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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."
'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
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!"
'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, 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
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!!!!
It's already been done.
people with KaZaA actually buy CD's from Amazon??? Hmm... Who knew?
Humor folks, enjoy it. =)
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
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
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...
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.
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
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
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.
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.
The flipside of this is they can screw you over in any illegal way they like and there's just about jack you can do about it. It's like owing your bookie money. Because the debt CAN'T be legally enforced, you have to pay it.
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.
IANAL but AFAIK, you cannot enforce a contract for commiting a crime. In other words, if two parties enter into an agreement where one party pays the other party to kill someone, this contract is not binding on either party (yeah I know, the parties will have other ways of dealing with a breach). As far as I understand the situation, the party that is supposed to receive the commission will not because of nasty P2P scum. Since the P2P guys have no direct involement with the "charity" and the P2P scum are diverting money from the "charity", this is at the very least FRAUD! As a crime is being commited, the EULA is no longer binding on either party.
In a truly civilized world these bastards would die a very prolonged, extremely painful public death.
If VISTA is the answer, you didn't understand the question
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
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?
> I see virtually no difference between this and reaching into one of those bell ringers donation buckets.
Alot are saying this. But yet they *do* see the difference between downloading an album versus shoplifting it from Best Buy.
KaZaa/Morpheus/etc all reek of get-rich-quick schemes based on the success of Napster.
I'm no more shocked than when I get an e-mail promising free porn, and then end up with 9000 popups eaching wanting to charge a dollar on my credit card for 'age verification purposes'.
You can always hide behind some legalese gobbledy-gook in an EULA. All hail the mighty litigator.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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,
I am shocked--shocked, I say--to hear that Kazaa, a fine purveyor of music-stealing software, would behave in such an unethical manner.
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!
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
...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 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
Want to prosecute P2P systems? Get in line...
Schnapple
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
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.
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?
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!
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
Erm, they make a program for pirating movies and music. Do you think they'll give a damn that something else they do is seen as stealing?
Actually they make a program for transfering files from machine to machine. Yes, one potential use of the program is to aid in the distribution of copywritten works (which is mostly what people use it for), but it is the users that priate the movies and music, not the program.
However, what they're doing with the commission-stealing is dispicable and most likely illegal... they should be punished for this. I'm glad I don't use any of the programs mentioned in the article.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
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
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
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
OK, you're right, P2P is more than just music, movies and porn. It's all about copyrighted software too.
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?!
About 2 years ago I signed up for DirecTV. It was in the middle of the NBA basketball season.
So they gave me the NBA package for free. I didn't even ask for it. But that's ok, it was free.
The next year, I get billed for it. But because our bill was on automatic payment, I didn't notice this until after the first week of the season.
I called up DirecTV, and said I didn't order this. They told me that since I had the package the year before, it got automatically renewed.
I'm no longer using automatic bill pay.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
Heh, it may work for a bit, but if they don't pay, people will just abandon the affiliate program altogether. Kind of defeats the whole reson to have it in the first place - which is to increase exposure and draw in more customers.
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.
So this would be a perfect example of how a P2P network can be used for good, and as a marketing tool. Interesting to note that this artist didn't seem to mind the notion that the legion of Kazaa users they probably just created might then go and pirate all their songs, but given that ICP charged some $100 to get in to this packed conference and convention, they've obviously found some alternative revenue sources.
The problem with the "it has legitimate uses!" argument is that there aren't enough examples like this to offset the illegal ones. Note to artists: don't webcast your concerts - no one can watch them anyway with server overload and no one wants to watch U2 in RealMedia anyway. Do this sort of thing instead.
Schnapple
Someone needs to teach you the difference between a comma and a coma :) I love it when people complain about grammer/spelling but they screw it up themselves.
Yes, that was intentional.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
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!
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.
Two totally different things.
The network itself is set up so that the company isn't running the servers themselves, so they can't be held directly responsible for the content that is transfered using their software (in theory).
However, the money being directed is being directed to a specific account, not distributed across the net like the servers, so there is a central target which can quite easily be sued.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10045910.html
Free and will remove said offending insiduous files.
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"
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!
Do you need to run ad-aware every time you run kazaa?
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"
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"
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.
Limewire is OSS too (GPL, no less). OSS is not guarantee that there's no spyware bundled. Actually bundling spyware is one of the few ways you can actually make a profit from an OSS product.
Jilles
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.
No, that says that if they get sued for something you do, you'll pay.
Read Bujold. Free (as in
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
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"
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.
P2P is not illegal. If it where, every web site would be shut down and the web browser would be removed from every desktop. The same for FTP and email servers. All are forms of peer-to-peer data transfer. Hell, LAN servers would need to go, as they are merely peer-to-peer with one server and lots of peers.
The contract/EULA is enforcable in that it only affects the parties of the contract: you and the software people. Via the contract you agree that any affiliate links you use will be replaced with ones for the software vendor. No money is ever redirected, the link is redirected. The most wrong there is possible copyright infringement.
Copyright infringement is hardly something most users of these softwares should get up in arms about.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
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
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
I've used the JAR with no problems. If you use Limewire you should really run the JAR version because all the crap is in the installers. Stuff like that is difficult to write in Java anyway. Which is probably why they're so mentally disconnected from it- after all it isn't in their code.
There is a link for it on Limewire's site somewhere. Just go there and look for downloads for "operating system - other".
Set up a JRE on your computer first so you can download the JAR only.
The ISP makes the same claim to the judge about changing the TOS anytime they want. The judge states that the TOS that *I* signed doesn't contain any clause about changing the TOS at ALL, and dismisses the claim entirely.
The flip side of this is that a lot of TOS/service contract type agreements do state that they can be changed at any time without agreement or even formal notice (you were lucky, or informed, that this one didn't). Personally I find that hard to fathom as being legal: If a contract is signed, there should be no method that it can be altered without both parties resigining a new contract.
Erm, they make a program for pirating movies and music.
and you use a computer for hacking, you drive a car for running people over, and use a knife for stabbing people. i guess that makes you immoral and untrustworthy, as well.
Do you think they'll give a damn that something else they do is seen as stealing?
copyright infringement is copyright infringement, it's not stealing. just because the riaa says it is doesn't make it so, don't be the riaa's ass-puppet.
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.
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.
Well, you have a lot of agreements nowadays that stipulate that they can change the terms of service. They do have to notify you, whether it says so in the agreement or not, otherwise they could raise the price to US $1000000 and take your first born child as collateral. Also, I'm no expert at this, but I would imagine there's something in basic English common law that says you can't force someone to buy something because he didn't specifically tell you he didn't want it. The clerk at the local Sam's Club: "Gee, Sir, you didn't specifically tell us you didn't want a metric ton of asparagus, so we're going to have to bill you for it after we deliver it to your house Railway Express." There's some point at which common sense takes precedence over legalistic idiocy.
As for them suing you in foreign court, I think we'd all like to know who these guys are so we can avoid them, though I suppose you'd be hesitant to tell us for fear of being sued for doing that! What losers.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
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 funny thing about this, is it's fine, legal, and dandy.
If they want to "renew your subscription", then they can ask for payment. You are certainly under no obligation whatsoever to pay it, but they can spend the 20 cents it costs to bulk mail you a request to pay for a new subscription.
As long as they carefully tread the fine line between intimating that you can pay them for services, and claiming that you contractually owe them money, it's legal (IANAL).
(right?)
Think of it as a man in the middle attack at the very core of Windows (though fully supported by the API - there are plenty of legit uses for these sorts of hooks). This isn't very difficult, it's how many of the "Net Nanny" and "Spy on your Wife" programs figure out where you're browsing to and who you're talking with on AOL, and it's the same principle that Windows keyloggers have been based upon forever. You tap into the message queue, ignore anything you don't care about, and mess with anything that interests you.
The problem is that Amazon's affiliate URLs are in a fairly constant format and easy to fudge. For example, consider the following:It would be very easy to catch such URLs, because they're always in the same format:...replace the affiliate-id with your own, send the "Go to this URL now, please" request on to IE, and you're set.
As an aside, message queue peeking and system hooks are usually the reason why having spyware (especially multiple spyware apps) installed can slow your system down or even bork it completely. Imagine the above scenario, except with 10 different spyware programs all trying to intercept and reformat the same messages for the same program at the same time...
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
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 .
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.
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.
While sad that it takes something like this, and even sadder that someone would exploit it, it will force a better system into existence.
Under what nation's laws? The Virgin Islands'? The whole thing was set up as an offshore deliberately to make it more expensive to pursue legal action against.
And really, as for tracking the beneficiary of all this through the account number, my bet is the account (which only Amazon knows until someone bothers to file a John Doe lawsuit to force it out in discovery) is a front company somewhere with no easy-to-prove relationship to any of the filesharing networks. Sue it, it can vanish overnight and be resurrected under another name by the end of the week.
Trying to pursue it that way is even more of a game of legal whack-a-mole than trying to get rid of the networks themselves.
- FTP: exclusively non-theft. (Whatever that means.)
- HTTP: exclusively non-theft. (Whatever that means.)
- Usenet: exclusively non-theft.
- OpenNap: almost exclusively theft.
I'm making assumptions about what you mean by "theft".Do you mean out of print obscure non-mainstream music that you'll never hear on mainstream radio stations? Yep. My tastes are very particular. Honest. No doubt some of what I listen to is available for sale in your local christian bookstore.
Do you ever photocopy copyrighted material, say in a public or university library, without buying the book?
Do you read articles in magazines on the rack without buying? Or parts of books in a bookstore?
Do you ever download or collect pr0n? (Almost exclusively copyright violations.)
Do you run Windows? Do you have ANY pirated software? Is your system absolutely pure as the driven snow? Any non-paid for shareware?
I run exclusively Mac and Linux at home. No pirated sofware on Linux. Zero. My Mac has mostly fallen into disuse and what pirate software I once had is long gone. A nice feeling to be piracy free for years now. Some of the biggest pirates I know are Windows users.
As for p2p, what counts as "theft"? What I would call theft is what the RIAA members do to artists and consumers, and what Microsoft does. But this debate has been had over and over before. Nobody is going to convince anyone else. Oh, and I have bought more than my fair share of books (see bookshelf) and CD's and vinyl before that.
My point still stands. You did not address it at all. P2P is just a tool. P2P did not introduce the concept of piracy. It just made it convenient. The fact that it is widespread is a social phenomena. Why? The answer to why says a lot.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
can I please quote you?
Hrm... what do you think?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.