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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.'"
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
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.
Kinda works under wine too
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.
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 prefer eMule to Kazaa. A SourceForge project and an excellent P2P application with much better functionality than Kazaa. It has pretty speedy update cycles too, they aim for about 1 to 3 weeks between updates and are so far keeping up with that goal well. It's of course free and completely void of spyware.
:)
http://www.emule-project.net/
The current version, 0.28b, is much more mature than one might think from the version number.
Ports of eMule (Windows application) are under development: lMule (Linux) and xMule (OSX). See their forums for more information.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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.
Happy fortnighty format C: everyone.
p.s.: Ad-Aware helps, too.
-- I love the smell of Blue Screens in the morning.
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