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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.'"
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All products go through a life-cycle from pioneer, early-adopter, maturity, late-adopter. Kazaa is already in its late-adopter phase.
Question: what are the early-adopter P2P products today? These will be the market leaders tomorrow, and they will be: open source, portable, secure against worms and attacks, silent.
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I thought that record belonged to Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson...
You'll note that the origin for this story is CNet, and that the metric that they are using is download.com (owned by CNet). Since Kazaa.com actually links straight to download.com, it's not surprising that they have the highest numbers on download.com.
Over 335 million unique RealPlayer/RealOne Player registrations have been received by RealNetworks.
Other software makers (who don't use download.com) probably also have numbers higher than Kazaa.
Cydoor and BDE could soon announce that they are still beating Kazaa for the title of "Most-Downloaded Program", since they are also installed with many non-Kazaa programs as well.
(Memory a little hazy here! Fact nazis, prepare your guns!)
Kind of like how Doom was the most downloaded program ever durings its era...except for the unzip program that they distributed with the installer.
Anyways: Over 200 million spyware installations just from one program. That is a pretty scary thought, isn't it?
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
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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.
What about Macromedia Flash Player? As it runs on most web browsers, I believe that the number of downloads would be quite substantial, rivalling Kazaa. Consider the number of Flash-enabled sites out there.
How about free web browsers? MSIE? Mozilla? Opera? Programs installed via Windows Update? Quicktime Player?
They should also check with the folks at Kazaa Lite, the Kazaa version without all those ads. Including this version they've probably already passed ICQ. Unless of course they already accounted for the lite version.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
"I call for better international laws against piracy, but I admit I've no idea how/if it would work."
KaZaA is just a tool. Sure it's used by many (I'd say most) for downloading copyrighted works. But that doesn't mean we need to make new international laws to ban it. What's next? FTP? HTTP? If copyright holders (mostly the music industry and soon the movie) really want to stop this "theft", they need to take major steps in the right direction to fix the broken relationship they have with consumers.
The music industry can start by not charging $24 for a crap-ass CD with one good song. If CD's were $5 a pop, I'd buy hundreds, not 1 to 5 a year. At least when I only spent $5 on a CD I wouldn't feel like a sucker when there is only one good song.
Further, it is rumored that viruses or worms can be transmitted via sound files on Kazaa. I can't prove this in my humble capacity as a repairman. However, I would feel subjecting my computer to their site would be like sending the poor machine to a cyber orgy without condoms
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
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
In other news kazaalite was beaten by the following program titled "Good evening, as you all know the royal family of Nigera is considered one of the wealthiest......."
http://saveie6.com/
mldonkey supports edonkey, bittorent, kazaa, overnet, napster, and probably other protocols that I forget, in one single program, that runs from the command line, on many platforms (linux x86, osx, bsd, even win32 !) as for GUI, you have a pletora of frontends. While this might not be a new p2p system, it's by far the most convenient way to download stuff from many different sources... mldonkeyworld
Music is the language of the heart, the sound of the soul. -Joe Satriani
But, you see, OSS for Windows is catching on! Some of the most popular programs on Sourceforge are win32. Everything that you need for spyware-free commercial-free RIAA-free music and video sharing is available there, on sf.net. Here's a sampling:
CDEX - a great MP3 ripper. Use with LAME for great, free rips.
eMule and DC++ - very popular P2P clients
BitTorrent - For large file sharing (movies, etc)
VirtualDub - for video format conversion (DiVX, VCD, etc)
Audacity - multi-track audio editor
I could go on and on. Look at this list and all the win32 apps there.
RIAA senior vice president for business and legal affairs Matthew Oppenheim has said: "Stealing is stealing. Piracy contributes to terrorism and eats away from the profits of the music industry, driving up costs for everyone." Industry analysts worry that in the future, software makers will not be the sole target of the behemoth's notoriously aggressive copyright defenses. Some have speculated that vendors of popular operating systems on which these software run may be next, and that hardware manufacturers may not be far behind. One of our anonymous correspondents wondered: "what happens if they decide to outlaw the internet?"
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.
Exactly. Why do you think Microsoft lets me and every other student at my university purchase just about every title of their software for $5? It's all psychological, my friend.
I'd have thought windows would be the most downloaded program (in order to make Kazaa work for instance) ...
theefer
They may not do much advertising for themselves, but holy shit, they certainly DO do a lot of advertising.
As Kazaa comes bundled with multiple spyware programs this also gives you an idea of how many computers are infected with its programs, mind boggling really
remember Kazaa is just a vehicle for this software as their revenue model is based on the user installing it, i feel sorry for all the support desks that are going to have to deal with all the problems it brings and the security implications when someone/thing exploits it, imagine how many corporate systems are infected and the implications that could bring for security in the workplace now that other private companies have direct access to their data bypassing firewalls etc (by using http port 80 to communicate) i mean Windows isnt exactly the most secure system around but these applications have made this so much worse and it can only be a matter of time until someone develops a *nix port of spyware.
The sooner they are out of buisness the better for the user, but these numbers prove that it isnt going to happen unless virus companies decide to pull their fingers out and target these applications which are probably more destructive and intrusive than most viruses.
According to the virus scanner companies stance , if you release a worm,virus etc with an EULA you are exempt from detection and are free to extract any information you like from the users/hosts system for financial gain
(regardless of what laws exist to protect the users data in his/her country)
luckily a few good people have addressed this problem but as their software isn't as widely known as the big boys (Symantec,Mcafee,Sophos etc) and doesn't come bundled as standard by pc manufacters (as a lot of virus protection does) i fear this situation can only get worse until the users computer becomes an un-usable device
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.
Kazaa is one of the most scalable software I ever seen, downloaded 229,150,955 times, assuming only 10% of the people are online at a time, that is 22 million online users searching its database... makes you wonder if their advertisment business can buy them all that bandwidth and equipment.
I would love to have a look at their p2p protocol, actually i think it should become an RFC.
That's only because people have to redownload it as they keep trashing their windows systems with Kazaa and all the spyware and malware it brings despite all the junk that people will actually download.
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p.s.: Ad-Aware helps, too.
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The article and the claim state that Kazaa is on track to become the most downloaded free software ever, not the most downloaded piece of software ever. I think Microsoft bug fixes have that base covered.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
If I were to download Photoshop with Kazaa, spend time learning how to use it, and enhancing my job prospects I would quite likely end up joining a company who would buy a Photoshop license for me to use. So my Piracy would have directly resulted in economic gain for Adobe, why the hell they should be bothered about the everyday Joe dling it I don't know.
I agree with you about Gimp, it's good but Photoshop is better and it's nic eto know that Codeweavers have made some updates in crossover so that Photoshop can now be run without having to buy a windoze license.
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I beleive I remember hearing at the Quicktime Live conference that the title statement was accurate.
It is interesting to see all the records Quicktime has.
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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.