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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."
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
Yes, it still has spyware, but Kazaa lite is kazaa without spyware. You can get it at Kazaalite.com.
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.
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.
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.
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.