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Kazaa Backs Plan To Bill P2P Music Transfers
Darth Coder writes "From this article at The Age:
Kazaa has thrown its weight behind a plan to start billing song swappers for their music downloads.
The idea is to phase in a billing mechanism for peer to peer networks, such as Kazaa and Morpheus.
Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill."
and thus endeth Kazaa.
If they did that, how long would it be before another network popped up to replace them? Hours? I guess they forgot they aren't the ones who invented P2P...
I guess they also don't realize people use the network....because it's... free... Not free and it will go away.
Indeed. We don't pay to listen to the radio. We won't pay to use Kazaa. To hell with them anyway. Kazaa is just a spyware riddled virus factory. I want Napster back the way it was!
How ya like dat?
If there was ever an incentive to get people to lock down their wireless networks, this is it.
ISPs will probably also like the idea that it provides an incentive for people to not share their broadband connections with their neighbors.
Since all my KaZaA downloads end at about 4% anyway, will my payment be reduced 94%?
If I could make this sig kill you, I would.
P2P file sharing apps work for just that reason. People sharing on their own free will.
What is the reason to share if you are paying for downloads?
This sounds a lot like the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act), which added a surcharge onto the cost of tapes, divided among labels, songwriters and artists, under the assumption the blanks would be used to duplicate music.
I don't think you'll ever get people to pay for what they can get for free. Why would I pay $1 for what I can get for free three clicks away?
There is an interesting experiment going on where ex-members of Candlebox, (now KMHW) are giving away their next CD in return for label-like benefits ($$) by increased sales of their sponsors product. It's more like the sports model, where Shaq and Tiger make more money from Reebok and Buick than they do from their team/winnings.
Interesting alternative. But pay Kazaa though my ISP? Wouldn't that violate the "no internet taxes" law? Also, how would FTP, Usenet, and Freenet (among others) transfers be taxed?
It seems that what is happening is that labels are saying "hey this worked before, let's try it again!" Perhaps if more people considered new models like the KMHW one, taxing bandwidth would be unnecessary.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
Not every download of an MP3 is copyright infringment. It's doubtful the RIAA will make any distinction.
Frankly, I don't see why they should make people pay for a service they're not providing, especially when they don't know why somebody is downloading an MP3.
"Derp de derp."
Once you give something to the public, taking it away isn't very practical, especially when the technical ability to 'give back' something that has been taken away exists among many talented people. It might not have been legitimate to start the initial P2P network sharing of music (though I'm not here to debate ethics), but it's been done, has been widely adopted, and is seen positively by music consumers. It's not going to go away when fifty million people want it.
If the RIAA wants to do something useful to preserve profit, they should provide lower quality versions of the tunes available for download. Three things that could be beneficial/changing for this:
- It'll give people something to download and listen to, if their reason for being on P2P networks is to preview music before contemplating buying it. They get to hear it, and they might be willing to spend their hard-earned money for a better copy.
- It'll put lots and lots of poorer quality mp3s on the filesharing networks, making piracy of the CD rips more difficult. If you can't download it and you really want it, buy it.
- Lowering the price of CDs will cause consumers to actually preview and buy music "legitimately", rather than relying solely on mp3 downloads which can be awkward to play in cars and on larger stereos without a computer connection. Not everyone knows how to take mp3s and turn them into CDs.
The RIAA doesn't seem interested in doing this though, so the situation will continue in perpituity.Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Now, technically, if Kazaa wants to bill its users for downloads, shouldn't WE be getting paid? Kazaa itself only provides the login servers and the search mechanism. The overwhelming majority of the bandwidth and content provided by the service is paid for by the users themselves.
Why should I pay Kazaa when their service plays only a small part in the P2P network?
Sharman Networks does not pay my bandwidth. It does not hosts any music files. It does not need to run any server, except its web server. The only thing they give in the deal is their software, which they already sell. Can anybody give me a plausible reason for me to give them a cut of the money?
"Mr Lafferty predicted that within four years of the big record labels adopting the plan..."
Yea, but iTunes for PC launches next Thursday. Thus ends the MP3 "war". After that anyone who wants to pay can, and anyone who doesn't can go elsewhere. I don't see a crappy P2P service anywhere in the $ picture.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
"Initially payments would be by credit card, but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill."
Those idiots over at Sharman realize that the majority of their userbase doesn't have credit cards don't they? Also, this is not something parents are likely to just hand over their card for. "Sure Jimmy, you can download all you want and charge it to my card, AND open us up to potential lawsuits!" Nope, I can't picture that one happening any time soon.
The one thing I would be interested in seeing is if by paying....if you were to download a copywrited file illegally, and then get busted...would they indemnify you?
Would they be held responsible because they would be profiting from the distribution of copywrited material?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
The reason Kazaa appealed to people was because it had FREE music. How many of their user base will stick to Kazaa once it's a pay service? I'm sure once Kazaa makes the change there will be an instant replacement for it.
Sherman Networks seems to think that users will just stick with Kazaa because they know its name and they don't want to switch because Kazaa is nice and familiar. Their buisness plan just isn't viable. For example if I wanted to download a song on Kazaa I would get more than 100 matches. I choose to download one and it turns out to be a hoax, but its too late. Its already been charged to my bill. If they want to have any hope at success then they need to switch from decentralised to centralised, but of course that would defeat the purpose. So then they would have to introduce a rating system so users could tell if it was a hoax, and they'd have to figure out a way to eliminate wrongly name songs.
I personally believe then that Kazaa's only choice is to stick to giving their adware-riddled software away for free.
Doing something like this may persuade the RIAA to back off of Kazaa, giving them a year or more of safety from lawsuits, as they are "preparing" a pay per download service...
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
I would suggest if you have a wife/gf, you are paying in inumerable ways. "Oh yes honey, I'd much rather go to the flower show than play video games and drink beer with my friends."
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Ummm... someone gets a virus on my box, then convinces my ISP that I dowloaded a whole bunch of crap, then I get a huge bill, then I have to prove I didn't download?
No Thanks.
If that's going to work, the ISP had d*** well better be sure they are filtering packets on a per user basis, so that I can't download anything through the Kazaa port unless I really am a registered Kazaa user, and they had better make sure that if "I" try to do that they flag it as a virus and not a new signup or something. No other way.
Look.
The ISP billing right now is "pure". I get billed for connectivity and that's it. The last thing I need is for my connection to turn into something like the POTS line, where kids in the house could "dial" the equivalent of a 900 number.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The ISP would also need a cut from Kazaa, since they're taking a portion of the bandwidth hit.
If there's anything that raises my hackles a bit, it's the concept of building a business model on illegal behavior as a means of doing legitimate business down the road. That's the opposite of the way things are done in this country.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
It is apparent that we should start separating concerns as soon as possible. If we proceed along these lines, with a kazillion ad hoc contracts and agreements, everything is going to come in to a babelesque and screeching halt.
Time for a few RFCs.
Everybody should do one thing well. Music licensing companies do one thing well -- collect money and offer licenses. P2P services do one thing well, facilitate distribution of content and sharing of information.
I can conceive of a few things we could do to facilitate it.
Imagine a license server protocols for license servers, which are capable of tranmitting a license, song-by-song, that permits the licensee to receive from ANY party a file representing that song. Presumably, the licensee can be given a token and authentication means that a prospective filesharer can check, perhaps by interaction with the license server, which then permits the file-sharer to transmit that song at will.
Now, conceive of various ways to engage in lawful commerce of great tunes:
1) enhance p2p services to perform license checks, so that when a person seeks to receive a tune, it will first have to authenticate the right to receive it. now, p2p can operate completely legally and in the clear -- and evolve to provide whatever value it can; and
2) vendor servers, either on the web, or through applications like iTunes, can provide super-duper interactions with users, combining and putting together tunes and samples, and then sell the tune to a customer (if unlicensed, sell the license -- if licensed, perhaps charge a bit because of special quality encoding or whatever).
Thus, we can always check to see if all of our tunes are licensed, and we can always check to see if the recipient can get our license.
Clearly kinks should be worked out, but I would WAY prefer to see the internet community get together to figure out the right way to do this -- rather than see yet another distribution infrastucture built up to protect yet another ridiculous hunk of turf.
This approach should be VERY attractive to music sources, making it possible to collect real revenues almost immediately, and from a kazillion purchase sources, without worrying too much about technology or distribution, and without having to negotiate with each and every individual prospective vendor -- by making it possible to create lightweight music servers that comply with the law, we make it easy for everybody to get legal.
This would be a good thing.
I agree completely. I actually feel guilty PAYING for music. So I don't do it. Fuck the RIAA.
I'd like to purchase some Frog Brigade or moe. CDs, but not if a single cent is going to the RIAA.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Well, I 'have' six or eight big boxes full of old Jazz, Classical, and popular LPs and 78's that I've accumulated recently. I haven't gotten around to playing much of it at all yet, but I know that I 'have' it and it won't go away because some 'service' ceases to exist or I decide I don't need an ISP bill any longer.
Go ahead and be a 'consumer' if that's what you're into. I'm glad somebody in the past 'had' all these records. Some of it is damn fine music to listen to, and it wouldn't have made it's way to me if they'd just listened to the radio.
A Good Intro to NetBS
A major problem with Kazaa is that it only hashes the first 32K of any file. Any glitches after that go undetected. This is why I won't be sorry to see Kazaa lose out to Overnet, or some other network which hashes the whole file.
No one in their right mind would pay money on a per-download basis for peer-to-peer access. The cost of developing a client-server system, in which you know you're getting some standard of quality, is fairly low when amortized over the millions upon millions of downloads that you'd have, so the fee would be only slightly higher for the same royalties. If the labels were smart, they'd read the writing that's been on the wall for the past few years and actually do this. The only possible justification for allowing a fee-based pay-per-download would be that people who get crappy downloads would end up paying again, which is not something the labels want, since customer frustration over pricing is what got them into this mess in the first place.
Of course, it is possible they're just stupid.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
... but in the future downloads would be automatically detected and a charge added to the monthly internet service provider bill.
hahahha. Sorry, but am I the only one that just completely fell over laughing after reading that? Its NOT going to happen.
1. People wont allow this to happen. Never. Not in a million years. People wont accept an ISP that just charges them for certain things on the internet. People will have the service turned off if possible. Then what? Will the isp stop them from sharing files?
2. They wont be able to organize every internet service provider in the world to accept their charges
3. Open proxies and hacked boxes. When you see people with tens of thousands of botnets of hacked boxes and lists of thousands of open proxies, this billing system wont work.
4. Why should kazaa get money? They arent really providing the networking power or files, the people are. Real p2p networks like gnutella just cut out the middle man and will always be free.
bah
How is this any better than buying your music straight from a web-based service like the iTunes Music Store, PressPlay, etc.? At least with those services, you have some assurance that you're getting what you pay for. With Kazaa and other P2P services, you don't really have any idea what you're getting or even who you're getting it from. Nobody cares much right now specifically because you're not paying for the stuff you download, but that'll change when the download costs you a buck and the quality turns out to be crappy, or when the file ends up being something completely different from what you wanted.
Anonymous P2P file swapping cannot support a pay model unless there's some way to trust the people you're swapping with. I can think of two ways to do that: 1) something like PGP's web of trust concept; 2) some sort of centralized system for rating users the way eBay does. But PGP's web of trust doesn't really seem to have taken off in any big way, and a centralized authority negates a lot of the advantages of P2P in the first place.
Frankly, I don't think that the record companies will go for this either, since there's no mention of DRM, and they have no assurace that you'll actually get what they produce instead of some modified version which they can't control and which might make them look bad.
No, it's exactly how things were done. In the 19th C the US didn't recognise foreign IP rights, to allow its industry to catch up with Europe. That included copyright, so authors like Charles Dickens were screwed by US publishers who just reprinted their books with no payment to him. Only when the US started to want to sell IP, that's when you got sanctimonious about "respecting" it.
I don't give a fuck who owns the copyright. IP law is so fucked up as to be irrelevant. I would like to give a reasonable amount of money to my favorite artists, so I go to concerts. I wouldn't mind giving a bit to the artists for the digital music I listen to, but FUCK THE RIAA!
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Leave my ISP billing alone. I know what my Internet access costs each month and that is the way it should stay. As soon as one charge hits the bill, everybody is going to want in and Internet ISP billing begins to look like the mess that is our phone bill today. --No thanks.
Mp3 music is crap at all but the highest quality. Most of the encodes you find on Kazaa are poor. Downloads are iffy as well. Add this up and what do we find? Millions of people downloading bunches of crap music.
Go back a few years ago. FM is crap, unless you take the time to really make the most of it. This is a lot like spending tons of time on Kazaa looking for only the best encodes. People all have tape decks. Add it up and you have millions of people making crappy copies of music.
Didn't hurt things then, does not now.
Just for the record, I no longer use P2P for music. (I will still get other things however.) Got tired of the crap. Funny, I got tired of the crap taping FM as well.
How to trade? With friends via SSH. Nice and private, not too much distribution. In fact, this form of distribution is not too much different from people trading discs.
I would be more inclined to encourage this, but I am not sure we can put a centralized payment scheme on a decentralized service in a fair manner. These jokers should have taken the first Napster deal. They would be making a lot of money right now and would own a popular name. It's too late now.
So will all mp3 downloads be taxed? How? What if the creator wants to provide the content? Do I still need to pay for it? If I am paying for one kind of download, why not others? If downloads begin to be charged according to their type at the ISP, what exactly am I paying for? Will general Internet access get cheaper? Who pays for the new ISP billing systems? Me --you?
This is not the answer. At this point, the answer is marketing. Clean honest marketing of music with added value services and content attached.
Basically, these folks need to earn their keep. Since we all know distribution is cheap, why do they need to make the money they do? Hell, it was cheap with CD media. As far as I am concerned, they have been making far too much already.
They could link music downloads with all sorts of things to make plenty of money. They could make the downloads worth downloading as Apple clearly shows.
What to do with Kazaa? Not sure, but I don't want to pay for something I do not use.
Blogging because I can...
Who the hell uses this shit anyway? You'd have to be an idiot to choose Kazaa from among the other choices out there - why would you want to use software from a company that knowingly installs malware & snoopware on your machine? Kazaa is crap.
It's got a modular architecture - it's got different frontends (I prefer the ncurses frontent, it's very fast); and various backend modules (one for the Gnutella network, and even one for FastTrack, the Kazaa protocol).
Even if Naptser was still around the way it was originally, I would still prefer gift.
of all the Kazaa users figuring out this "opennap" thing...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Besides the obvious user reaction about this, I think it should be pointed out that they do not understand the record industry's position at all. The execs at Sharman Networks believe that the RIAA and their contributors only want to legitimize music distribution on the Internet.
They could not be more wrong. The record industry does not care if the artists get paid. It cares if it occupies the lucrative middle-man position in music distribution. If they were to do this deal with Kazaa, they would be sharing their monopoly rents with another greedy group of execs whould could completely usurp their power over their golden egg laying hen. The music industry wants to be the only distributor of music on and offline and in any alternate universe that remains to be discovered.
Therefore, this plan, however wicked and evil to any reasonable person concerned with freedom, is twice as unpalatable to the monopolists working in the offices of the RIAA or any organization that actively contributes money to it.
Obviously, this also means that the execs at Sharman Networks are an untrustworthy ally in the struggle for freedom against the tyranny of ignorance created by copyright law. While that should not have been a surprise, it sounds like more alternative and easy to use clients for serverless P2P networks need to be created (and fast) as insurance from the potential loss of such an important information distribution system.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Right, so will I get guaranteed high-quality files (160+ kbps for MP3, 96+ for Ogg) and consistent fast downloads? I doubt it.
If I download a file, say 'Pulsedriver - Galaxy.mp3' and it turned out to be 3 and a half minutes of static would I still get charged? Probably.
If I make my own music and people download it from the service, will I get a share of the profits? Can you see it? Nah, didn't think so.
This idea is DOA. Plus the fact that hosting a 4Mb MP3 these days costs very little, and the provider gets much better control over the downloads. What's the point?
The problem with P2P has always been the asymmetry between people willing to share and those willing to download. Downloading is far less risky because it does not require you to present yourself to others on an extended basis. You are thus are less likely to be discovered by the enforcers of the copyright laws and to be subjected to litigation. You also do not have to give up your bandwidth to others as an alturistic gesture.
Ultimately this leads to the classic "Tragedy of the Commons" in which a few are exploited by the many.
The only cure it to come up with some sort of compensation system that rewards those willing to share. The MoJo Nation project was an attempt at this.
..... to use this encrypted, cross-platform P2P file sharing software instead!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
To be truly effective, this system would also have to keep track of which files you've already downloaded, so that users don't just download and "preview" songs whenever they want to hear them. It would also mean that the Kazaa folks would have to work to make sure that only one "official" copy (preferably high quality) of a song exists, because otherwise it would be easy for a user to just keep grabbing different rips of the same song and "previewing" them.
--- Bwah?
I want Napster back the way it was!
Are you kidding? 90% completed - then transmission error
No Movies, No Books, (ok, no virus)
No multiple sources?
I DON'T want NAPSTER - not the old one, not the nw one...
Kazaa Lite is fine by me.
how long until
Fh
Nah.. Im still laughing. The people wont let it happen. As soon as my ISP informs me, Im going to switch ISPs. Im NOT going to be liable.
...'. How many people do you think will cancel? How many people will bitch and complain when the ISP tries to bill them and then cancel? Theres absolutely no way they can get that working.. ever.
By the way, I work at an ISP. I saw the huge chaos caused by the blaster and welchia worms. Just think if all those computers started accessing something which automatically charged their account and then Kazaa had a huge bill for the ISP to pay. The ISP isnt going to like this either. They arent going to tell their customers 'oh by the way, were going to start charging you when you access the following:
Hence the spyware in kazaa.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein