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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."
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.
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
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
You make it sound like Napster actually went to court and was found guilty by a judge and a jury -- when in fact, they never got to the trial stage at all.
You don't have to be right when you have enough money to sue the other guy into bankruptcy.
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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.