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New Kazaa Lite Protects Identity
Denver_80203 writes "Found this story about the new Kazaa K++ 2.4.0 and it's new sister program which claim to protect your identity while sharing files. Any of you folk know how legit this could be? We all knew it wouldn't be long... is this the war or just another battle?"
Hurrah! It's about frickin' time that this came out... Now let's just pray the developers didn't make a deal with the RIAA and are sellign our identities to them with this new version. So, what's the verdict on it, fellow geeks?
That's what I needed : something to hide my fake identity
Just in time for the next move in this move-countermove chess game. . .
Who wants to bet that the news won't report that filesharing has jumped back up %15, and then some with the advent of this.
I don't know if Kazaa K++ can hide your identity, but what I do know is this: Kazaa K++ is an excellent program. It is so much better than vanilla Kazaa. No ads, spyware, many cool features make it a great program.
#include "sig.h"
From what I have seen, it just has a list of ips of law enforcement and record industry computers. Not a very fool proof method, but better than a tin foil hat.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Well K++ edition bascially contains a wrapper on the Kazaa application so that one can modify the memory accessed by Kazaa easily, and thus those who use K++ edition automatically has the K-Lite Master (1000) ranking on Kazaa. Its simply a matter of manipulating the values at the memory address.
I would think that extending on that principle, they could write protect or just dump gabarge into the memory space where idenities are stored.
Of course, I don't have the K++ source, so how would I know, it's just a theory.
for pushing us to come up with ingenous ways to screw them. When the heck will they wake up and realize whatever they try they can't subdue filesharing. Why not just make it easier and rake in some money (read profit. anything more than 0 is...). sheesh. is the org run by a bunch of retards or what?
Both Kazaa K++ and Kazaa Lite, two very similar modifications to the Kazaa file-sharing system by Sharman Networks, now contain hooks to the PeerGuardian database of IP addresses
Database of IP addresses is going to protect us ?
Cmon now. What prevents RIAA from using anonymous IP blocks that they can purchase legally for use?
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
From the article, all this seems to do is some basic housekeeping to ensure that your search history is not stored, and interact with a database of IP addresses known to be used by the RIAA
:)
This doesn't seem to be anything revolutionary, or, interesting.
If the services went through some kind of anonymizer, that would be cuter. Of course, the bandwidth demands would be huge.
What may be an alternative is to produce a collaborative download system. I request a download, which is proxied by another random user (provided I return the favor). Even if you had RIAA sniffers, all that could be proven is that MY IP address downloaded something, but not the ultimate destination of the data.
Of course, if I have illegal music on my PC, then I am still screwed. But I leave solving that problem to the reader
I already protected my identity. I am John Doe at 123 Abc St. My email is JohnDoe@kazaa.com. How could they possibly find me?
*knock* *knock*
Umm.. yeah.. I'll finish this post la.. *ouch* Not so tight with the handcuffs.
The new feature that blocks users from seeing ALL files, however, is VERY smart. All 50 million users (pulled that number out of thin air, should be close) now appear to be sharing only the ONE file you searched for. Makes hiding in the sea of users fruitful.*
* Disclaimer: Don't steal music. :)
mldonkey is pretty good and has Fast Track (meaning Kazaa) support.
Begun, this copyright war has.
Dude, You seriously need to cut down on Star Wars.
(Star Wars, you seriously need to cut down on.)
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but UDPP2P does not seem to be "promising".
I've checked the web site. It basically says "we broadcast all the queries and if someone has the file we meet each other by using secret codes hidden in those queries".
A peer-to-peer network that does queries in terms of network-wide broadcast is always doomed to fail. Gnutalla failed (and was redesigned) the same way. Even Novell NetWare was unable to scale because of SAP (service advertising protocol).
Nevertheless, the web site says "peers will somehow know each other". This is also a big problem in P2P networks. -- No design only big words.
Anyways, if I were you, I'd use freenet. It's anonymous, and it works much better than the scheme explained on the web site.
May I point you to giFT-FastTrack?
Let me get this straight: the author of the article says he installed software that blocks communication with RIAA servers, then claims that the site couldn't be reached.
Umm...
No one has ever fired for blaming Microsoft.
Matters not what this message says, be modded +5 funny it will.
It aint gonna work. The reason is simple : The rules have changed. Distribution of music is now much easier and cheaper than before and a large chunk of the old distribution network is *no longer necessary*. This is totally irrelavent as to weather or not this new distribution model is legal or not. It is happening. It probably cant be stopped(I mean the software industry tried and failed thru the 80s/early 90s)
So now the RIAA have several choice.
1. Try to roll back the technolgy that enables this new distribution channel. This is possible but not very likey.
2. Use more draconian law enforment techniques. Posibble but I mean whata ya gonna do... start sending colleage kids to prison ? For what stealing a Brittney track ? Is this what we want ?
3. Try to adapt to the new medium. Be creative and come up with new profit channels that take advantage of the medium.
Personally I dont think 3 is very likely either... I think RIAA is going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
The thing is, the RIAA has subsisted all along on being the middleman. They don't really DO anything. Sure they promote new albums.......oh wait, no they don't, they have ad agencies and their ilk to do it. I know, they press cds......oh wait, no they don't, they outsource it to record pressing companies.
The RIAA(meaning the record companies) only exists because the artists and the consumers haven't really questioned their existence. Artists stand to make a lot of money without the RIAA in place. Why not make all music free? If you want to brave the p2p networks for different quality mp3s and such help yourself. OR, you can pay $5 directly to the artist to download the cd from their website.
Artists can make MORE than enough money from licensing their music(think movie scores, and commercial soundtracks), and live performances. Without having to pay large portions of their income to the record companies, artists stand to make a LOT more money, once the RIAA is gone.
The artists you see fighting p2p etc, are the ones that NEED the RIAA to survive. I'm talking about the sell-out corporately manufactured groups that wouldn't last if the RIAA wasn't there to spam their name all over the radio and mtv every 10 minutes. Those are the only artists that NEED the RIAA, and if we lose them, frankly, here is one slashdot poster that could care less.
It's not that I mind paying for music, but isn't it about time for a paradigm shift? Natural selection has provided an easier and better way to get new music and the record companies are a dying breed.
I have a couple thousand mp3's on my hard drive that I didn't pay for, but I also have heard a lot of new artists that I will jump at the chance to see live, or buy merchandise from.
I'm a bit of an aspiring dj, and I buy records from artists that I've heard and liked through p2p. If it wasn't for p2p those artists wouldn't have had my purchase.
The problem doesn't lie with the consumer.
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
Why don't we put a EULA in the new Kazaa programs, which say something like this:
I don't belong to any organization related to RIAA.... I won't use any information obtained from the use of this program, or the study of the way this programs works, to sue others users of this or related program... I don't suck
And then require, from some point in the near future, that everyuser of kazaa has accepted this EULA
IANAL, and I don't know how an EULA like this would stand in a court, but should work for a time at least.
In the worst case, if the EULA doesn't stand in a court, it would provide a good case against crazy EULA's
It's a win-win!!
Pretty much works the same way as Security Through Obscurity if you ask me.
Although it blocks users from browsing your files and blocks queries from known malicious IP's It would not stop the RIAA from downloading from you from a not yet known malicious IP, Proxy, wierd "Save the Music Industry" Campaingn where they pay you to hunt down P2P Users, ETC.
Basicially if they do a search for "St. Anger" on Kazaa, Download it, and verify that it is "St. Anger" they have an IP going to somewhere. And that IP now has a big red Bullseye on it whether it's a proxy, a user or whatever else that could obscure your idenity.
The only way to truthfully be anonymous is to be encrypted, swarmed and stored all over the place by hundreds of users like Freenet does it, and even that gives them an IP to paint a target on with the excuse that even though you dont know what your PC is sending thats no excuse to infringe. Although the courts would have to decide that.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
This is a really good idea. You can extend it to make it even better though.
Part of the good thing about the erasure-correcting code approach is that if you use a big enough very low-rate code (although its quite tricky to do that with good CPU and memory efficiency) then you can have downloading from several servers concurrently without having to tell each server which parts of the files you want (just send random parts of the encoded data and theres a low chance of overlap from multiple servers).
Now, here's the clever part: you use IP Multicast with multiple sources spoofing the same sender address. This means that (a) you save quite a lot on bandwidth since many P2P clients will be downloading the same source file (this is important since a big reason many ISPs and Universities have banned P2P is the bandwidth); and (b) it is MUCH harder (not impossible, but hard enough if you are not an ISP or a router at the very end) to find out who either the source or the destination is.
I don't know if anyone has thought of this idea and tried to implement it. Someone should; maybe I'll give it a go when I have time.
PS. There is a sparser and more CPU-efficient solution than VanderMonde matrices, look for Low-Density Parity Check codes.