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Kazaa: Happy In the Global Legal Briarpatch
Steve0987 writes "The Washington Post has an article on the entertainment industry's atempts to close down the file-sharing system Kazaa. I agree that copyrighted material shouldn't be freely distributed from an ethical standpoint. However, the entertainment industry has been acting in an arbitrary manner trying to impede anything remotely impinging on their industry. Go Kazaa."
Freenet link:e w/Main/ WebHome
http://freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/twiki/vi
Project goal is to be secure so that 3rd parties can't see what you're exchanging.
If the article gets slashdotted, you can find it on Kazaa with the search query, Fuck Holywood.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Go me! Anyway, does anyone know if Kazaa is still spyware? I've been interested in using it, but the installer requires WMP and there was a story awile ago that said that Kazaa was some freaky serious spyware.
Anyone know?
I have no tag line
Just one of the powers of the DMCA, whose vagueness prohibits owning a crowbar.
I've said it before and I'll say it again
And don't give me any of that "violates free speech rights" nonsense
Yes, regular kazaa has spyware in it. But you can download a spyware-free hack of kazaa here. Most people in-the-know use this. It also removes the popup ads, etc.
Yep.
use www.kazaalite.com..... its kazaa minus the spyware.
and weird, eh? i've posted 2 and both are in the first 20! w00t!
Fortunately there is a project that makes a version of Kazaa with the spyware stripped out. You can get it here: Kazaa Lite. It seems to work just fine.
I'm actually pretty impressed with Kazaa. The only real problem sometime is finding files that are mislabeled (i.e. in Kazaa they are listed as being by one artist but then when you get the actual file it turns out to be someone else).
-Tom
That the article makes casual mention that the programmers who wrote the original Kazaa are now working on a new program with built-in DRM, for a company called Altnet? Sound familiar? It seems this Washington Post correspondant didn't bother to investigate how Altnet is linked to Sharman Networks... Altnet is virtually Sharman Networks...
Yes, it still has spyware, but Kazaa lite is kazaa without spyware. You can get it at Kazaalite.com.
Is a way to protest against laws that you don't agree, usually associated with passive resistence.
This means keep doing whatever you have always done ignoring the law, and of course paying the consequences. It works as a colective form o protest.
Let's suppose that the speed limit becomes 20 mph at highways. If everybody ignore this limit then the police won't be able to fine everybody.
The same happens here, if a considerable number of citizens ignore the way copyright works today it will be impossible to sue everyone, and of course they won't sue none of us!
That's how it should work, passive resistence.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Kazaa has basically made it too easy to pirate all things. Before, because of the inherent difficulty involved, (FTP, IRC, etc...) some people were prevented from doing so. Now, everyone looking for an alternative to Napster, has begun to pirate much more than just games. I feel that sooner or later, the majority of consumers will pirate software, rather than vice versa.
The music companies did win their case against Napster, and we all know that Napster is dead and buried because of this, but would we all have known about Kazaa if the Napster wrangle had never been made so public? I can remember using Napster in it's very early forms, and very few people back then had even heard of an MP3 file, let alone peer-to-peer or Napster. Now even my aunt and uncle who have only just recently bought their first ever PC have Kazaa nicely installed on their computer. Surely something like as high profile as this will surely turn out to be will just be another shot in the foot for the music and movie industries. Especially if they don't end up closing it down, just think how many more people will know about it.
The thing I like the most is that the american court will have sooo much trouble if they want to put all these dudes on trial. :)
Go Europe!
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
On the last version of Kazaa that I installed I could actually choose whether or not to install some third party spyware apps. My firewall hasn't found anything strange trying to phone home so I don't think any hidden spyware is forced on you either.
File sharing is suspicious. CD copying is suspicious. What follows next? Internet is suspicious. Just allow the people to use officially approved sites, officially approved software, since we now best what they can do.
"Two beers or not two beers. That's the question." -- Shakesbeer
**AA's and any other corperation shoudln't be allowed to have any more influence than a single citizen in this country regardless of how much money they make.
/. would be nice though, supporting different platforms would great:)
p2p
What is happening is that the industry is bludgeoning the public with their short-sightedness, forcing everyone to realize that far too much money gets page to music publishers, far too little rights actually belong to the artists themselves, and the big sell-outs like Metallica (s/big/has-been/) who jump on the "STOP THIEF!" bandwagon even damage and (prematurely?) end their own careers due to the PR fiasco.
Its time the recording industry focused on making music and less on making headlines.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
except FTP sites and IRC, which do it the most.
[anything remotely impinging] Isnt that what you do when you see if your chat buddies are on line?
my other sig sucks less
Free.
So they shut down Kazaa. The Consumer available models of file trading are all gone? No, more effort put into efforts like freenet, or Edonkey, or much more sophisticated methods that are decentralized, encrypted, and much more difficult to shut down?
No, witness DC++, which is 99% warez, and no efforts to shut that down.
What they don't realize is people want this, they can get it, and their efforts truly are being wasted. At least the Motion Picture industry is attempting to head them off at the pass with their own service ramp-up.
For music? It's too late, they have lost the battle for distribution. And to think, if they had their own distribution model in 1998, we would likely all be paying for it, and be happy!
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
Theres two options.
Option A, people who make something always own what they make forever.
Option B, people who make things share what they make with all of humanity.
The same arguement which claims we should have software be open source because it benifits the whole instead of one part of the whole is the same arguement we use with file sharing.
More people benifit from file sharing than those who dont, the purpose of technology is to benifit the people.
When deciding what is more ethical, I look at patents as something mythical in my world, I do not know anyone who owns a patent in anything. I know musicians like my mother or my father who both make music but never made any money.
I make music but I never make any money. I know artists who when they make art because they have to begin to not like drawing anymore. Some things are meant to be an art, and some things are meant to be a business.
Its not very logical to try to turn bits of information into a product, it doenst benifit the majority of the people in this world. People in africa cannot buy medicinee because of this. People in afganastan cannot get educated because of patents on books. People in the USA cannot learn programming or be productive in todays society because of patents.
Why do we need patents? So a few hundred people can make billions of dollars? How does this help me? IT doesnt, I benifit more from Open Source than I do from closed source because I have no money.
I benifit more from file sharing because if there were no napsters and gnutellas of the world I simply wouldnt have the money to listen to music AT ALL, PERIOD.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
... to make an example out of people? It's not unheard of for law makers to change the penalties for infractions of things that the populace as a majority or large minority want to be legal, and still get away with remaining in office, in power. Worse yet, those that get caught doing whatever "bad thing"(tm) that has been legislated against suffer massive penalties. I don't personally want to be the one caught if something that I enjoy doing, listening to, using, etc, gets made highly illegal in an attempt to make an example out of me to the others if I should happen to be one who gets caught.
Regarding your speed limit argument, something to keep in mind in many states is that there is a 'resonable and prudent' clause, where certain speeds above the posted speed limit are acceptable. In Arizona, one can go up to fifteen miles per hour over the posted speed limit and not have broken the law, assuming that one can demonstrate how that was reasonable and prudent (ie, everyone was going that fast, or there was no one on the road for a mile in each direction). Those that do exceed the reasonable and prudent grey area, however, are now subject to criminal traffic citation, rather than the civil citation that normal speeding, red light running, failure to stop, etc, would qualify for.
The only way that I could see such civil disobedience working is if it's in conjunction with pressure on lawmakers to change laws, so that when massive penalties are dealt upon parties involved, there can be a public outcry that lawmakers might feel they have to follow, else their continuing jobs will be threatened. Even then, though, I don't know if the modern system of campaign contributions, favours, kickbacks, and the like will allow for such.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Freenet == Kiddie Pr0n Exchange
My memory is a bit sketchy in places, but I am sure y'all will fill in the blanks with /.'s usual enthusiasm.
So we begin.
A few internet cowboys, seeing the demise of Napster, cobble together Kazaa -- a decentralized filesharing network.
Originally, the software was licensed for distribution under three names, Kazaa, Morpheus, and Grokster, each of which was essentially the same program, with a different skin.
Kazaa was known for making an attempt at placating the record industry by only allowing lower bit-rate songs to be downloaded, whereas Morpheus had no such restrictions.
Forgive my lack of knowledge about Grokster -- the programs were all so close to identical that I never tried it.
Now, Kazaa came under legal fire in the Netherlands, but didn't get an official shut down.
Fearing their investments (and possibly their freedom), the original owners of Kazaa sold Kazaa to Sharmin Networks, who are perhaps the dodgiest software company I've ever seen.
Sharmin is also infamous for their spyware, and Bonzi Buddy. I can't remember who the founder was -- and Sharman Network's web page has mysteriously disappeared, but they were involved in some great scandal in Australia, and even a cursory Slashdot search (of the kind I'm unwilling to do on a saturday morning) will turn up the details, undoubtedly.
Sharmin was the one who loaded up Kazaa with enough spyware to make Back Orifice look like a legitimate client application, and has a EULA including a clause giving Sharmin permission to use your clock cycles, bandwidth, and hard drive space however they want.
This was part of what is known now as AltNet, Sharmin's answer to the Seti@Home project, or ud.com's Cancer curing project. Turn Kazaa users into a giant super computer... And then sell the time to the highest bidder.
Only one problem -- Kazaa's reputation was so bad, everyone was using Morpheus, who's tagline was something along the lines of "File-sharing without spyware".
Kazaa responded by ejecting Morpheus from their network by poisoning all the Kazaa hosts that upgraded to the new version. Any Morpheus client that touched an infected node was killed -- Kazaa overwrote a part of your registry to ensure you would never be able to use Morpheus again.
Around that time, they put up a button on the front of their site offering amnesty for refugees in this file-sharing client war, and Morpheus released Lime-Wire as Morpheus 2.0b.
Basically, the new morpheus was an old fork of the limewire code with an M for a logo, and was just a klunky gnutella client. There was some hullaballoo about open source this, and no source code that, and then Morpheus released the code again. Checking their web page now, they claim to have a final 2.0 out, but I haven't used it and cannot vouch for its quality.
Since then, Sharman Networks has been keeping a fairly low profile, and a hacker named Yuri has started releasing KazaaLite. KazaaLite is not a stripped down version of the software, so much as a stripped down version of the installer.
One without Bonzi Buddies, or yellow link underliners (remember that little ad-fad?) or any of the other myriad hacks and stupidities which Kazaa inflicts on your system.
KazaaLite does actually include a few patches to the executable, mostly to ensure Kazaa can't monitor your usage or install spyware on your system, and new versions are released with some regularity.
Well. Now we're up to the current date, with somewhat foggy bits along the way, and probably a few confused details by myself. I would appreciate any clarifications or corrections, as this all came from memory.
Cheers, and remember: KazaaLite is the answer.
"The wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." -- David Hume
When you decide on something, when you decide if its right or wrong, do you look at how something benifits you?
Well you can say Piracy benifits you because you save money and get free times, OK.
You can also say
Piracy benifits the majority of the people on this planet who also cannot afford to buy $500 software and $20 CDs.
So, what it comes down to is, Piracy is good because the majority of the people on this planet benifit from Piracy more than we benifit from not being pirates.
So Piracy is good because it benifits the common man. Intellectual property benifits maybe %1 of the worlds population if that, 99 percent of people in the USA do not own intellectual propery, most musicians dont have record deals, they dont make money off of their art.
Most people in other countries do not have the money to buy patented medications, most people on this planet simply do not have or own any information.
Why should we, the common man and owners of all information which man produces, give ownership to a select few when we can all own it?
Think about it, how do YOU benifit by giving Sony the right to own music? How do YOU benifit?
You dont benifit at all by doing this, so why do it?
Because its right? Its more right to share than it is to own.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The Courts have shown favourable response to the petition.. after all they dont want our poor homeless singers and bands to suffer. Probably earplugs will become mandatory at concerts.. insider sources said.
"Due to this stealing, our artists are so poor. Look at the music videos, they dont even have clothes to wear and have to appear in undergarments" said a RI** executive.My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I downloaded the two towers from kazaa last night but can't get any codec to decode them. Has anyone gotten the [tmd] movies to work, with mplayer or windows media player? If so, how?
For those who are about to yell "DIE PIRATE!" or something similar, please don't. I saw the movie once already and am going again tomorrow, so it's in Peter Jackson's best interest to keep me on the hook.
I know who'll meet them at the airport.
Is this thing on? Hello?
yeah, the Subj is a bad one, I know.
Anyway, the MPAA went after individual users on ATTBI and ATTBI responded by shutting those people off for TOS violations. Basically, don't share files and they can't really catch you.
There was a quote in the article, something like "it's software that allows you to request a file and download it, that's all it does". It's not illegal to do that, we have been using programs to req. files and download them for years (BBSs, FTP, etc).
Asking for the source to the software to find out "how it works" is non-sense. They know perfectly well how it works. It's P2P just like any other sharing program these days.
I'm sorry that people abuse the software. That's not the fault of the programmers or the 5% of the Kazaa userbase (a large number no doubt) that use it for legitimate reasons.
Go after those people that are sharing the stuff. If you can't find them, I'm sorry. That's not Kazaa's problem.
It's called Gnutella, grow some ballz kthx
Its the tommo effect!
Just so we can be like China, a beacon of human rights in a sea oppressors...oh wait!
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks
The problem with Kazaa-Lite is that when you are installing it, it says: "This software is illegal". No joke. If you install the software and use it, then you are breaking the law.
Sex - Find It
I'm sorry, in every manner Kazaa is much worse than the people trying to shut it down.
I have no intentions to support software that is 50% spyware.
Do not tell me to download some bullshit hack, I don't want to support a network with a base of spyware.
In other words, I hope Kazaa gets crushed, crashed, burned, trampled on and forgotten. I will never use the words 'Go Kazaa' in my life.
I used to be really paranoid about spyware, but I talk to a guy about this, and he said the following:
"What do I care, all anyone is going to find on my computer is porn anyway"
I seem to remember an artivle from a year or so back dealing with Kazaa. The article stated that instead of going after Kazaa, which has failed in the past, the lawsuits would be against FastTrack, and forcing them to shut Kazaa's p2p abilities down. Is Kazaa still based of FastTrack's p2p?
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
If they shut it, something else will come along. It's not as if Kazaa is the only p2p program.
"Reading this post is illegal."
Looks like you just broke the law because my post said so.
I agree that copyrighted material shouldn't be freely distributed from an ethical standpoint.
So you must hate Linux then? The local independent newspaper gets you in a tizzy? Broadcast TV and radio make you turn red?
Or did you mean "without the copyright holder's permission"?
In that case, yes I agree. It shouldn't be distributed from an ethical standpoint, but rather through an electronic computer network.
*rimshot*
PS: Anyone interested in a Star Wars Themed Mullet Hunting video(complete with rotoscoped duel) search KaZaA for Mullet Wars: Episode One the Phantom Mullet or star wars mullet or something of the likes, also feel free to e-mail me about it.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
But more importantly, which of the many hundreds of files on Kazaa labelled 'Two Towers' is not a fake? You've got to help me!
troll??? is it an inside troll or am i retarded? btw, kazaa rules. and it will never get shut down! (does it have central servers to shut down?)
If that's the way we're talking, then the RIAA have already won. There are plenty of legitimate circumstances to distribute a lot copyrighted material -- and that's not even getting into fair use yet. Consider examples in software, or other types of media.
It's not an issue of copyright per se, it's an issue of what's permitted by the license.
DNA just wants to be free...
They will start making examples
Suppose, 20Mph is limit... they stop you.. then beat you to pulp in front of other drivers... how many will take chances next time? Of course we have rights(hopefully) and this cant happen, but as far as civil laws go... you have no rights.. money talks and it talks loud
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Of course I wholeheartedly beleive that artists deserve something for their work, and certainly deserve a decent living (don't we all?) The fact that they either have to use their art to make money or get an unrelated job that impinges on their artistic efforts is simply a symptom of our ever-present scarcity economics. Wouldn't it be nice if artists (and programmers, and others) could live without economic insecurity, simply giving to the community as is their basic impulse to do so? This would make the need to make an income from their work irrelevant, because most of these people do not do it for the money (at least not as the primary motivation). I'm sure many of the people here, more than most places, understand this. This would solve issues like Napster and Kazaa, since the free flow of information (and sharing of files, whether they be art, music, or software) could proceed without any harm to anyone. If an author doen't want his work shared, he simply need only keep it, or give it to people he trusts. Perhaps there could even be a copywrite law that gives the artist/whoever the power to decide how "free" his/her work is, but there would still be no need to do so to earn a living, i.e. artificial scarcity.
So how could this be done? Scarcity, we are told, is forever with us, an unsolvable problem. But is it really? People like Jeremy Rifkin (The End of Work) have shown us that work as we know it is obsolete. Machines and automation can do most if not all of the tedious tasks that make life dull, freeing up human society for more creative persuits. So scarcity no longer exists, except that we continue to impose it on ourselves because we know of no other way of doing things. And this creates its own set of problems, believe me!
The only thing missing now is a workable system of economic distribution that does not employ scarcity, and its tools like money and debt. If this could be done, all crime due to poverty would vanish. There would be no point to stealing something you could very easily afford yourself (pathology aside). Millions of property and litigation laws would also become obsolete, releiving the justice system of a huge infrastructure. Banks, stocks, all business related to money need no longer exist, and what results is a huge outpouring of people to now share what little work need be done. Thus, with secured incomes, people need not work more than a few hours each week, and could have a standard of living that far exceeds what we have now.
It's too bad more people aren't trying to think of ways of doing this, because it is possible. It would be a world were programs like Linux would be the norm, and no one could make shoddy MS-like products (or they could, but no one would have to use them). So far the only serious research group with any credibility that has devised such a non-scarcity economic system is Technocracy. They've been working on this idea since the 1920's, so they have a pretty detailed and workable plan. I hope we one day switch to a society they they propose.
Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. - M. King Hubbert
Kazaa lite also works in linux with wine
An appeals court in the Netherlands, meanwhile, ruled that local distributors of the software shouldn't be responsible for piracy by its users.
My personal feelings: Damn right.
Me as the Devil's Advocate:
Unfortunately if you rule that the company isn't responsible and the users are then it basically tells the labels/software companies/etc that they can't do anything about it. They can't ask the file-sharing program's owner for user information because of the wonderful world of privacy. Lovely!
It has nothing to do with saying so. It's because Kazaa-Lite is illegally distributing copyrighted software. (gasp!)
I agree that copyrighted material shouldn't be freely distributed from an ethical standpoint.
Well, I don't know about you, but I don't agree with large corporations making money off artists 90 years after they died.
This space left intentionally blank.
So, what's the best peer to peer application for linux these days?
-Miles
Fuzzy
This case "is one in a series of skirmishes that will determine whether the information network the public enjoys five to 10 years from now is open or closed and to what extent different countries will have a role in controlling it," said Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
This almost sounds like a threat...
"all you naughty people start behaving yourselves or you'll ruin the internet for everyone else"
It's interesting to note that the spyware-free Kaaza Lite's webpage slams you with four popups and at least one window that dances across your screen, advertising casinos, Ebay, the University of Phoenix, and some "you're the millionth visitor!" nonsense.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
what do you do after you download both songs of gnutella. and the linux client is KazaaLite w/ wine.
Theres two options.
Why does there have to be only two options? Shouldn't those who create something have the ability to gain from it, as well as enrich the world?
Copyright itself isn't the problem, the problem is the -term- of copyright, and perhaps the ability of corporations to own copyrights, but whatever.
There are always more than two options. If you simplistically reduce a complex problem to a binary problem, you miss out on a lot of good solutions.
Its not very logical to try to turn bits of information into a product,
Business isn't about logic, it is about profit.
it doenst benifit the majority of the people in this world.
This is going to sound very harsh, but I don't owe anyone in the world anything. It is not our responsibility to give them benefit. Certainly it is an honourable task to attempt to give them benefit, but you cannot fault someone for failing in responsibilities that are not their own.
That said, intellectual property is meant to be a compromise between the interests of the innovator and the public. The system is broken, I admit, but it doesn't mean that the system is a poor system.
People in africa cannot buy medicinee[sic] because of this. People in afganastan cannot get educated because of patents on books.
Patents do not prevent people from buying medicine, and a product patented in the US is -not- patented in other countries, unless they have signed a treaty to honour each other's patents.
Books are copyrighted, not patented, just like everything anyone (in the US at least) writes.
People in the USA cannot learn programming or be productive in todays society because of patents.
No, people cannot learn to program because they don't take the time to learn to program. You can program something that makes use of a software patent with no fear of reprisal so long as you do not distribute the program with the peices that make use of the patent.
That is the purpose of patents, to give a period of "profitability" to the innovator, while giving society as a whole the benefit of the innovation.
I benifit more from Open Source than I do from closed source because I have no money.
You do realise that the only reason Open Source software exists as it does is because of the copyright system that you despise. Without copyright there would be -no- way to prevent a malicious person or organisation from taking the fruits of the OS software, and including it in their proprietary software.
I benifit more from file sharing because if there were no napsters and gnutellas of the world I simply wouldnt have the money to listen to music AT ALL, PERIOD.
Shouldn't the musicians whose copyright you violate deserve some benefit also? You can't say you don't owe them anything, because you use their services. It is not their responsibility to provide you with free music.
I'm going to make a base assumption, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you're the type of person who would give your services freely to just anyone. If (assuming you have a job or ever get one) your boss asked you to work for free, would you?
After all, think of the benefit it would be to him.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Do you really think Kazaa only remotely impinges on the entertainment industry??? That's the sole purpose of this software. Pirating music, movies and software.
I know this will be marked flamebait because the thought police who vote on such things for Slashdot will not like what I have to say. (Funny for a baord that talks about guarenteeing free speech uses such measure to supress thought they don't agree with them). Let me put it bluntly: you guys are on crack. How about if I need food I walk in your house and raid your fridge? Or if I need to go somewhere I steal your car. Does that sound any different than "I want to hear a song, let me download it wihout paying?"
People create entertainment and DO NOT deserve to be ripped off. If you don't like how much it costs, that it has region coding or macrovision or whatever, don't buy it. But please, don't justify stealing as free speech.
If you want to use P2P as civil disobedience, you have to make sure the law knows who you are
You're right. In this respect sharing copyrighted files without express permission is more like disguised participation in the Boston Tea Party - deliberately making life difficult for those who would do you wrong, and violating the insane "right to profit" that seems to have popped up in this country.
We're much more like the American revolutionaries who refused unelected sovereignty than we are like Martin Luther King playing goodcop to sympathetic but tentative white people.
So I have to agree with both of you; it is not exactly the same as what people normally think of as civil disobedience, but it does constitute passive collective resistance in the tradition of the American revolutionaries.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
You can see how well it works (and tips to get it working) here.
If you really want to run the original KaZaA, see here.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Very true!
Kazaa Lite. Kazaa, with the spyware.
http://www.kazaalite.nl/
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
The old scenario is imagine you were being held at gunpoint and your capturer gave you a gun and told you to kill one random person on the street. If you didn't he would kill you and ten others. You might make a policy decision to kill that person in the name of benefiting more people, and under a cost-benefit analysis model that might be a correct decision, but it isn't an ethical decision because our moral code says that we don't murder people.
The only ethical decision here to make is that you either do what artists or distibutor asks of you, or you don't. Decideding that you are going to copy somebody else's creation, even though they have asked you not to, can in no way be called an ethical decision that I can see.
Just because you benefit from something doesn't make it ethical. So you don't listen to music. I don't get it.Watch it. There was at least one version i downloaded from there that had some really strange hosts entries and other weird stuff. Seems someone is trying to hijack kazaalite for his own scheme. Look (eg.) here freewebhosting.hostdepartment.com/kazaalitetk or here www.k-lite.tk for a more trustworthy download site.
How about if I need food I walk in your house and raid your fridge? Or if I need to go somewhere I steal your car. Does that sound any different than "I want to hear a song, let me download it wihout paying?"
It's vastly different. A more accurate analogy would be if I had a replacator device and replicated the food in your fridge, rather than buying it at the grocery store. File sharing is NOT stealing...it's UNAUTHORISED COPYING.
People create entertainment and DO NOT deserve to be ripped off.
Agreed. They are also NOT entitled in a free market society to guaranteed profits. They are not gods, they are not our saviors, they are not offering a solution for world peace or feeding the hungry or curing disease, they are MERELY ENTERTAINERS and if we happen to like the performance, we might feel inclined to throw them a few coins for their troubles. They are definitely not entitled to cripple technological innovation in order to secure profits for themselves. If the creators of Britney-slut don't like that then they should find something else to do.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Please try again. Your logic only works on the feeble-minded. Luckily I happen to be immune from such false logic.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
If this has been said before feel free to mark it redundant, but wasn't Kazaa the one with the big banner ads on Yahoo! bragging how you could get the latest Britney and somebody else music for free so that they could profit from their spyware. I agree the RIAA needs to either quit charging $18 for a CD or start putting more than one hit song on a CD, or both, but if somebody has to make money off of Britney Spears shouldn't it be her record label and not a bunch of spyware folk?
That is so true. How come no-one caught that?
What is that a picture of? I'm afraid to click on it, but I still want to know what it is, I think...
From the article:
(the MPAA and RIAA)...have issued a statement saying Kazaa is perpetrating an "intricate international shell game aimed at evading the U.S. court's jurisdiction and avoiding liability" by spreading its operations around the world.
Haven't these huge multinational corporations, the likes of which are represented by the MPAA and RIAA, been spreading their operations overseas for years now for the very same reasons?
Suck it up, guys.
It CAN be used for distributing copyrighted software.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Like they are doing in Denmark (check previous Slashdot stories), the attorneys scan the Kazaa network, when they find Danish Ips they check what people are sharing. Get a court order, send them a letter which essentially says "we can see you have done violations which amount to x amount of money, if you pay now you won't have to go to court". Then the newspapers are filled with sad stories, like how a single mother suddenly gets slapped with a $5000 fine because her son, unbeknownst to her, had downloaded his favorite songs. They try to scare people to stop - and none of these P2P programs have much in the way of security, you can always see the IP number. And even if they do try, people can just use the netstat command (On Windoze) to see which machines you are currently connected to.
How long before they start doing something like this in the united states?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Copyright is, in and of itself, a part of the real problem. Copyright is the legitimatization of a monopoly, and even small monopolies are dangerous.
But the purpose that Copyright was originally created to serve was valid.
Patents are, in of of themselves, a part of the real problem. It's not just the stupid design and execution of the patent system that's wrong. Patents are legitimatizations of monopoly, and even small monopolies are dangerous.
Notice that in their original forms the Patent and Copyright laws were nearly harmless. They were for restricted periods of time, and they covered limited areas. But with time and $$, laws have been changed to extend the coverage in both time and area. This is because monopolies represent an amount of control that can be exercised over other people, and certain folk have a fixation on control. Actually, their fixation is usually on power, but any kind of control represents a kind of power. (But don't assume that they aren't also attracted to the less savory techniques. Any reluctance is probably more practical than moral or ethical.)
But the original purposes of these laws, to reward the creators, remains valid. (Not well accomplished, perhaps, but valid.) So some other way is needed, with fewer vile side effects. Proposals?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
kazaa is EVIl. that is why using Kazaa lite is great. You use their network, their resources but they get nothing out of it. Deserving of an evil company like Kazaa. Boo Kazaa. Spyware=Virus. I payed for my processor. and my electricity.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
"Why does there have to be only two options? Shouldn't those who create something have the ability to gain from it, as well as enrich the world?
"
You dont need copyright to make money. Sell the service of music creation, if the creators stop creating music well then people will have to pay so they create it.
We all know the creators will never stop creating and there will be endless supply, so why should musicians make so much money as if they are so valueable? I'm a musician, I can make music, should I demand millions of dollars if the music I make is only average?
Now, if my music changes the world, people will pay millions of dollars because they will be fans, people will go to my concerts.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Why are there so few functional file sharing apps for Linux? AudioGalaxy blows chunks, Kazaa-Lite works only with Wine IF you have saintly patience and the spare dll's handy, and Limewire isn't a walk in the park either unless you have Java installed and the $PATH enviroment variable right - not to mention any needed dependencies. I'm not adverse to commandline (I prefer it for most administrative tasks) but I'm not going to run some bare bones text-based Gnutella client in a friggin terminal. I'm too spoiled for that.
I'm just surprised the Linux community hasn't made more noise about this... or is everyone dual booting?
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
If there is a law that everybody breaks, that gives the police the ability to bust whomever they please, at their discetion. Thus it is a police state. In this situation, they can focus on minorities, people with warts, ex girlfriends etc. lol
Seriously, most laws are like that. Everybody breaks the speed limit, and this allows the police to pull over anybody they care to pull over, legally. Thats why, in CA, they pull over mexicans who are driving the same way as the white guy in the lexus ahead of him.
wHAT WE NEED ARE LESS LAWS THAT MAKE SENSE. 'Too many laws' + "masses of people ignoring the law' = discrimination. =class society. =assholes =poor getting poorer through fines =we are fucked.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
So why do we need patents? You are sharing your knowledge now, Do you need to patent this quote and sell it?
Artists can make money without patents, its called selling services instead of the music itself, selling the service of actually making the music.
If you buy a hamburger from mc donalds you arent really paying for the beef and bread you are paying for them to prepare you a burger on command.
So why cant musicians make money by playing in concerts and creating music for their fans?
Let the musician sell his own Mp3s.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
correction to parent " wHAT WE NEED ARE LESS LAWS, and only those that MAKE SENSE."
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
There is no R&D when it comes to producing information. I can understand you patenting a physical process, or even a physical item which costs you millions of R&D to produce, for a very short period of time such a patent should apply, maybe 2-5 years, allowing you to profit, but no, these patents last almost 100 years.
Its currently out of control, the R&D for drug research, you should not be able to patent the ingredients or information, you should be able to patent the physical product, the tools used to create the product, and you dont have to tell people how you physically create the product you create.
However the information itself should never be patented. People can make money selling products, people can make money selling services, but there is no need for patents, these patents hold back innovation more than helping, these patents keep the majority of this planets population poor, billions of people in africa, india, china all make up the majority of humanity and these people are poor because of patents.
In an entirely open world, these people could do their own R&D to cure their own diseases, they could release the ingredients to the cure, companies in the USA would still have to BUILD the machines and factories to make the cure, they'd sell the medicine still, but you'd sell he physical OBJECT, not the information!
So if you buy something you are paying for labor and not ideas.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Under real capitalism there are no copyrights, not only is copyright and patents anti capitalism, its against the constitution as well because it prevents freedom of speech.
You can argue that some products DO need patents, and I might agree with you that products which take millions to produce need patents for a set amount of time, such as movies, highly expensive cures to diseases, etc, but you can patent the physical device without patenting the information on it.
Example, you make a drug, you can have it so you are the only company in the world who can make this drug, yet the ingredients for the drug are free.
WHat about movies? You can make it so you are the only one who is able to sell this movie, but people can copy it themselves for free.
Most people do not have their own personal drug factories, so medicine companies will still be able to make plenty of money ot make up for R&D, movie companies will make less money until they increase the quality to a level which we cannot reproduce on our home PCs.
The information however should always be public domain and free, the right to sell it should not be free, the right to look at it, use it, read it and share it should be free.
This means a musician has the EXCLUSIVE right to sell their music, but if you copy and give it away they cannot do anything about it because no ones making money off of it. Thats how the laws should be, patents are not needed, just the exclusive right for the creator to profit off of what they made.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Innovation comes from knowledge and sharing of information.
You'll make better music if you listen to more music and have access to better tools.
You'll be smarter if you read more books and with this intelligence you can use this knowledge to give back to the world in the form of your own knowledge.
Its give and take, its not like you can pay for innovation, you cannot, you can pay for products, you can pay for people to give information they already have away but the fact is people would create and distrubte information even if they dont make money doing it.
People do it on the internet now, giving away files and information when they arent being paid to do so.
Innovation does not need to be encouraged, theres no short supply of innovation, its natural, selling innovation is like selling air.
You have a point people need a reason to spend their money to develop new things, and things which cost alot to develop will make money, my point is not that a person shouldnt have exclusive right to sell what they create, they definately should have the exclusive right to sell what they create if they created it
What they DONT have the right to do, is to stop people from giving away what they buy. IF I buy information I should become an owner of that information as well, giving me the ability to give it away if I want to.
Information should not be owned, products should be owned.
Microsoft can say that I dont have the right to sell Microsoft Windows and I'd agree with them, but If I give it away for free they have no right because I'm not taking anything away from them, the person I gave it to for free wouldnt have purchased it anyway.
Just like If i give away the cure for aids to africa, American drug companies shouldnt be able to sue me because I didnt create and sell a bottled drug, I just gave them the ingredients.
How can you sue me for giving the ingredients? This is what I mean when I say I'm against patents, I'm not against Capitalism or making money off of ideas, I'm against people who claim that when I buy something that I cant do what I want with it.
I can do whatever I want with anything I buy. If drug companies want to make money in a world with no patents they can sell drugs to the goverments itself, simply sell the drugs to the governments before you release your ingredients. This is like what Lindows does, they sell the OS beefore they give the code.
Redhat does this too you can get the code but theres reaosns for you to buy the product instead of just taking the code and creatinng your own.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Proving that you do not need to sell information to make money and pay for R&D.
To everyone who says you do need patents, look at Redhat.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
or is Niklas Zennstrom the long lost brother of Bill Gates?
You dont need copyright to make money.
True. You sell the first copy to somebody else. There you make money. Then he copies it and sells it to somebody else (before you get to them) and he makes money.
Sounds right to me.
We all know the creators will never stop creating
So, let's summarize shall we?
1. Apart from "being inspired", making music costs money and time. Lots of it. In fact, it's work. Lots of it.
2. Artists have to eat, pay rent, etc.
3. When you work, you get paid.
4. But everybody else should give you their work for free.
I'm a musician, I can make music, should I demand millions of dollars if the music I make is only average?
No, but it might be nice to buy some new strings now and then. And maybe a rusty old van, to get to concerts and demand millions.
Now, if my music changes the world, people will pay millions of dollars because they will be fans, people will go to my concerts.
No, they'll sit at home on their huge keisters and watch the videos. And instead of paying you, they'll have keggers. And you'll live in a cardboard box, but you're so dedicated you'll keep stealing strings to play. Because they deserve it. Because they do important work and you don't. Because they NEEEEEEED to partay.
i hope kaz goes the way of napster. they have some of the most virus like spyware out there. to say p2p cuts in on profits may be true, but try and figure out an accurate amount. to say that the son of a single mother (presumably not rich) cost some fatcat record execs 5 grand is not true. people will only spend a percentage of their income on music, and that for the most part being disposable income. even with children emerging as a recocgnized source of revenue in the past few decades, very few of them have 5 thousand to blow on music, or anything for that matter. the most you could ration this kid is about 1000 per year, and that includes bdays, xmas, noday resents, bribes for doing well in school, allowance, etc. only a fraction of this would ever be spent on music. so the wrecka stow could not claim lost income or damages, because they would have never got that income in the first place. the most they could have lost would be a few hundred dollars, and thats if the kid was a real music afficionado. bet he bought an ipod w the money he saved ;)
A name you can trust.
To my knowledge they have removed certain bundled components, not hacked the program. The individual use could remove them on his own (if he knew how)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
US copyright law has no legal force outside of the USA. The DMCA is not a worldwide law. The companies have no legal jurisdiction to prosecute KaZaa then, unless there is a law against it wherever KaZaA is based. I can forsee the Intellectual Property interests creating their own mercenaries to (literally) combat foreign threats that they have no legal power to stop.
Repeal the DMCA!
you missed a 't' in 'attempt'
You are, of course, absolutely correct. Which is why President Boy George *HAS* to destroy the economy enough to get a million more Americans unemployed by the middle of next year. Only poor people (for the most part) will take the risks necessary to be soldiers. Or as the famous sign goes that got a man jailed at a pro-Bush rally for the crime of sedition, "The Bushes must truly love the poor -- they've made so many of us."
If you give a man the choice between his family starving to death, and joining the Army, he will be happy to join the Army, and will do what it takes to stay in the Army, including killing plenty of Jews^h^h^h^hMuslims (whoops, sorry, got caught in a 70 year old time warp). The same deal is why Reagan torpedoed the economy in the early 80's when he needed to build up the U.S. military to the point where it would be capable of taking on the Soviet menace (as defined by the CIA's ridiculous exaggerated Soviet military strength figures, which had the Soviets aiming close to a million tanks at Western Europe). What, you don't remember Reagan torpedoing the economy in the early 80's? Tsk tsk. What a short memory you have...
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I agree that copyrighted material shouldn't be freely distributed from an ethical standpoint. However, the entertainment industry has been acting in an arbitrary manner trying to impede anything remotely impinging on their industry.
Surely, that belongs in a comment under the article and not in the article post itself on the front page? Not to mention, "DUH" it was a waste of words for something completely obvious. What's next, a post about IRAQ and how Sadaam is "not a nice guy"?
It really doesn't matter if they hacked or repackaged it. They are still distributing Kazaa without permission, and that's illegal.
You can download Diet Kazaa, gets rid of the ads, spyware and adds a download manager to make it faster. http://www.dietk.com
One of the odd things I've seen about this is what the RIAA calls it and how they punish. If downloading songs is stealing and users are to be punished, then why punish them otherwise? By their logic, a user should be charged for theft of an item rather than copyright infringement. Maybe call it digital copy shoplifiting or whatever.
A user should pay for the materials downloaded. Rather than the $500,000 tag for copyright infringement, they should eat their words and charge users the way they say what the users are doing. If I download a song, I should pay list price for a song. DOwnload a DVD ripped movie and I should pay 21.99. People should be charged exactly for what they download. $500,000 for copyright infringement is bull crap.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
Let's not forget that a missive amount of Kazaa traffic is pornography. Granted a large amount of that is content not authorized to be shared by pr0nographers. Yet we should keep in mind that not every terabyte transferred is from skaria MP3s and divx rips of "gone with the wind". Then a question about a pr0n trading p2p software arises. But if there was such a thing and it turned out to be popular it would die due to child pornography and other concerns. Is sharing copyrighted martial technically wrong = probably Is Kazaa just limp bizkit = not by a long shot
go to zeropaid.com and you will find a list of over 80+ software types. I m pretty sure there is kazaa version for linux
Am I the only one who sees a distinct likeness between the pictures of Niklass Zenstrom and Bill Gates?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
No, it's mentioned in the article.
"Zennstrom, 36, who with his rectangular-frame glasses and a leather jacket looks like a younger, hipper version of Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates..."
"kazaalite" isn't s'posed to have ad or spyware, asuming that, one could gather that "kazaa" does.
Funny... joss didn't like my slashdot signature much either...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
I wish someone would hack/redistribute a linux version.. i detest wine and all the hoop jumping you have to do to get the dll's to make kazaa lite work with wine.
No todo lo que es oro brilla
Diet Kazaa defeats spyware and other nagging features, and is not "illegal" like kazaalite. www.dietk.com .
I find it hilarious that Kazaa cries over people using their software without their permission. pot, kettle, black?
The article regarding Kazaa demonstrates that if our system of intellectual property law further ossifies, we are at serious risk of innovation going overseas.
True creativity is generally the result of the liberal borrowing and reworking of earlier ideas--and contemporary ones--in a new fashion.
Locking up mindshare may cost the US its intellectual leadership in the long run.
The problem is that our legislative leaders are driven by money and a lazy reliance on lobbyists, not principle. Howard Coble is a perfect example of this. I have to say I'm embarrassed that he represents my congressional district. How he became head of an important congressional committee on IP--when he represents a manufacturing district that is losing textile and tobacco jobs--is either an example of the Peter Principle in operation, or a testiment to the fact that those who have a vested interest in the continuing drive to own all information don't want anyone who really understands the issues overseeing legislation.
I buy CD's that I like. But how can I tell if I like them unless I can hear them? They have listening stations for some CD's is stores, but you can't hear everything that way...
So when I run across music I like, I download the CD. If I like two songs or more, I usually buy it. If I only like the one song I heard, then I don't, and delete all the files - after all, why would I want a bunch of crappy music hanging around?
I use Limewire as a tool very much like radio to help me maximize my music purchases, not any of the reasons you listed. And that's the way it should be thought of in my mind. You can tape off radio or download music of dubious quality from Limewire. What's the diifference?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are you really afraid of a company that was sleeping the day they taught network engineering? Kazaa recently implemented a participation level system. What they neglected to notice is that it's completely impossible to prevent abuse of it given their network structure. The entire premise of this system was flawed from the phrase "What if we..." They obviously can't manage their client, so let someone who is capable do it. If they don't want their shit altered, they probably shouldn't have made it such a piece of crap in the first place. And it would also have helped to be there the day they passed out clues.
Trillian Pro comes with plugins for that. I have a digital eye on this newsfeed 24/7
Seriously. No, really seriously. You're better off trading wares on the street in front of the Hoover Building; at least you'd have a non-zero chance of not being observed. If Imperial Stormtroopers are beating down your door and you want to be sure the Good Guys get the password to your stolen Death Star plans, go on any IRC server anywhere and tell it to a random stranger on a private channel. It'll find its way home.
From the article:
In the past few months, many people have replaced
the original Kazaa software with Kazaa Lite, an ad-free version created by a hacker who isn't affiliated with a company and hasn't given out enough information about himself to be named in a lawsuit.
He calls himself "Yuri" and lives in yet another country -- Russia.
It's not this Yuri - I live in New Zealand - not Russia.
In Soviet Russia yada yada yada
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
I payed for my processor. and my electricity... and Kazaa paid to develop the program. I don't agree with their spyware, but your attitude is ridiculous.
A Matter of Motive?
The defendants, which in addition to Kazaa include Grokster and Morpheus, contend they are doing nothing wrong. They said their role is analogous to photocopy-machine makers, who aren't responsible for people who copy entire books, or to computer makers, who aren't responsible for people who use their machines for hacking.
"If you can be held responsible for everything your end users do with it, it becomes very hard to build any technology," said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents Morpheus creator StreamCast Networks Inc.
The entertainment industry argues that the Kazaa case is different because the key issue is motive. While some makers of technology truly aren't aware of or do not advertise the illegal aspects of what their technology can do, they say, the owners of these file-sharing systems do.
"Peer-to-peer services overwhelmingly are used for illegal copying and transmission of copyright material over the Internet, and actively encourage, assist and participate in this activity," said Allen N. Dixon, executive director of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents more than 1,500 music producers and distributors.
This was the part that I found really interesting. So, if this goes through, and the creators are responsible, does that mean that firearms manufacturers are in trouble? As we all know, a firearm has only one purpose, to shoot things. (Human, animal, or otherwise.) And what about those who manufacture the bullets?
Just food for thought.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
While we're at it, let's ban Colt semi-automatic pistols, Saab cars, and Hitachi VCR's, because they're all specific examples of technology that can be used for bad things.
Does anyone remember Fahrenheit 451?
Kazaa does have spyware built in, and it even tells you that it's in there if you read the EULA. I use Kazaalite, exact same client, spyware crap removed.
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
that we can sue microsoft for distributing software that is used for piracy? any google on "warez" will find hundreds of sites with copyrighted material (i.e., software, music, images, etc.). Since Internet Explorer is the most popular web browser, and software is illegally distributed to users of Internet Explorer, doesn't that mean that microsoft is in violation of anti-piracy laws such as the one that the RIAA is using to shut down file sharing products?
As for the food stamps bit, I have known quite a few military and ex-military over the years. What they tell me is that for a single person, the military life is the cat's meow. Sure, the pay sucks -- but the expenses are almost zilch for a single guy who's living on-base. One ex-marine told me that sure, he was only making $12,000 a year (back in 1982), but they gave him a $6,000 bonus to re-up and his expenses (since he was in on-base housing, getting meals at the base commissary, etc.) were almost non-existent.
Salaries since then have gotten ridiculous for experienced NCO's and enlisted. I know of one tanker driver who was offered a $60,000 signing bonus and $65,000 a year salary! One retired Army Rangers sergeant was offered $75,000 to re-up! This is hardly food stamp territory, especially when you consider that Uncle Sam provides food, shelter, and clothing during their time in service.
The ones who are on food stamps are the married officers. Being an officer is expensive because it's all about sucking up to your superiors under the "up or out" policy. Being married makes it even worse, especially if assigned to an expensive posting like Hawaii. First, you must make sure your children look presentable, well dressed, and have all the proper educational toys and etc., because you don't want your superior thinking that you are neglecting your children, that might be a black mark against you in the little black promotions book. There is too little base housing for married officers, so they end up having to get housing in the community. They get a housing stipend, but it is not sufficient in many markets. So junior officers end up in a real financial crunch.
That's also why the U.S. officer corps sucks so badly -- the way to get to the big bucks (up to six-figure salary) is to get promoted to the Pentagon, only the piss-ant ass-kissers get the promotions to get to the Pentagon, the good guys end up getting drummed out of the service eventually because they did their job instead of kissing asses to get promoted. We have the best enlisted and NCO corps in the world, but our officer corps is at best a mixed bag, with some shining examples of competence, and a helluva lot of mediocrity.
But then, that might just be the bias of my acquaintances, since (like me) they're all from the "white trash" class and thus are enlisted, not officers. Enlisted tend to have a rather jaundiced view of the officer corps, since in their opinion it's the officer corps that keeps assigning them impossible tasks (which, to their credit, the enlisted managed to pull the balls out of the fire most of the time).
Anyhow: I was probably too forceful at saying Bush *HAD* to torpedo the economy in order to get more people for the military. The ridiculous sums of money that the military is currently throwing around to recruit and retain various specialties shows that there IS another way to get the people you need to fight wars -- simply raise their salaries to the point where people are willing to take the risks in order to get the money. But still, only people from the lower classes routinely take the bait. You don't see many kids from middle class and upper class families volunteering. This has been true practically forever -- for example, during the U.S. Civil War virtually the whole U.S. Army enlisted corps was lower-class farmboys and immigrants right off the boat, and Vietnam was fought primarily by poor white trash from the South -- the priviliged classes have always found a way to avoid service even during times of a draft -- so an economy which threatens to eliminate the lower classes altogether obvious affects the ability of the military to recruit. An up economy is the worst thing that could happen to the U.S. military, and you can bet that there are generals in the Pentagon right now who are breathing a sigh of relief that the U.S. has not yet entered an economic recovery, because if you think they're having enough trouble now (having to throw so much money around to retain people), an "up" economy would make it even harder.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The Web was designed to work well with caching, particularly at organizational firewalls and peering points. It scales really well, and if you work inside a big company, or use a medium-sized ISP that has one, the first time somebody retrieves a given page, it's there for the next N users, and the bigger N is, the more chance that the first person got the page before Slashdot killed it. I've generally had much better success reading slashdotted sites from work, where I catch a cached version at the proxy, than from home. It requires a bit of computing horsepower at the firewall or gateway, but that's surprisingly cheap, and if bandwidth still costs you money, it can cut down significantly on costs when lots of people look at the same static content. It's obviously less useful for dynamic content, unless there's an easy way to tell if the dynamic content is the same for multiple viewers, but most web sites have content that's mostly static most of the time.
Akamai built a model that sells caching to content providers rather than viewers, which was technically interesting, and similar things have been done by their competitors such as AT&T, Digital Island, and Speedera, but if you're not doing a high-volume commercial site, and didn't expect to be slashdotted, it's the wrong model. Google's caching is fine, if Google catches it before Slashdot does and Slashdot actually points to it, but that's pretty rare. BitTorrent does a nice job of P2P caching and distribution of large files (its target application is things like CDs and big software distributions, and you'll find it used by some of the ETree Jam Band Music Download people - Bram's tested it for respectably-sized numbers of simultaneous downloaders (I think a few hundred, which is pretty big for CDs.)
If you look up "cache" in Google, the first entry you get is for Squid, which is also the first entry you get if you look up "squid".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks