaa and BearShare. The software, he said, provides services to users and money to each company "so it doesn't have to charge" for the currently free software and services.
The companies also argue that consumers give consent to the terms of the contract when they download the software, whether they read the agreement carefully or not. An expert in online consumer protection said the companies had a point. In the case of the LimeWire agreement, for example, "there does seem to be some indication to the user of what's going on," said David Medine, a Washington lawyer and former Federal Trade Commission official.
Mr. Medine said that he was, however, uncomfortable with the degree of disclosure. "The question is whether the quality of the notice is as good as it could be," he said. "They don't tell you that it's interfering with other business relationships."
Jeff Pullen, the president of Commission Junction, a company that helps link affiliates with Web sites, said that he was not inclined to cut off companies that divert commissions if the customer has agreed to the diversion. "The tactics that they use, maybe they're on the edge," he said. "Maybe, personally, I don't find them particularly attractive. But if they aren't illegal, it's hard for me to point to my public service agreement and say, `I have a reason to kick you off my network.' "
Still, other online merchants are taking action after being confronted by angry affiliates -- and they find that they are dealing with a moving target. TigerDirect, an online computer and electronics store, blocked Morpheus from its program earlier this year after discovering that the company was diverting online commissions. "I obviously thought it wasn't honorable," said Andy Rodriguez, the company's manager of affiliate marketing. "They said, `It's our right.' I said, `It's our right to remove you.' "
Morpheus changed its software, Mr. Rodriguez said, but a few weeks ago TigerDirect noticed that sales through Morpheus were "going through the roof" at the same time that many affiliates were complaining of a drop in commissions. So he blocked them again. "Guys at Morphus wanted a piece of the pie for each of our sales," he said. "I'm sorry. Absolutely not.
The diversion programs have made life difficult for affiliate marketers in the last year, said Steve Messer, chief executive of LinkShare, a company that runs a major affiliate network. But he sees a silver lining. "It's showed affiliate marketing has come of age," Mr. Messer said. "If you look at it, the volume of transactions passing through LinkShare's affiliate marketing got so big that when affiliates get upset, the largest merchants in the world react. If it's just a few dollars, nobody would've noticed."
LinkShare is working with other companies in their market to come up with industry standards to govern ethical practices in online advertising, Mr. Messer said. "For some people, WWW stands for the Wild, Wild West," he said. "Hopefully, that's coming to an end."
A Software Cleanup
Computer users who want to remove shopping software from their machines can do so in a few steps. Instructions for removing three of the most common programs:
BUYERSPORT - The shopping software with Morpheus:
Click the Start button.
Click on Find.
Click on Find Files or Folders.
Type in mbho.dll. Click on find now. When the file appears in the directory window, drag mbho.dll into the trash.
LIMESHOP - The software with LimeWire:
Click the Start button.
Click on Settings.
Click Control Panel.
Double-click Add/Remove Programs.
Click LimeShop.
Click Add/Remove.
SAVENOW - The software used by Kazaa:
Click on Start.
Click Settings.
Click on Control Panel.
Double-click on Add/Remove Programs.
Click SaveNow.
Click on Add/Remove
Does anyone know if this affects the OS X version of Limewire? Or is this just a Windows issue?
sudo eat my shorts
I run LimeWire straight from console in Linux (and Windows) using "java -jar LimeWire.jar", mainly cause I don't trust their installer to not install spyware. You can download this platform-independant .jar from their website using "LimeWireLinux.tgz" or "LimeWireWinNoVm.zip". Does this spyware exist in the .jar version, or only in the .EXE installer version? And if it is in the .jar file, does it function in Linux (I seriously doubt it)? If so, how?
What if you have installed Morpheus, and Kaaza? How does it decide which program gets to steal the comission?
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
I suppose if someone thinks it's OK to steal from "The Artists", then it's OK for the developers of the tool(s) to steal a little for themselves.
Has nobody heard of Gnucleus?
:)
http://www.gnucleus.com/
http://gnucleus.sourceforge.net/
And it's Not Evil.
Unlike many file sharing systems, Gnucleus is not run by a company. This project has been active for over a year and no one has made a dime of it. We do not want your money, we want your support in development and making this program something great. Few windows programs are open-source, this is one of the few, because of that it is impossible for us to ever charge you for this program or future versions. I make this program out of my need for a honest file sharing system.
We are all Gods unwanted children. Did you ever consider he may hate you too?
Stealing from kazaa using thiefs is not wrong, it's what they deserve !
New Software Quietly Diverts Sales Commissions
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and BOB TEDESCHI
ome popular online services are using a new kind of software to divert sales commissions that would otherwise be paid to small online merchants by big sites like Amazon and eToys.
Critics call the software parasite-ware and stealware. But the sites that use the software, which is made by nearly 20 companies and used by dozens, say that it is perfectly legal, because their users agree to the diversion.
The amounts involved are estimated by those in the industry to have mounted into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and are likely to continue to grow -- in part because most users are unaware that the software is operating on their computers.
Advertisement
There is no cost to the customer, but those who run small Web sites that funnel sales to the big merchants say that they are being hurt. "It's painful when someone walks in and takes sales right from under me," said Shawn Collins, who runs a number of sites that feed customers to Amazon and other merchants. "I probably saw a drop-off of 30 percent in income for the past six months."
The diversion begins when consumers get software from the Internet that helps them swap music or other files, or find bargains online. As they install the software, they are asked whether they would also like to show support for the software maker by shopping through an online affiliate program. These programs typically give a percentage of each purchase back to the affiliate -- in this case, the software maker -- as a commission.
What the consumers are not told clearly is that if they agree to participate, their computers may be electronically marked: all future purchases will look as if they were made through the software maker's site, even if they were not.
In many versions of the software, a purchase will look as if it was made through the software maker's site even if the shopper came in through another site that has its own affiliate agreement with the online store in question. Those affiliate sites include small businesses and even charities that use affiliate links as fund-raisers.
Some version of the diversion software is used by some of the most popular music trading sites that have tried to fill the void left by the collapse of Napster, including Morpheus, Kazaa and LimeWire. The companies say their software has been downloaded by tens of millions of Web surfers.
Although estimates are hard to come by, those in the business say that the amount of money involved could be large. The affiliate market, in which smaller sites funnel sales to larger ones in return for commissions, accounts for roughly 15 to 20 percent of the estimated $72 billion online market, said Carrie Johnson, an analyst with Forrester Research. A successful affiliate Web site can make $60,000 a month from referrals alone, said Haiko De Poel Jr., chief executive of Abestweb, an online forum devoted to affiliate marketing. He has organized owners of sites to fight Morpheus and others.
A spokeswoman for Amazon, which has 800,000 affiliate sites feeding it customers, said the company worked to protect those sites from hijacking. "We don't allow sites that use a download or a tool to redirect a shopping session to their account if they do not initiate the shopping session," said the spokeswoman, Patty Smith. "We've kicked out a number of sites for doing that."
Last week, Amazon cut off affiliate payments to Morpheus, one site that employs the shopping software, said an online executive. Coldwater Creek, an online clothing store, has also blocked Morpheus.
Some companies that make and use the diversion software said they were rewriting the programs so that they would no longer take money intended for others. But these changes may not affect copies of the software already installed on millions of computers. "We're not interested in stealing any Web site's revenue," said Greg Bildson, chief operating officer for LimeWire. "We know that this is sort of a new and sort of strange area, but we're interested in doing the right thing." He referred calls to TopMoxie, the maker of the software that LimeWire uses to get affiliate money.
Patrick Toland, a vice president for sales and marketing at TopMoxie, said that the company did not intend for its software to displace other affiliates' rights and that his company had altered the software in the last two weeks to stop substituting its affiliate identification code for those of other sites. "The second we realized this is a problem, we turned that boat around and said, `Let's get this out,' " he said. He added that the amount of money involved was minuscule.
Mr. Toland attributed the losses that the Web sites claimed to a tougher marketplace for small players.
Morpheus referred inquiries to Wurld Media, which operates its shopping rebates program. Kirk H. Feathers, the chief technical officer of Wurld Media, said that it had been wrongly accused of stealing and that the company would readily go to court to defend itself.
He acknowledged that an earlier version of the company's software did divert commissions away from other affiliate sites but said that new versions dealt with that situation. Now, the company said, the softwareoffers a choice to the consumer before each purchase: whether to give the commission to the affiliate or to himself in the form of a rebate, with a portion of the rebate going to Morpheus. The software does not misrepresent the user's computer to sellers' sites, Mr. Feathers said.
Arguments that the diversions are somehow the fault of an unintentional flaw do not persuade Erik Petersen, the chief technical officer at an Internet security company, Polar Cove, in Providence, R.I. Mr. Petersen said that he had received complaints about TopMoxie and LimeWire from friends and took a closer look. After conducting a detailed analysis of the software, he concluded that the TopMoxie program was intricately designed to substitute its affiliate identification code for that of other sites as transactions were made. He said that the program remained on the computer even if the user removed the original LimeWire music sharing software. "I don't buy their explanation," he said. "What kind of accident is that?"
Mr. Petersen also pointed to a statement made in an online forum where the technology was discussed, in which a LimeWire developer characterized accusations that the software diverts money as "pretty accurate," but said, "While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users."
A chief executive of one software company was similarly unapologetic about the diversion of commissions. "We look at affiliates as competitors," said Avi Naider, the chief executive of WhenU.com, which makes the diversion software used by the music swapping services Kazaa and BearShare. The software, he said, provides services to users and money to each company "so it doesn't have to charge" for the currently free software and services.
The companies also argue that consumers give consent to the terms of the contract when they download the software, whether they read the agreement carefully or not. An expert in online consumer protection said the companies had a point. In the case of the LimeWire agreement, for example, "there does seem to be some indication to the user of what's going on," said David Medine, a Washington lawyer and former Federal Trade Commission official.
Mr. Medine said that he was, however, uncomfortable with the degree of disclosure. "The question is whether the quality of the notice is as good as it could be," he said. "They don't tell you that it's interfering with other business relationships."
Jeff Pullen, the president of Commission Junction, a company that helps link affiliates with Web sites, said that he was not inclined to cut off companies that divert commissions if the customer has agreed to the diversion. "The tactics that they use, maybe they're on the edge," he said. "Maybe, personally, I don't find them particularly attractive. But if they aren't illegal, it's hard for me to point to my public service agreement and say, `I have a reason to kick you off my network.' "
Still, other online merchants are taking action after being confronted by angry affiliates -- and they find that they are dealing with a moving target. TigerDirect, an online computer and electronics store, blocked Morpheus from its program earlier this year after discovering that the company was diverting online commissions. "I obviously thought it wasn't honorable," said Andy Rodriguez, the company's manager of affiliate marketing. "They said, `It's our right.' I said, `It's our right to remove you.' "
Morpheus changed its software, Mr. Rodriguez said, but a few weeks ago TigerDirect noticed that sales through Morpheus were "going through the roof" at the same time that many affiliates were complaining of a drop in commissions. So he blocked them again. "Guys at Morphus wanted a piece of the pie for each of our sales," he said. "I'm sorry. Absolutely not.
The diversion programs have made life difficult for affiliate marketers in the last year, said Steve Messer, chief executive of LinkShare, a company that runs a major affiliate network. But he sees a silver lining. "It's showed affiliate marketing has come of age," Mr. Messer said. "If you look at it, the volume of transactions passing through LinkShare's affiliate marketing got so big that when affiliates get upset, the largest merchants in the world react. If it's just a few dollars, nobody would've noticed."
LinkShare is working with other companies in their market to come up with industry standards to govern ethical practices in online advertising, Mr. Messer said. "For some people, WWW stands for the Wild, Wild West," he said. "Hopefully, that's coming to an end."
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Oh well, more c0ff33.
Carousel is a lie!
I suspect that merchants will choose not to work with folks who don't at least take this step. Even if the software publishers do the right thing, this model may work for some merchants and not work for others - In the end the merchants have the power to decide whether to work with these guys because they're writing the checks.
Please mod this clown down. He's making fun of us!
Amazon write there affiliate program code so that you can't frig it; It's a piece of piss to do:
each affiliate has a key that they encrypt there product numbers, a hash and a few other standard authentication bits and bobs.
When you buy a product from an affiliate Amazon looks up the affiliate's ID in a database, un-encrypts the product ID and checks the hash.
The problem isn't that there's 'spy ware' spoofing Amazon, more like Amazon's shopping site has piss poor security.
Anyone fancy posting to Bug traq on spoofing affiliation with Amazon?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I pay for every application i can in linux just to support them all. I would be very dissapointed if this scam exists in Limewire PRO wich i pay for and therefore shall not contain any advertising related software. Thats what i pay for.
Any Linux LimeWire developer who can answer my question?
HTTP/1.1 400
Am I the only one a little uncomfortable with how readily people sugest using Kazaa Lite? Whilst I'm not going to attempt to defend Kazaa or the numerous little bits of crapware that keep on being found in it - if you don't like Kazaa then just don't use it. It's not as if there're no alternatives.
It's nice when people release free software but we can't expect all software to be free. Kazaa lite is theft, pure and simple - we like your product, we like the network you've grown on it - but we don't want you to receive a penny for it.
Basically I feel it's a little hypocritical to complain about kazaa stealing referrals and then recommending you steal kazaa's ad revenue in the same post.
I get how if you shop through the software and buy through their program how the reffering benefits go to the P2P company, and that's reasonable enough for me, but how does it change refferer status on other orders? If I go to a small vendor's site, fill out and online orderform and click buy, how does the P2P program change the refferer tag in the online form, unless that's a form defined by the user? Or am I misssing something here?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
It may not be illegal, but it's undoubtedly immoral, and I think we should be emailing Amazon asking them to terminate their affiliate accounts. I know I will.
Seeing as how these programs are making me an accessory to what is essentially a crime, I doubt I seriously gave them permission under their licenses. They are stealing legit income from someone else. So they want their salaries paid. boo hoo. Why not find some legitimate work then? Limewire's popularity baffles me. Frankly, I attribute it to the lack of good gnutella clients on many platforms. For example, on OS X it was the only alternative pretty much until Acquisition matured into a fine program (which it really is and promises to get better).
Look at my karma - I'm bad, just like Michael Jackson!
If this affects sites like Amazon.com, I'm sure that Amazon could sue they hell out of them. Sure, they've barely turned a profit, but they've got to have some awesome lawyers.
Why don't Amazon just shut them down?
-Vic
You have shown, that it is easy to remove the money redirection software TODAY but in the next release, it might be more difficult. But even if it will always be that easy, do you really want to endorse companies who install stuff like this on your computer?
I miss the Karma Whores.
Digital logic is just Boolean Algebra with pictures. All the design work is mostly mathematical anyway.
This is simply a ridiculous use of an EULA. Software makers have gotten it into their heads that they can put any clause, with no restrictions based on sense or law, into a EULA and have it be valid or binding. While EULAs may have some binding power, this should be carefully bounded.
The next thing you know, you'll click 'yes' on a EULA and give the software maker permission to rape, murder, and cause general mayhem. And because it was in an EULA, it's binding! It's legal!
What a heap of bullshit this is turning into!
Not only does sLimeshop stick referrer ID's in URLs, it intercepts URLs from similar vendors. For example, typing in www.officedepot.com will redirect you to www.officemax.com/referrer=slimeshop.
I believe our friend WC Fields once said, "you can't cheat an honest man".
You can't get something for nothing. And the authors of the software that allows one to steal are getting paid, even if you didn't intend the kickback to go to them.
Honestly, if you have a problem with it, then go out and buy what you're downloading. Or write a check to the place that you wanted the money to go to initially.
...Well, you gotta to admit that if you're GOING to steal, that's the way to do it. Don't you have to admire the brazen, arrogant presumption of it? No question about it, this IS theft.
The only things I can think of to compare with it are
a) the apocryphal? urban legend? tales of programs that round all financial transactions to the lower penny instead of the nearest penny and divert all the fractional cents to the thief's account;
b) The $95 fee which some Massachusetts banks introduced about five years ago. The bank charges the fee for the "service" of terminating an inactive account and turning the money in it over to the Commonwealth. The person most concerned is whoever abandoned the account, who is probably either dead with no relatives or has Alzheimer's, and either way isn't going to complain.
Can anyone else think of anything comparable?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I wonder how long this has been going on. Both companies would probably have made a 'killing' when the September 11th fund was on Amazon.com if this bit of theftware was included at the time.
Makes one wonder.
Are the people ripping off recording artists upset because the software that's helping them do it is ripping them off now? Stupid nerds. "Wah, wah, I want it for free!"
I have a hard time believing that some bloke at the NYT would hear about a new form of rogue code before the story would break in the tech community.
Can anybody actually confirm first hand that this story is even true? The NYT story has no technical details, so as far as I know this is unverifiable. This is a good example of useless crap journalism, because even if it is true, the story doesn't really help you get rid of the software.
Hmmm... I wonder if Amazon would be willing to say how many CDs Kazaa users have bought? That might just prove (note that I said "might") prove that those filthy dirty music pirates are actually *gasp* big customers. Could be interesting.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Hello,
Does anyone know if LimeWire Pro includes spyware? I am hoping the spyware is just in the "free" version.
If LimeWire Pro does have spyware I will have to quite using this program which btw really pisses me off.
Someone please type up a page describing how to remove the spyware leftover after these programs are unistalled.
Thank You!
Yertman
Thanks Much
That was Gator's business model over a year ago. Except they literally replaced ads on web pages that the user went to. Fortunately, the court system has consistently blocked them
I was using Kazaa Lite and upgraded to the 1.7 version that they just told me was available. After doing that my firewall went nuts trying to accept connections to machines that were odd to say the least to me. They weren't even connecting on the kazaa port anymore. Piece of crap software anyway. What makes people think that this is okay to do anyway?
Limewire is an open-source product. Any reason not to download their CVS tree, remove the code we don't like, recompile and carry on? Hell, we could move it to a SourceForge project!
I am disappointed - I had a high opinion of Limewire, though why I'm not sure. At least with the source code, a KazaaLite stle product can be released shortly. I may have to take a look at that this afternoon - anyone else interested? :)
cheers,
Andrew
The hypocrisy of people complaining that P2P companies are stealing from affiliates (allowing them to steal from artists) or the fact that no one seemed to notice they were a hypocrite.
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
May not be much use for the non windows boys but for windows crowd, no spyware fast and reliable.
I'd also recommend using AdAware, a great little program that scans your registry, memory, and hard drives for spy/scum/adware components and gives you the option to delete them.
I used my brother's computer the other day to show him how to crossfade tracks in Nero. Anyway I went to search something at Google and upon hitting search button was redirected to some shady search engine site for my results. The best part is that it lists the same shady porn/hacker links no matter what you search for (albeit in different order each time). So I tried Yahoo Excite and other sites, same hijacking. "That's it I'm downloading AdAware to fix this!" I go to www.lavasoft.com and wouldn't you know the bastardware re-directed me to the same friggin search engine site.
OK, now I go into Control Panel and removed at least 10 apps that I never heard of (suprised that they even show up in there) each time confronted with scary/threatening warnings about how removing this software will damage my computer or break my software etc. I installed Ad-Aware, Kazaa-lite and cleaned it up.
I assume these bastard-apps came bundled with the plethora of naked girl screensavers, dancing strippers etc. he installed. (He's 14 what do you expect)
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
I've carefully read the EULA, but I do not find any explicit permission given to KAZAA to "2.4 Forge headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any data transmitted to other users". On the contrary, the user is explicitly forbidden from doing so.
~velco
IANAL but... The EULA claim is irrelevant. Even if the EULA were enforceable - which it obviously is not no contract between scumcorp and the user can affect the rights of the afilliate and Amazon.
The EULA is invalid for so many reasons it isn't funny. First no contract can in any case give a license to perform an illegal act. Second no EULA entered into through a clickwrap agreement has ever been enforced for a term remotely close to this.
But the EULA is in any case irrelevant because it is clear that Kazza is no more legit than Naster was.
Of course crooks of this type tend to be litigious and there is every chance they will bring nuisance lawsuits to try to silence their critics. I don't think it will work in this case since even the RIAA can probably see that it is in their interests to make sure that any scum lawsuits are fought.
I have argued on many occasions that the way to kill theftware is to go after their money supply. In particular make any company whose roduct is bundled with theftware liable for damages to the RIAA.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Come on, who REALLY reads a EULA? It's just the annoying thing you need to click "OK" on or the software quits the install program. Nobody takes that shit seriously. What we do take seriously is when viruses and trojans get installed on our computer all hiding behind some legalistic bullshit. If you put in your EULA that you can come to my house and kill my children and I passively click "OK" without reading it it's still illegal to come to my house and kill my children! There are still laws that have to be followed that override a EULA.
1. Create P2P Application. 2. Steal money from charities. 3. ??? 4. Profit!!!
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
I would think that all merchants would want to ban this activity from their affiliate programs. It's not like these companies are promoting the merchants in any way. They're just trying to get a cut on thousands of transactions that were going to happen without them. The whole point in an affiliate program is that the affiliate sends someone to a merchant to buy something. If the affiliate didn't even do that much than why on earth would a merchant agree to give the affiliate a cut of the sale?
OH MY GOD! Stealing commissions from Amazon is wrong! Call the police!
OH MY GOD! You are so wrong! Stealing music is fine! Damn the RIAA!
KEPTIN! Hypocracy levels reaching critical! Ve cannot take much more!
1. Create P2P Application.
2. Steal money from charities.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
Does this effect Linux, Java-jar, or mac osX versions? If so Does anyone know how to remove it or at least detect it?
by the way, how does this work anyhow?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
There is no honor among thieves...
:)
and bonus points to anyone who pictures the artwork with that caption from the old D&D books (Dungeon Master's Guide?) when they hear that phrase
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Morpheus uses the open source Gnutella client Gnucleus.
Earnings: $0
Costs: $0
Net Gain/Loss: $0
Morpheus installs spyware.
Earnings: a lot
Costs: $0
Net Gain: a lot
Morpheus installs stealware.
Earnings: even more
Costs: $0
Net Gain: way too much for a company that hasn't done anything worth a damn.
12 Indemnification
12.1 you agree to indemnify, hold harmless and defend sharman, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, co-branders or other partners, and employees, at your expense, against any and all third party claims or demands, actions, proceedings and suits and all related liabilities, damages, settlements, penalties, fines costs and expenses (including, without limitation, reasonable attorney's fees and other dispute resolution expenses) incurred by sharman, due to or arising out of data you submit, post to, transmit or communicate through the software, your use or misuse of the software, your connection to other users, your violation of the license, or your violation of any rights of another.
1. Develop p2p software.
2. Steal from charities
3. Profit!!!
I used to be somebody... until I gave the account away...
The whole principle of p2p is peer to peer file sharing. Nowhere, in all of the great cosmos, does it say that 'thou shalt use peer to peer to steal music'.
That, my friend, is the choice of the users. Sadly, these dolts will continue until the current generation of p2p programs are outlawed, possibly at the cost of taking down everything that's peer to peer.
Scams such as this could bring about the end of the click-through license. I think it has been well demonstrated recently that people do not read them.
These companies are going to have their asses handed to them if they think "the user gave us permission to steal these commissions" will stand up in court.
you may not: [..] read, intercept, record, redirect, interpret, or fill in the contents of any electronic form or other materials submitted to us by any person or entity;
This should be enough to boot any account from amazon that has transactions coming from altering affiliate links. I'm starting to wonder how much my site 'lost' due to things like this.
The Virtual Bookcase: book reviews
OK, we're going to get 150+ comments saying "I use gnucleus/gnutella/whatever and I works just fine. Why would anyone use kazaa ?"
Answers : because Kazaa doesn't suck. Because kazaa a a critical mass of users. Because Kazaa scales well. And with kazaa lite, I don't even get spyware.
Gnutella is slow, has nothing to offer, has worse file fingerprinting, doesn't scale well. I tried it, dozens of times. Everytime my friends touted "and it's so great". Everytime I stopped after 5 minutes and deleted it. Gnutella sucks. Try kazaa (lite of course) and you will not look back.
I plan on writing a letter to my State Attorney General encouraging him to pursue criminal fraud charges against Kazaa's parent company. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
I'm a little surprised that the browsers even make it possible for a security hole like this to exist.
heck suppose the EULA said, after a 1 week trial period we will begin charging your credit card 9$/week. just as soon as our stealware program sees you enter the number for some purchase. Your tough luck if you dont read EULAs, chump
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The dumbest thing about this is that if they really had been upfront about it to people, many probably would have agreed to send their Amazon referrals to KaZaa (or as my dad calls it, "Kaboozoo"), Morpheus, etc.
The key is being honest and ethical with your users and that's the difference between software and SleazeWare. Burying it in the EULA is almost as bad as not telling the user at all.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Sadly, that's actually a highly accurate description of the way buisnesspeople and politicians speak :P
Does this affect kazaalite? I got rid of imesh cause I did not like all the ad's and spyware. I thought I was getting a better solution with k-lite, but who knows now?
Thanks,
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
This is a slightly altered version of Robin Hood ...
You have the poor using the poorest to steal from the rich
... the only difference is that everyone likes Robin Hood (before Kevin Costner, of course)
(the software company using the music theives to steal from the rich Amazon.com)
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
The DOJ has a web site dealing with Internet fraud here: http://www.ifccfbi.gov/. There, you can find a link to a page with instructions on how to report this. I suggest EVERYONE follows these instructions. If enough people do that, the DOJ will notice and take action.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
As others have insightfully pointed out, these antics are exactly the things that will relegate P2P to black market trading.
To prevent this from happening, let's take action:
If you have (had, hopefully by now) one of the offending programs installed and have made an affiliate purchase that you believe to have been diverted, notify the merchant who should have received the commission. Send them the Amazon (or other) order number and sale amount, or as best an estimate as you can make.
The burden of proof the government would have to establish in a criminal case would be much higher than that needed in a civil suit. Let's use the legal system to our advantage and encourage defrauded affiliates to take action against the petty thieves. This is just another example of someone thinking that a Superman-esque scheme of stealing fractions of pennies doesn't hurt anyone and no one will notice (see also Office Space).
Go Kazaa!!!
Well, not really... but I see it as a win/win situation. Kazaa gets trampled for fraud, or EULAs get shown as worthless pieces of paper.
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
An AC saying it's windows only with no documentation doesn't exactly satisfy me... I tried it out a few weeks back and didn't see any evidence of abuse, but then I wasn't looking for it, silly me I thought Limewire were the good guys. Grrr. I like Mldonkey a lot better anyway, but now I'm wondering if I may have gotten some bugs piggybacked on the Limewire client that I'm not even using. If anyone knows what to look for it would be appreciated...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
There you go again, thinking it's your computer. You may have laid out the cash to buy the hardware, paid the electric bill to run it, and paid someone to maintain it, but once you turned the processor over to someone elses software, your priorities took a second place to theirs.
Who's writing the software you use? What's their motivation for doing so? And how do you know you can really trust them?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
LimeWire Pro contains no ads or bundled software. All non-Windows versions (free or pro) contain no bundled software. So, there's no software bundled with any Linux version of LimeWire.
Adam Fisk
LimeWire LLC
Adam Fisk
even if these companies are responsible whose to stop someone from hacking their own version and distributing this trojan horse.
I guess in principle its no worse than any tojan horse is. But I was gullible enough to believe my browsers maintained a veil of security against this kind of intrusion
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's a pity it doesn't work on Mac.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Does this mean that Kazaa Lite will let me redirect the donations to myself? :)
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
www.winmx.com
It's a much better client than morpheus/kazaa, its network size has passed the threshold to be useful.
Isn't this just old-fashioned stealing? You are LITERALLY trying to give money to a charity via your purchase, and they steal it. This is a direct criminal act, not some vague "internet ethics" thing.
In other news, terrorism is bad.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I'm not surprised. People basically think its okay to steal if the company deserves it or if prices are too high or any other reason they can use to justify it.
Now that it has become the norm to steal from the RIAA and movie industry why not move into other areas?
Its evolution.
I've gotten quite a workout on my legs from running up and down the stairs getting to each computer in a 7 story building, though.
But seriously - I've gone so far as to do a free-pizza-if-you-come-here-and-listen-to-me presentation on how KaZaa is bad, and I'll still see KaZaa on every desktop I touch (except mine, of course).
I have been noticing for a while now that many corporate entities seem to think that their own private rules somehow take precedence over the general laws of the localities in which they operate. A quick example. My old ISP kept sending me a bill in the mail for a yearly subscription to their services that I had not used in months and had decided not to renew. I finally called up and asked them why they kept sending me a bill. Their reply was that THEIR POLICY was to renew subscriptions automatically (fortunately, they didn't have my credit card number or I would have had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get out from under them). To which I calmly replied that it was MY POLICY not to expect to be billed for items and services that I hadn't requested. The above mentioned attitude of the writers of user agreements that they can specify any old nonsense they want is just a special case of the general tendency of modern companies and institutions to try to write their own rules in complete disregard for the laws of the land. This goes for the ubiquitous rent-a-cops who parade around with guns pretending to be law enforcement officers.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Very interesting thought indeed... This Stealware could be used against the RIAA! Think of it, if Kazza, etc. is one of the highest on the list of affiliates, doesn't that mean that more people purchase CDs after using something like it?
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
For perhaps the most promising one in terms of fast file sharing, see OpenFT, by the giFT folks. Alternatively, if you're interested in a p2p network that protects your anonymity, privacy, &c. then Freenet is likely to be just the thing -- but it's not well-suited to file sharing (yet); indeed, sharing large media files isn't even really a part of its charter.
If you're running OS X, you can get the Ultrapeer/swarm-downloading goodness of LimeWire without that bitter SpyWare aftertaste. Have a look at Acquisiton. It uses the LimeWire core with a Cocoa front-end. While still very early, using Acquisition after using LimeWire is like... using OS X after Xp (oooh! Bad troll! how'd you get in here?!?)
I don't know the guy who writes it or anything, but he's a fellow Canadian so I feel the need to plug.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
One shouldn't be too surprised, as the culture of thievery probably permiates deep into these companies as it does their users. Fraud is fraud, and a large fine should be brought in response to this initiation of force.
This junk does'nt exsist on the linux versions, does it?
I'm not sure why this is even news- it seems to be little more than the next logical step within the whole get something for nothing mentality.
Very interesting. So, now the question is how much legal exposure they might have to Amazon. In one sense not too much since Amazon has no direct losses since items were still bought from them. On the other hand the loss of public and affiliate goodwill could represent a significant loss, arguably millions depending on how much revenue the affiliate program generates in the first place.
I'm not sure whether there is a cause of action against Kazaa directly by affiliates but you might have one against Amazon if they allowed this sort of bahavior to continue. Of course Kazaa is probably essentially broke. There's no better way to be judgement proof!
P2P file sharing programs really ARE being used to commit theft.
Anyone know which dll's or files I should delete so my commissions going to the right place? This is, of course, assuming I *cough* installed kazaa in the first place...
What do you expect. They feel like their userbase are all criminals so they don't care about abusing them.
Not much different of an attitude from the RIAA.
How does that old song go: "Stealing from a thief"
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Well, you could use Plex86.
it certainly sounds very illegal, and it doesnt matter that you agreed on the EULA, the contract itself is illegal.
but has anyone tried to verify that this is really happening?
a shame if its true, since now RIAA will have a bigger club to wield against P2P systems (which should not be and is not illegal)
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
This site has some info and javascript code to detect spyware and warn users browsing your website that they have spyware on their systems. This might help if you are trying to get affiliate links from your site.
How is this redundant? I don't see it in this story anywhere... It is a fscking joke!!! Go hit the crack pipe again, maybe you'll be in a better mood.
Pretty much.
Phase 1 -- Deny everything until hard evidence shows up.
Phase 2 -- Admit it, but then insist that the hurt to your reputation is enough punishment already; that it's not worth dwelling on; and can't we all just move on please.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Hmm. I hope someone takes them to court and gets them to stop stealing and stuff. The programmer openly admitted that this is a scam.
Oh wait, but he said they have to pay their salaries somehow. Remember the old 90s dot-com business model:
1. Register domain name
2. Make a cool website
3. [Do something here]
4. Make a profit!
We finally figured out what the missing piece was:
1. Register domain name
2. Make a cool website
3. Steal money from users
4. Make a profit!
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
We must inform you that you, sir/madam, are a faggot wanker.
It's not the tool that does the deed, it's the user. Don't blame the tool, that's just stupid.
Home Page
After all the bad propaganda that commercial peer to peer software has gotten, I've learned to never trust it. Anti-spyware software is not enough, you never know what will they come up with next, that is why I run Kazaa on a safe sandbox. I have a vmware session with win98 whose only purpose is to run Kazaa or other programs that might be suspicious. That way I can take advantage of the service provided, while being sure that my main OS is clean (or at least cleaner).
What really gets me is their claim that this diversion of cash doesn't hurt the customer. Sure, it doesn't cost the customer any more money, but most of the sites that have funds diverted away from them are small, special-interest sites that provide their content for free, and use that income to pay for their bandwidth. If that money dissappears, then the sites dissappear as well, and voila, the customer is now hurt. I certainly don't want *my* favorite sites dissappearing just because some amoral jackass decided he needs the money more than they do.
Could someone point me to the clauses in which I've supposedly granted permission for this abuse?
Maybe the words are in there; my eyes keep glazing over...
At what point in the transaction process does this program get hold of my credit card number when I'm buying something from Amazon.com? Does it intercept the actual ssl transmission or something? Will it only work with IE or will it affect all other browsers too?
Anybody any ideas?
I disagree.
They should be liable for damages to the Affiliates - they are the ones getting shafted.
Plus, I'd hate to support the RIAA in any way.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
Let's analyze the incentives and tricks of one fictitious company named "Imazon". Imazon runs an affiliate program. "Morfeces", a spyware company, steals the affiliate links from end users.
Net effect to Imazon? ZERO. The only thing that's changed is the credit has been shifted away from the thousands of honest folks to the crooked Morfeces.
What does Imazon do? Pretend they know nothing about it and continues to let Morfeces run their scheme.
A few months later Morfeces starts noticing that the affiliate checks still haven't arrived yet so they contact Imazon. Imazon finally comes around and tells Morfeces that their affiliate account has been terminated due to illegitimate theft of other people's credits.
Imazon pockets and saves themselves the tens of thousands of affiliate payouts. Their sales didn't suffer, but Morfeces and the other merchants sure did.
Imazon laughs and giggles further because they realized that the hijack code is still on the hundreds of thousands of end user computers.
Computer Guy - "Boss, it looks like we'll be saving ourselves for months, if not years to come! All thanks to Morfeces!"
Boss - "Gib him a raise w00t w00t!"
eTrade SUCKS
If they were smart, they could blow this predicament out of proportion with an ad campaign that warns that P2P software spys on your every move and can fuck your normal computer operations.
Kinda like the "drug money supports terrorism" ads...
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
Nice!
The idiot Kirk did create my favorite juxatposition of quotes: So now he is threatening to sue people who quote him? He is a complete ass.
The stupidest thing out of all of this. The merchants who go with them see an increase in affiliate sales - sure, because they are paying affiliate comissions now even if someone just typed the site name into the browser! These companies do not drive traffic or promote the companies, they leave that to webmasters, they just step in at the last minute and grab the sale. In the long run this seriously impacts merchants and causes them to see a lower return on their affiliate programs, and then as affiliates leave since their commissions are being taken, the merchant is left with nothing.
The ad networks love this because they are paid a % on each comission. So what do they care? Comission Junction has gone from trusted third party, to scam that will do anything not illegal. I guess the idea of being ethical is beyond them? Phww.. Surprise, they are an idealab company.
Chet
Does it actually work? They only give a download link tho their CVS tree, and claim it may not even build.
But will you admit to putting spyware into your free versions of Windows Limewire?
Amazon et al should simply split the commisions Kazaa etc have 'earned' between their real referers. The money should be split as a proportion of what each proper referer has already earn. (I know Kazaa does refer people directly too but...)
... WinXP ;-P ) to do anything except download stuff, certainly don't trust it with your credit cards or any financial transactions.
Still it would be very interesting to see how much kazaa(etc) users buy online, and its an entertaining PR problem does Kazaa state how much its users buy online and admit the scale of its dubious gains or does it downplay its gains and imply no-one who uses Kazaa buys from Amazon?
The moral is don't trust a computer with dodgy software (spyware, warez,
The fact that this is even in the software tells you where kazaa Executives heads are at. This is something that;
1. Likely came out of a brainstorming meeting.
2. People agreed was a good idea.
3. Programmers coded and tested it.
4. Kazaa as a whole looked at it and said, "its a go, launch it."
Obviously they spend considerable time thinking up these schemes. Considering the Kazaa environment is defined, this is likely what their software 'engineers' spend their time working on.
Why does everyone always scream when this stuff happens? The EULA give them permission to make your computer their bitch. The solution is to read the EULAs and be aware of what they say, OR don't agree to them. Buyer beware.
For the record, no contract, no matter how legitimate it's means of delivery cannot consent a party to commit an act that is legal. Doing so renders the contract (or at least that clause depending on how the contract is worded) illegitimate. If that wasn't the case, they could add clauses in there to claim your first born male child in exchange for their service.
It impresses me though when I think about this. The P2P companies are now actually more obnxious than the MPAA/RIAA. I mean WOW, the RIMPAA is a giant bunch of whores, but at least they aren't actively trying to defraud charities.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
In a larger sense though, this points up some difficulties with the current way that shrink wrap, click through licensing, EULA's, "terms of use" and the like work.
Users agree to things that they may not understand (if it is couched in sufficiently baroque legalese), or to things that they may never even see. And the fact that sleazoids like these folks can hide behind an EULA is truly despicable and points up the fact that as long as companies are making enough money, they can pretty much do what they want.
I've seen such licences and the like exceed 1000 lines in length and recently saw one in both English and French - the French was essentially a translation of the English (at least for the first few lines). It seems quite possible that it was different and that the differences would commit a user to something fun.
Recently I have found a good one. Go to the abc tv web site and locate the "terms of use" link. (in most browsers is it even visible when you load the page?), then click through to the terms of use page . Interesting reading.
Firstly, not that most people will not even see the link to the terms of use page as it is probably below the bottom of browser windows. It is for me with Mozilla in full screen mode (yech).
Formatted for a 70 character line, this is about 500 lines long and just by visiting the first site, you are agreeing (legally? I think UCITA says yes) to all the terms.
To begin with, you're agreeing to a nicely sweeping claim:
In particular the seriously unethical ( like Kazaa et al) might bind you to whatever changes in their licenses they might want to make forever. Even if you don't know about them.For a good chortle, search for "universe".
Most license agreements have something like this in them. IANAL so I can't even claim to understand the full ramifications of this, so how might a 13 year old who visits the site? Is a 13 year old legally capable of participating in a contract?
If Kazaa and the like have similar claims in their EULAs, it might mean that even if you are peeved and try to take action against them, you are still responsible for paying for their defense in the legal doodly-doo that ensues. I've seen at least one EULA that seems to say that the user is responsible for any legal action taken against the company. If that is the case, and if M$ had such a clause in their EULA, then they could conceivably make monetary claims against any users of their software in order to pay for the antitrust suit.
For amusement value, as well as insight into the way the US congresscritters are selling their souls to the devil of profit, reading EULA's and the like is highly recommended.
I just ordered a bunch of stuff as a gift from amazon yesterday - it wasn't on commission, but boy am I annoyed.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I remember seeing some PBS special about the G. Dead and how Jerry Garcia came from the Blue Grass tradition where at live shows they would have these open patch bays where you could plug in a recorder and tape the whole show.
The greatful dead brought that out to a bigger scale and helped make tape trading "What it is today."
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This doesn't affect me after all: I forgot that since I use Kazaa to get rare live tracks, I am a pinko thug bastard who steals everything I want. I don't shop online.
*This page intentionally left pointless*
Open source, fun, and a damn nice guy runs it.
Guncleus.
In a network not far away from here some vendors needed money in lack of a busines model. They had no idea how to make money with file sharing, so they thought, hey let's bundle spyware tools to my installer and name them "Addins". That sounds cool, the newbies will love it and I get some good bucks $$$ from the Spyware industry. Said and done. Everyone should be happy... they thought.
a did=5534#post18559
Read more... http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showthread.php?thre
This was already known about Morpheus in March. See This old story
they already are in hot water in the courts. it seems like they are gonna fuck themselves with the consumer also. lets guarantee p2p sharing fails. Geesh.
So, you agree to an ELU that basically says: Whenyou buy from an affiliate, we will be the one who receives the affiliate cash.
How can this even be legal? A lot of people are spouting 'semi-legal', moral ethics, P2P is illegal in itself so the EULA is too... but, have you considered what the EULA says?
This is equivalent to the following:
"By signing this contract, you allow me to steal from your neighboor."
So, if this is even remotely legal, wow, that's great, please, I just need one person to sign this contract declaring that all money transfers around the world should now be forwarded to me from now on. Anyone? I just need one signature...
-Karhgath
I like how he cites that they need to pay their salaries. What about the legitimate websites that depend on their affiliate commisions? Are their salaries not as important as yours?
The power is in the code. The future of computer usage and the flow of information will be determined not by rules and regulations imposed by governments without the right or ability to enforce them, but by the people who write the code. The unknowing user is completely at the mercy of the skilled programmer.
This type of software is just one example of that. There is a war going on right now, a war between the knowledgable users and the commercial programmers. Kazaa vs. Kazaa Lite is a perfect example of this.
"Now, most people, common people, really... can barely manage to control their own self-centered, myopic existence. They command armies of lawyers, armed with paper weapons, attackingwith spiteful, vengeful... cowardly litigation. Others... operate within elephantine bureaucracies. And then, Captain...
There are extraordinary men... those who must identify... comprehend, and ultimately shoulder the responsibility for not only their own existence, but their country's, and the world's as well." The X-Files, Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man
Instead of ripping out KaZaA, only to have them reinstall it (or a similar app) later, just install KaZaA Lite. All the taste, but less the craptastic filling of your friendly neighborhood spyware p2p.
Kazaa runs fine within wine with its own user. If it still messes with me, the fresh installation is untarred in just a few seconds.
It's totally illegal. What the EULA actually says is :
"By signing this contract you allow us to steal from your neighbor."
This is the same thing, period.
First, it asks the permission to someone not related to the contract's target, which is illegal. (You cannot have a contract that says: By signing this, you agree that your friend X owes us XX bucks.)
Second, stealing is illegal.
So, it doubly illegal!
This is just sick.
Here is what we know:
- These companies are stealing money.
- But not your money.
- They do this with your knowledge. Not just the EULA, but you read about it here.
- You install this program anyway because you don't really care...hell, you want to steal music.
Count the amount of times you agree or disagree for the following statements:
1) Better then spyware.
2) "hell, everyone steals money, thats what money is for. Take a peek at CNN for cry'sake"
3) Not my money, not my problem.
4) "I hate Amazon anyway"
5) "I don't have any money, why do you think I'm installing this piece of sheet software"
6) As long as they tell me everything I consider it legal. It's MY CHOICE!
- 6 Agree
You are probably 12-16 years old and stumbled onto slashdot by accident.
- 4-5 Agree
Surprised you read this far, might as well moderate this up as 'funny'. Now go find that link to LimeWire.
- 3 Agree 3 Disagree
Let's wait and see what the other people think, hell this is probably just going to happend anyway so might as well read through the silly comments.
- 4-5 Disagree
I'm about to post some insightfull comments about why this is yet another 'end-to-the-internet-as-we-know-it'. Sigh, why don't people think before they code.
- 6 Disagree
Stop reading this, start writing that letter to your congressman!
Since Morpheus got busted doin this back in march(03/19/02 Slashdot article), I'm kind of surprised that Kazaa didn't get on the bandwagon sooner. Anybody know how long Kazaa has been doing this?
does that crap affect the linux one too? i mean i haven't _seen_ anything like that, and it's tough to run spyware when a ps -e could tell me exactly who's doing what, but is this garbage just IE specific?
best college pickem site ever: pickem.terrbear.org
never like this. I dont remember any of this spyware crap in napster or them doing anything like this.. Does anyone else?
Personal thought: I guess nothing is like the orignial....
-br0ken
This post was generated by a Team of Elite Monkeys for br0ken2o0o (569914).
Why doesn't Norton Antivirus do this to credit Symantec? Can Micro$oft do this if I buy products using their operating system? Hmmmm....
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
But how can you be so upset about these companies/pieces of software which lives on stealing all of a sudden starts to steal themselves? You feel it is ok to download copyrighted material, but wrong to fool the amazon servers to get credit instead.
Newsflash, both are illegal and wrong. Don't use software that is made for the purpose of doing something illegal and you are safe.
'While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users.'
Well fuck! Why not just rob banks? I mean, people's savings are insured up to $100,000 by FDIC and in most cases up to millions from secondary private insurance. No harm done!
Or perhaps insider trading is the answer. Just scan people's hard drives for sensitive financial information and use that on the stock market. Doesn't hurt a soul!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Since the story on ESRI was rejected, I am asking all Linux scientists who use GIS systems to follow this link to take a survey in support of Linux development.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10045910.html
Free and will remove said offending insiduous files.
> That might just prove (note that I said "might")
> prove that those filthy dirty music pirates are
> actually *gasp* big customers.
HUH?
If I were to install Kazaa and never use it -- or use it for a while and stop -- and I later bought some CDs that should have been credited to a charity, this scam would make it look like I am "a Kazaa user who actually buys CDs". Heck, even if I do use their software Kazaa would get credit for CDs that my wife and kids buy, using our family computer.
Maybe that was a side-benefit of this deception that Kazaa planned. Make it look like Kazaa is a larger source of income for the music industry than it actually is. Attribute CD sales to a company that encourages music theft, and maybe people will start thinking "those filthy dirty music pirates are actually *gasp* big customers."
I know you said "might" but I really don't think so...
"7.4 Your correspondence or business dealings with, or participation in promotions of, advertisers found on or through the Kazaa web site or Kazaa Media Desktop, including payment and delivery of related goods or services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties or representations associated with such dealings, are solely between you and such advertiser."
From my understanding, they are going against what they say on the EULA...
100% Insightful
You can't legitimize illegal actions by putting language in a EULA. If it's illegal, it stays illegal.
How about someone suing these guys? Eight hundred thousand Amazon associates ought to make for some nice class action litigation.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The MP3 that I don't buy is free advertising for them - when they come to my town - I go to the show that I would not have gone to had I not listened to the MP3.
Money is made - Capitalism is safe...
Well, since some computer users don't bother to read through your pages and pages of technical jargon, I propose, KaZaA, Morpheus, etc. that you abuse nave users to the fullest extent. Dig: EULA You hereby agree... (3 pages of yadda yadda)......to the following: 1a. If you are male: The entire development team may utilize the resources of your girlfriend at any time. (read. sex) 1b. If you are female: The entire development team may utilize the resources of you and/or a girlfriend at any time.(read. sex) 2. We may acquire your residence for our yearly "Fuck the Consumer" bash. Clothing optional (esp. if you fall under section 1b) 3. You hereby agree that we are above the law. In that voice that Sly Stallone uses in "Demolition Man." Feel free to add your own!
So by hiding it in a EULA that no one reads in a way no one would understand, they have violated a user agreement they prolly didn't read either...
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
> if Kazza, etc. is one of the highest
> on the list of affiliates, doesn't
> that mean that more people purchase
> CDs after using something like it?
All other things being equal, if Kazaa (et al) had not done all of this, assuming that their customers really do purchase CDs (which I will happily concede) then their numbers would have placed them somewhere on the list of affiliates. A numerically meaningful place on the list. But if they steal units from other affiliates then they artificially inflate their own numbers are deflate other affiliates'.
So what does that do for the credibility of being "one of the highest on the list"?
Do you need to run ad-aware every time you run kazaa?
p2p network suites will never be able to make any type of positive reputation if they keep pulling this kind of crap.
:) no ads no "
this is why I use kazaa lite.
-makoffee
Ever take you car to a mechanic and notice the signs that say something like "Customers Not Permitted in Work Area. Not Responsible for Damages or Injuries"? Well, that doesn't absolve the garage from legal liability if you walk into the work area and they drop a transmission on your head.
Ditto EULA's. Someone could walk into a bank and get a clerk to sign a license that says "Give Me All Your Money". Still illegal.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
. . . for installing a closed source executable. It can do anything it wants to your computer, and you have no say in the matter, nor do you have any way of knowing in advance what it's going to do to you.
Commercial folks like these, especially those having hard times, are going to do anything they THINK they can get away with to make a few bucks. So take their "free" downloads at your own risk.
Better to run Linux and use gnut.
Do these guys use any Gnu or open source code? If so, what are the implications? What do those licenses have to say about this kind of usage?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
"Phase 1 -- Deny everything until hard evidence shows up.
Phase 2 -- Admit it, but then insist that the hurt to your reputation is enough punishment already; that it's not worth dwelling on; and can't we all just move on please."
I succesfully resisted. I want a badge.
graspee
kazaa light dudes
Just because SOME P2P users are buying CDs doesn't mean that MOST of the rest of them are, or are not buying CDs. I don't doubt that P2P is helping to sell some CDs, the question is whether or not P2P is hurting CD sales overall.
the software makes an involuntary donation from your account to riaa.org.
now that would be funnier.
on March 20 of this year, I wrote the following letter to Robin Gross of EFF expressing my dismay and anger at the activities of these spyware companies.
Dear Ms. Gross
I am writing to express my concern that my attempts to financially support EFF have been stolen by Morpheus and similar companies. I have long been careful to use the Amazon Affiliate Button on your front page for all of my book purchases. I have felt that doing this combined to support what I believe in simply and effectively. Since my purchases have been well over $1000 per year for at least the last two years, I know that it has to have been worth at least some money to EFF.
It has recently become apparent that Morpheus et al. have been placing software such as TopText and other scumware on users machines. These programs have the sole purpose of rewriting affiliate links. This effectively redirects the financial benefits of these links to the scumware operators. To put it bluntly, this is theft, no different than if they had stolen the affiliate checks and written their own names as payee.
I have supported the EFF for years. I supported Morpheus partly because of EFF's support of them. But I am frankly disgusted by this turn of events. As the Director of the Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression, and a staff attorney for EFF for Fair Use and Intellectual Property, I believe that you may well be the single best person to let them know they have gone too far. To take a principled stand on Fair Use is one thing. To pump ads to users while using the software is also perfectly legit. To actively steal revenue from other people, companies and organizations, even after the user has supposedly removed the software, without notice is simply beyond comprehension.
Shortly thereafter, I recieved this reply from Robin
Thanks for your message and concern. We've been informed that was a very brief test and has been completely disabled. If the company wishes to do this in the future, they will be sure permissions are granted in advance of rerouting trafficking. Best, Robin
Perhaps Robin needs to revisit this issue with these scumbags.
This is a bit long winded, but you're right in that there is a huge difference between what's going on downloading MP3s and redirecting refers.
:P).
In business there's a concept called "Opportunity cost". It's the cost of not doing something (IIRC, I'm not an MBA
Here's an example. Suppose Pharmagog corporation created a new drug that, erm... cures carpal tunnel syndrome. If Pharmagog doesn't advertise the only people who'll use it are those with doctors who keep up on all the publications, reports, and new treatments. If they do advertise millions of people with RSI will find out about it and ask their doctors for it. Suppose that the advertising campaign costs $30 million dollars, and will probably result in about $126 million in income over 10 years as opposed to $13.4 million otherwise. This means that the opportunity cost of not advertising is $82 million dollars.
When you download music from the Internet, you're not depriving anyone of anything, but, you're reducing the chance the record company has to sell you the CD later. In other words, you're actually stealing opportunity. Some people were never going to by the CD anyway (perhaps they couldn't afford it), for them, the opportunity cost to the record company is nothing. Others were planning to get the CD and continued to do so, despite already having the music. For them, the opportunity is also nothing. Other people download music and then don't get the CD. Those people do cost the record company money. A final group of people are actually more likely to get the CD after hearing MP3s. Those people are actually stealing negative amounts of opportunity from the record companies.
But anyway. When these p2p companies steal refer traffic, they are not stealing some unquantifiable opportunity, they are stealing money actual money from actual people who are doing the work to promote the item. And that's just fucking wrong.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think all except for limewire, the others have been caught several times with such crap in them.
If you're still using them, you're a stupid fuck.
But limewire? That's a new one on me.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
i am curious if the spyware only switches a "partner id" from the legitimate site's id to their own.
or does it go further and redirects their request to one of their servers so they have more control over the redirection process.
if the request is indeed sent to one of their servers, i can see a number of ways how one could intercept such attempts on their own machine. hosts file anyone? redirect to localhost or some public-service server that runs a CGI or servlet that restores the request back to what it was supposed to be before redirecting the user. mmMMMmMMm. i don't have a PC so i can't figure out how it alll works.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
How is this even close to -1 Offtopic? If you can't mod correctly, don't mod at all.
Bunch of trolls with mod points around here...<GRUMBLE>
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I just uploaded a pic of myself to gtk-gnucleus. No spyware and it's FREE PORN! Feel free to download a pic of my one-eyed, helmeted reptile.
This is like them walking into someone else's store, setting up a cash register, and taking money for someone else's product. In the case of an Amazon associate, the "product" is not the product the consumer purchased, it's the referral that Amazon purchased from the associate. This they are stealing.
Anyone who is an Amazon associate (or an associate for any other company they're doing this with) should complain to Amazon.com (maybe make a petition) and have these people's associates account cancelled. I'm sure going to!
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
Why do they believe that the user's agreement makes this legal? An agreement between two parties cannot, as a general rule, relinquish the rights of a third party. This is almost certainly felony fraud, earning the players 5-10 in the clink. I hope the players have good attorneys. As soon as the victims (hint: not the user) hear about this and file a complaint, charges will be filed. They're not going to be civil charges, and it's not going to be judge Judy.
Some people are really stupid about the internet! "Oh, this is the internet, therefore if I do something unethical, they must not have passed a law against that yet." Not so. God. DUMB!!!!!
C//
"For some people, WWW stands for the Wild, Wild West"
This is very old news. I heard about this months ago through word of mouth. I'm still outraged, but I'm no longer shocked. It's Old News. Very Old News.
The second thing I've noticed about this topic is that a lot of posters have picked up on the original story's reference to "charities" losing out on referal money. I'm sure using the word "charity" helped enrich the outrage but charities are not the only ones affected. Any business or organisation that would normally receive referal monies is affected.
And yes, I still think it is criminal and heinous, even if it is not just an issue of robbing charities.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=spyware& tg=dl-2001
I would personally recommend Lavasoft Ad-Aware from Lavasoft.de. "Ad-aware is a free multi spyware removal utility that scans your memory, registry and hard drives for known spyware and scumware components and lets you remove them safely. It is updated frequently. If you are new to Ad-aware, we recommend you read the getting started tutorial."
Don't forget to download the Reference file Updater v2.01 for Ad-aware.
Something just occurred to me. The RIAA has been reasonably ineffective at getting rid of P2P or slowing it down. The P2P programs are suddenly doing something obviously wrong and illegal, something that can really hurt them bad. Something that they would have had to have been complete idiots to ever think was a good idea. I believe in the possibility that the RIAA has planted infiltrators, to bring them down from the inside.
Just paranoid speculation perhaps...
It has worked at one time. Making it Work For You... well, that's your job. :)
By posting these instructions, haven't they violated the DMCA? =)
All you crazy slashdotters, going off about the moral code of society.
What we need here on slashdot is a new topic called "Existentialism." Hell, lets throw in some LaVey Satanism, just for fun!
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
kazaa and morpheus aren't open source, i don't believe limewire is either.
This EULA can be fairly easily attacked in court, and maybe doing this, the precedent would help weaken EULA's everywhere. Maybe?
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
I think this may have bigger ripple effects on how affiliate programs work.
Lets say I am the miscreant administrator for ABC ISP. I route all my customers http traffic through my evil proxy that intercepts Amazon.com traffic. I would strip out any legtimate associate ID and rewrite the URL with my own ID.
I would think that I can even fiddle with the Kazaa attempts to grab the commission and make it my own.
Am I wrong? If not I think we are going to start seeing more of this type of scam.
My bet? Better than 80% of the "outraged" posters here have been using P2P software to trade in pr0n, software, music, and video ... for years.
...
If the shoe fits
My second bet? Those who cry most about this post will be the worst offenders, since I'm giving everyone the opportunity to claim they are in the 20%, by their silence.
I am in the 80%. Both shoes fit. And the gloves. I have rationalized my behavior for years for any number of reasons. My primary rationalization has been, "i would pay if i could afford it, but i can't afford it. just because i'm poor doesn't mean i should be locked out of the opportunity to acquire the software literacy and skills needed to improve my condition."
But by the time i acquired those skills, the behavior had become habit. Yes, i pay for all the software that i regularly use, these days; however, i still can't resist checking out new software just because i can. All too often i find it just too easy and tempting to rip off my shareware producing brethren; even though i get pissed off that my own product gets cracked. Then i tell myself, "well, they're ripping me off, so now i have the right to rip them off."
i love getting TV and movies on P2P networks. Still, i often watch TV and the ads. i often buy DVD's. My bet is that the marketers get the same amount of my attention as they did pre-P2P. This is an issue that remains unaddressed. Is there actual HARM done to advertisers (in terms of quantifiable lost-eyeball-time)? This is the real concern of TV show owners, because they fear they will lose advertisers if exposure is degraded. If it isn't degraded, then perhaps we have a new rationalization with an improved moral ring to it.
This theftware issue is giving me pause to think about all of this all over again. Sadly, I have no moral ground to stand on in criticizing these companies, today. But I CAN change, if I wanted to (so said the alcoholic to the bartender).
Is there a Pirates Anonymous chapter nearby where i won't go to jail if i seek help for curing my addiction? If you think it can't become an addiction, well, crackheads and sex addicts don't think that their behavior can become an addiction either.
Yes! And as I mentioned way above, maybe this court action would form a legal precedent, effectively weakening EULA's in general!
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
With banner rates dropping below the basement floor, and the marginal returns from "affiliate" programs anyway, robbing commissions is just going to kill off a lot of websites. I killed a rather popular site a few months ago - it was burning about 600 bucks worth of bandwidth and generating about 200 bucks of income each month. Where's the incentive to write code for new stuff let alone keep things online? Yeah, it was fun, but it wasn't worth 400 bucks a month to me. And I'm sure I'm not the only greedy pig who would at least like to cover costs on a site. The affiliate checks are small enough as it is, assholes who steal the commissions are the lowest form of scum on the web. Bastards.
So get a pirated warez version of Limewire pro without the stealware :-)
I read the articles but none of them told me how to disable this 'feature'. How do I find out if this is on my machine? How do they do it? How do I disable it?
Like a many people I got swept up with
Napster - it was "cool" and a novel thing to
download mp3s and burn CDs. Recently I tried
out a few of these post-napster clients and to
my anger discovered all the bullshit "behind the
scenes" software that was installed on my machine.
Well, I spent a few hours trying to kill all the shit that these people spammed to my computer and I am still not sure I got everything. RESULT?
For me, spending a few $$ for a CD is much more cost effective than dealing with this kind of crap. The RIAA should ditch the whole electronic counter measures fight and just put up adds showing what these P2P clients can do to your system and privacy.
LimeWire is open source.
See their website for more information.
Once immoral behaviour (stealing copyrighted material) is condoned and encouraged, people shouldn't be surprised when someone takes it one step further. Anyone who has stolen copyright (I'm sure a lot of you slashdotters) is being hypocritical when they criticise kazaa. Of course the RIAA is in the same business as kazaa anyway (ripping off artists). Maybe all the kazaa users should join the RIAA. There are genuine internet music companies who are trying to reinvent things (eg peoplesound.com). Of course they sign up unknown bands, not the (yawn yawn) Metallicas and REMs that the unimaginative love to download.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Agreed.
Agreed.
I thought this too, at first. But if Amazon only broke out the bounties given to KaZaA, Morpheus, etc, for the purchase of CDs, videos and DVDs, you still get a useful number. KaZaA and Morpheus claim the bounty on any CD puchased online from anyone who downloaded their software.
Many people, including, if I understood her properly, Janis Ian, believe that downloading music online is one step many music fans use prior to making an online CD purchase. Music industry types have claimed that the music stores near colleges and universities have experienced a drop in sales, due to downloading music, because that client base had a greater access to the internet.
It has been pointed out that that client base also has a greater access to online means of purchasing their CDs online.
So, learning the total number of CD's purchased by someone who has used morpheus, even once, is the stat we want, not whether the user clicked through a banner on a KaZaA site.
This is a known and growing problem. Check out scumware.com.
Amazon's policy is to remove the accounts of these scummers, but affiliates complain that Amazon is not doing this effectively. It is something they must address. It's hard enough to make a dime off an affiliate program as it is, without having your referrals stolen.
lol where do you live Man ? More hippies here than anything else...and Dude is a lame 80's saying...where I live we kick the unemployed x-gen's and yuppies begging for change on the sidewalk as we go to work.
Hmp. Just installed KaZaa to see what it was all about.
2 million users, lots of files... seems good... and then this happens.
This is about greed. Even if they achieved a steady state profit engine, they just have to crank it up another notch, then another, and another. Come on, isn't there such a thing as enough money?
Time to perform the semi-annual reformatting of the hard drive. I HATE software that refuses to un-install.
God, I miss Napster, and those innocent days before the men in suits showed up.
I've used ad-aware for some time, and I run it periodically on my system and it's drastically reduced my spyware problems, but I don't think it can guarentee it removes this theftware...
I suppose the best bet is if you buy anything through a third party (i.e charity), you should double check with the distributor (i.e. Amazon) to see who got credited the sale. Sure, it's a little more effort, but in te end it will prevent theftware from being truly utilized if the sale gets directed to the pary (i.e. charity) that deserves it.
what most of you seem to be missing is very simple - the RIAA is shooting themselves in the foot. and usually i wouldnt have a problem with this - but in this case they are trying too take all new technology down with them.
......
let me explain. the RIAA (and the mpaa) in all there granduer' seem to belive that they are entitled to an ever flowing (upward that is) stream of income. that they are somehow immune to the economic state of the times. case in point - has napster got bigger so did there sales. when they took down napster - there sales followed trend. now if they were smart they would follow the p2p trend and offer up there own network for 19.99 a month with 256bit mp3's all quality full songs. (you could do it as a teared setup or just unlimited - but the sweet part is they wont use very much bandwidth on there end) they instead decieded to try and make there old fashioned drudging inconvienent bussiness model work. which i dont have a problem with, until they started saying that all technology (all PARTS of a PC, TV's, cd players et al) be crippled by adding "protection"(read: DRM). the funny thing is this will only serve to protect the major labels, and only in the short term at that. it will not help indy artists, it will not help the economy , and it most definetly will not help the consumer. what they fail to realize is that they will sell more records has other people HEAR the music. and guess what - most people dont listen to the radio anymore. and i dont think MTV even plays music anymore
i say the way to solve the P2P issue is very simple - we should all sue the RIAA for false advertising. the product that they push is not indicative of what the actual product is. (for instance the entire CD is not as good as the single) and for price gouging. (no 20 or even 15 dollars IS NOT what it cost to produce a CD) and dont try to give me this crap about helping the artists. only the fake britney types will make money off selling CD's. the majority of artists make less than a buck per CD sold. and it costs about 3 to produce the entire tight package and CD so there is $4. the store selling it might see another $2, so now were at $6. will split the difference amongst the bands for advertising and say its a rough $3 , and now were at $9. so where the hell does the other 35-55 % go ? to the RIAA ? please ! what makes them so worthy of making so much more than the people who actually MAKE the music ?
(and yes i know i left out writers, producers etc. but in my opinion if you dont write it - DONT PLAY IT!, and yes i AM a musician!)
and the cold hard truth of the fact is that the only reason this whole RIAA and MPAA are so scared is because valenti and rosen are too damn stoopid too lead them into the future.
and yes the 'stealware' that p2p companies add into the product is crap. but i run linux - so MY box doesnt have THAT ISSUE!!!!!
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
We put TopMoxie in the free Windows version of LimeWire. There's a page included in the installer notifying the user of this, in addition to the license agreement.
Thanks.
Adam Fisk
LimeWire LLC
Adam Fisk
Frankly all those charities, plus the retailers, have a well-defined class action suit against the firms doing the hijacking of the commissions. And when you put in front of a jury a long list of charities that had commissions hijacked by a company that has to organize on a tiny island to avoid copyright infringement suits and start talking about punitive damages do you think they are going to be impressed for a minute by what is hidden on page six of an EULA? HA! Then you might even be able to persue criminal conspiracy to commit fraud charges against anybody involved with implementing the scheme. This could get real ugly real fast.
When you download the album, Best Buy still has it.
When you steal from the bell-ringer, he doesn't still have his money.
Understand now?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
the morals of people who make software thats used to pirate commercial software, music and video have really gone down. it's like in 'the godfather' when the families decided to start selling drugs...
One more reason to use FREE (as in Speech) software. No EULA, open source, full control. Proprietary SW be damned...
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Ummm...I can't delete it. I can move it, but it refuses to let me delete it. Damnit...
Sometimes I have to wonder if people in general are really this silly, or if they're all just trolls...
restart in safe mode. then delete. (Also make sure the program is not running)...
If these p2p companies want to earn money so they can continue development then just CHARGE MONEY FOR THE PRODUCT!
I am tried of this rediculious claim that its eaiser to scam users then to just have the users pay for the product, I mean that's why I stoped using limewire,mopheus, and Kazza in the first place, I know allmost everyone who would use these products would rather pay money to use it then have spyware on there systems.
Winmx.com
try it, it kicks ass, and no spyware.
I think I can offer a case history that answers this question.
I have a buddy who has a small site that offers a legitimate service. She works hard at providing this service, and gets a small trickle of money, from banner ads, just a bit more than she would need to break even.
Chapters was the bookstore chain with the largest number of storefronts in Canada. They also had a large online bookstore. She was an affiliate. Their rule was that they would not mail her a check until their bookkeeping showed that she had earned $100 worth of bounty. After more than a year of being an affiliate she was within a couple of bucks of getting her first check.
Then Chapters was bought out by Indigo, the second largest Canadian bookstore chain, but the one with deeper pockets. They had their own affiliate program. She was an affiliate of Indigo as well. But Indigo did not transfer in her Chapters bounty. No did they cashout her $99. They just kept it.
If chapters had gone bankrupt, and Indigo purchased the name and inventory from the receivers, they would not have been obliged to honour the outstanding bounties. But, officially, it was a merger .
Try closing the browser first.
marketing a product that only appeals to people who don't want to pay for anything. I don't see how they ever expected to make money anyway.
If your friend's experience is any indication, then affiliate programs are about as reputable as Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM). I guess the answer is to avoid signing up unless the retailer pays in advance. Given the number of sleazy or bankrupt retailers these days, it's foolish to extend credit to them.
You guys should'a used VMware for KaZAA! No excuses because it runs on winbloze and Linux.
Just fire it up when you wanna use kazaa, and it won't be able to touch your pristine system.
Then get the serial from kazaa, and you're gold!
Peace!
-Dr. J
how could you even start to believe this stuff. this is a typical example of modern day humanbeing trust written words than their own brain. what's the credibility of the original poster? where is the original news assert? how is it logically possible to steal like this? if you have worked in sales and marketing of any business before, you should have known that commission are strictly set by contract with each individual vendor and agent. if you are not on my sales agent or vendor list, you are not getting paid. just use your brain okay.
Many of the people posting on this topic have written a slew of repetitive comments, some of them clearly written as an attempt at humor, implying that it's hypocritical to hold these companies to a higher ethical standard because their primary products are either intended to promote music piracy, or else they easily facilitate music piracy.
I'd like to analyze this for a moment. First off, many are equating the theft of music with the theft of monies targeted at charities. It seems clear to me that stealing copyrighted work is a form of theft, but obviously not in the same category as stealing money outright. My reasoning is as follows: When you copy an MP3 from someone else, an MP3 which may be a song you don't already own a legitimate copy of, you are not depriving the record label of actual revenue. You are depriving them, at best, of potential revenue. I'll get back to this concept in a moment, but bear with me. When these companies install sleazeware to redirect actual dollars intended for charities into their own coffers, they are no better than a pickpocket (a poor analogy) or a bank robber (better analogy). Sure, the end user doesn't get harmed, but the intended charity is irreparably harmed. Funds have been diverted; these are REAL dollars and cents.
Getting back to the idea of actual profits versus potential profits: The RIAA argues that music piracy costs them millions of dollars annually. This argument is based on a logical fallacy. The people who steal music aren't going to pay for that music if the vehicle for theft is taken away. They'll either rely on slower vehicles (personal copies from a friend's CD collection, for instance, or direct file trading from one person to another without an intermediary service -- both very difficult to trace) or they'll consume less music overall. Oh, sure, some people will pony up the dough for music that they can't easily find copies of, but in those cases, it's usually music that's out of print or hard to find. (I snagged MP3s of two October Project CDs from a friend of mine months before I found copies of those CDs in a Zia Records in Tucson.)
Bottom line: You can't assume that people who pirate music would otherwise pay if that means of piracy were taken away. Besides, piracy will always find an avenue. File trading still runs rampant on IRC and various instant messenger services.
Therefore, record companies reporting losses due to piracy are tallying up imaginary numbers. They have no reason to believe they would have received those monies if the so-called 'pirate networks' didn't exist.
Having said all that, I would like to reiterate that although the Gnutella network is often used for illicit file trading, it has significant non-infringing applications that cannot be overlooked -- many universities rely on Gnutella for disseminating files to faculty and students. (It seems to work very well for a finite, closed network.)
A few months ago, Slashdot ran a story about the major Gnutella client developers banding together to figure out how to 'lock out' less well behaved Gnutella clients. One of the biggest complainers was LimeWire. Now we learn that LimeWire is one of the companies involved in theft of funds from charities. They're also very quick to lay the blame for poor network performance at the feet of many open sourced clients such as Gnucleus. (Yes, the LimeWire core is also open sourced, but they're still trying to capitalize off of it in a for-profit manner. Gnucleus, AFAIK, is totally free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech.) Makes you wonder if their complaints about 'badly behaved' clients are just a ploy to lock down control of the Gnutella network -- followed of course by closing their source tree to outsiders and then making future revisions of the Gnutella spec only available to those who pay to play with the big boys.
Whether the EULA is legal/enforcable or not is a moot point.
What we should be figuring out is how to correct the problem technologically, a hack.
Once this hack has been created it must be distributed across the internet fast, virally (worm actually) would work... questional to use that though ironically kazaa could be used LOL
While sad that it takes something like this, and even sadder that someone would exploit it, it will force a better system into existence.
Someone in this thread said "I have a hard time believing that some bloke at the NYT would hear about a new form of rogue code before the story would break in the tech community."
... For just about any category you can think of, somewhere a merchant is paying sales commissions to other webmasters who promote the product or service. Please note that the merchants do not pay for regular advertising with this kind of agreement; they only pay commissions on actual sales. It helps a lot of sites cover their expenses, can raise money for charities, and some people can actually make their living with affiliate programs if they know what they're doing.
With respect, this is old, OLD news in the affiliate marketing community, and we have been struggling for months to get some public attention for this issue. I am soooo glad that you folks know about this, and I hope you'll help us look for ways to combat the parasites.
Here's some more background. There are hundreds of merchants on the net who pay sales commissions to other webmasters who host their links and send them customers who end up buying something. As an example you'll be familiar with, if Bob posted a book review on his site and included a referral link so someone could buy the book from Amazon, Bob would get a 5% commission if someone clicked through and bought the book. Or maybe Bob has a site about carpentry tools, or auto parts, or fashions, or travel or pet care
So far so good. But the picture changes if a merchant accepts one of the parasite programs as an affiliate. If a computer user has one of these parasite programs installed on their computer (many users do but don't know it), the program watches where the user goes and if he/she visits a site that contains certain keywords, links to a certain merchant, or some other trigger, the software will show up with its own message, and attempt to induce the user to click their affiliate link. If a sale is made the parasite will be credited with the commission, instead of the webmaster whose information originally persuaded the shopper to check out the merchant. This even happens when a shopper visits the merchant because of the merchant's own promotions - example: the merchant paid for an ad in a magazine, or had a good rank in a search engine. The parasite again intrudes and if the user clicks the parasite's link, the merchant ends up paying a commission that by rights should have stayed in the merchant's own pocket!
Some merchants tolerate this without blinking, while others drop the parasite as soon as they understand what's going on. A surprising number of merchants have no clue how the parasites operate, unless another afffiliate complains.
Affililates like myself have been working for months to try to get Amazon (and hundreds of other merchants) to stop paying stolen commissions to affiliates such as Morpheus, WhenU and a number of others. Those programs do not send any new customers of their own to the merchant, they only steal other people's customers. Amazon affiliates have been asking Amazon to do something about this at least since last January! Finally this week Amazon took action to dump the parasites, and made a formal statement. Forgive me for being a bit cynical, but it was only when the New York Times came around asking questions that Amazon finally got their act together to Do The Right Thing.
It's a quiet little war, folks, and the person who compared it to the evil geniuses trying to take over the world was actually quite close to the mark.
For those who have been asking, YES this is for real. I am an Amazon associate (also an affiliate with Commission Junction and Linkshare) and this has been going on for years.
I run a small HONEST website, on which I have worked VERY VERY hard, and I've seen my commissions plummet from nearly making a very modest living (less than I'd make working at McDonald's) to earning so little that I must soon consider shutting down my site.
Affiliates have been begging Amazon and the other affiliate networks to do something about this for a very long time, and only now are we seeing any action, probably because of the recent ruling against Gator.
While I'm surprised that Slashdotters weren't aware of this problem already, I am also relieved to see you all saying that it is outright theft. I was starting to think everyone in the entire world applauded and assisted these thieves. Thank you for showing me there is still some honesty in the world.
its not there in the add remove section,
ive got Kazaa full version 2.0..
just run AAW release 5.83 full scan,
including memmory, deep registry,
quick registry and all local fixed
disks..
nothing..
perhaps this issue needs to be looked into..
im runing XP 180 day trial 2505..
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Isnt this just the same as using some software to stop banner Ads etc, You the users dont notice the difference, but in some way, another site is losing its 'rightful' revenue stream, and I think alot of people are taking a gut reaction to this issue, with out looking at the big picture.
The fact is MOST people use Kazaa for Music etc they dont have the legal right to have, even if you belive they have a moral right.
Add to that I have seen alot of support in the past for software for stopping banner ads etc from alot of posters over time. Perhaps its not the same issue, but its not all that different either.
Which kind of makes me think while I don't like the idea of something like this happening, given the way its happening, its a very murky water thats not clean cut as it might first look.
I saw the light at the end of the tunnel... But it was just someone with a flashlight bringing more work.
I actually had earned just over $100, after several years of promoting Chapters, so they should have sent me the money. But they are now with Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com). I phoned Chapters many times and left many messages, I also left them many emails. It was obvious they had no interest in responding. They stole my money. I'll never buy anything at Chapters/Indigo again. BTW, I have found Commission Junction to be excellent.
You may have given somebody permission as far as your browser goes but that doesn't give you the right to change a link on a persons website...
While I share your sentiment I don't think this argument will wash. Installing the spyware on your computer doesn't change an actual website, just your view of it. A ruling that this violated the rights of the website owner would imply that many legitimate and useful things (such as Googles language translation service) would also require permission, which would make them impractical.
None of this reasoning makes what is being done by Kazaa and friends right, but it would be better to seek a remedy on the grounds that a clickwrap EULA is not enforcable, that the practices are deceptive and harmful the user or that this is abuse of the Amazon affiliate program terms.
Not all those who wander are lost.
can I please quote you?
Hrm... what do you think?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Simple, just use http://www.kazaalite.com/
It should remain your computer. Companies shouldn't have the right to dictate to you what you can do with your property.
That's like saying that as soon as a company puts ads on your TV, it's theirs, and they can do whatever they want with that TV. It's just wrong.
But, they do have that power. All thanks to corruption^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Capitalism.
"A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
-- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
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