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Kazaa Says On Track to Be Most-Downloaded Program
Cody Watkins writes "Reuters has a story about Kazaa surpassing ICQ as the most downloaded piece of software (according to C|Net Download.com). 'As of late Thursday, the Kazaa Media Desktop application -- a file-sharing software that has drawn the wrath of the music industry by enabling its users to swap songs for free -- had been downloaded 229,150,955 times, as measured by Download.com.'"
Seriously, this is really bad news. I'm pretty sure that the extremely easy access to software for windows is one of the main reasons why so many use the crap instead of free/open source software.
And there could be serious copy protections, but I get the feeling that many software companies WANT their software to be pirated (by home users) so the same people want to use say MS Office or Photoshop at their workplace.
I call for better international laws against piracy, but I admit I've no idea how/if it would work.
Ciryon
Cheap reseller hosting and individual accounts.
Well damn! If Kazaa is the most downloaded, then AdAware will have to be the second most downloaded to get rid of all the spyware from Kazaa!!!
:)
Amazing, the most downloaded piece of software in history has spyware written all over it
Or did c|net mean Kazaa LITE?
I sell out to The Man every day.
I wonder how many of the people who downloaded Kazaa a using it for legal purposes. Peer 2 Peer is a great idea, to bad so many misuse it.
I think the number of Kazaa download just tells us that there are more criminals than we think.
Kazaa is distributed free. It is not being pirated. So why are you talking about software being pirated and companies wanting it to be pirated?
He's talking about people using Kazaa to download pirated software such as Photoshop. If people couldn't download Photoshop with Kazaa, they might use The Gimp instead, which would be bad for Adobe, because some of those people who pirate Photoshop at home wind up buying it at work. If they used The Gimp for free at home, maybe they'd use The Gimp at work too.
(Yes, I know, The Gimp isn't as good as Photoshop and is completely unacceptable to some, but it may be good enough for most people.)
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
The last time I checked, there were about 3 million users connected.
Why is this number so much lower? Obviously people in different time zones probably sign on at different times, but even considering that, the number seems low when compared to what download.com is reporting.
Is this a sign that perhaps a lot of people have trouble getting kazaa to work (firewalls, schools/ISPs blocking it, etc)?
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I was hoping by now, or at least the near future there would be a larger migration to software with open protocols like Emule or Shareaza using gnutella and whatever the edonkey protocol is called.
I've found Shareaza to be almost as good as kazaa in regards to variety, but slower on the download end because of either the lack of a decent userbase or the protocols still need tweaking.
I think we might be seeing, or already have seen, a big rift in content. RIAA/Mainstream stuff fills the Kazaa networks while less mainstream stuff is begining to appear on open protocol networks as people with a clue are migrating away from the spyware infested world of commercial P2P.
Got a popular file? Put up a magnet/gnutella/ed2k link somewhere and tell people to download a non-commercial client if they want access to the "good stuff." Sure, there's no accounting for taste, but a little effort could undermine and help produce a mass divestment from Kazaa and the Sherman networks.
The first reason Kazaa destroys all the other file-sharing methods is that it has all the users. The number one rule of P2P: More users equal more files. Sounds simple but a lot of people miss the obviousness of it.
Most Open-P2P services lose this battle immediately by not interoperating with each other. And every new Open-P2P implementation just further fragments the available user and file base into ever smaller fiefdoms. Not to mention the Open-P2P user base is not the average user, but the super user.
The other place the Open-P2P implementations really miss the boat is in the default user setup. The default settings of Kazaa share all of the files a user downloads with other Kazaa users. It also defaults the user to allow unrestricted downloads at unlimited speed from his machine. Sure, these settings can be changed, but that's not the point. Kazaa caters to the least common denominator computer user, truth is, that's most users.
But most Open-P2P implementations shoot themselves in the foot from the instant they are downloaded. They default the user to "not" share all downloaded files, then let them choose the transfer speeds. They also add in tons of "features" and settings that mystify the average user. Average users don't know from nodes and really don't want to know. They want to get files and not have to mess with settings. Kazaa works out of the box, while most Open-P2P implementations take a lot of wrangling just to get working. But the real key is that most users never change their default settings. So most Kazaa users share everything they download, thus there are always more files-per-user on Kazaa's system than any of the Open-P2P systems.
Then there's IRC and the Newsgroups. IRC has been DDOS'd into irrelevance and even when it wasn't, sitting in file que's for days on end was not my idea of fun. Newsgroups are still with us, for now. But many ISP's offer very spotty service and as binary use grows, I suspect even our dear old newsgroups may come under heavy fire from the MPAA/RIAA.
Bottom line, having tried all the various flavors and methods of file accumulation, Kazaa kicks everything else's ass. Using Kazaa-lite and a handful of Kazaa specific search and download enhancement utilities, there's almost nothing I can't find on the service. The Open-P2P providers aren't even close.
The only way any Open-P2P will get close to Kazaa is by emulating it, then bettering it. If I were building an Open-P2P system to try and beat Kazaa, first I'd copy it, the back-end, the front-end, the "lack" of settings, everything. Then I'd concentrate on features designed to get around all forms of ISP restrictions and MPAA/RIAA manipulations. I'd implement things like port swapping, encryption, IP spoofing, tunneling, reputation systems, cloaking shared data to elude packet shapers and anything else I could think of. I'd make it all automatically activate when necessary and have all the college users overnight. All those college users with all that bandwidth would give the system the inertia it would need to succeed. Once you have inertia, you have the files, and when have the files, the users will come. And when the MPAA/RIAA really start moving against the ISP's and Kazaa, a system like this could take Kazaa's crown.