Slashdot Mirror
FOSS Application Under Attack by Makers of KaZaa
Famatra writes "A story
from Zeropaid indicates that maker of
KaZaA, Sharman Networks, has sent a Cease
and Desist Letter to the maker of KCEasy because it interoperates with their
FastTrack network. The creator of KCeasy says on the
KCEasy website "I feel that inclusion of
FastTrack access with KCeasy is not worth a legal battle between Sharman and
myself". A similar issue was covered by the Slashdot story
Fight On Blizzard Vs. Bnetd Case on the right to reverse engineer to create
an interoperable network. Reverse engineering to be another on the list of
rights that have fallen by the wayside?"
The issue with bnetd is not "similar", except in extremely broad terms. The issue at hand wasn't hopping onto the Battle.net network, it was making their OWN network that used a reverse-engineered Battle.net engine.
/. editor.
Not only that, bnetd allowed people to bypass blizzard's CD-key check, which was bad sauce. So this guy's inclusion of FastTrack operability is allowing people to steal the chance to steal software/music? And what about KaZaA-lite? This makes my brain hurt.
Reverse-engineering may have fallen by the wayside, but it has next to nothing to do with f'n bnetd. Submitter must be applying to be a
Sharman Networks, has sent a Cease and Desist Letter to the maker of KCEasy because it interoperates with their FastTrack network.
I'm a bit suprised that the KCEasy authors have complied with the cease-and-desist this easily, since the above statement is not really true.
KCEasy is simply a front-end. KCEasy makes use of giFT, which is an interface program, connecting one or more front-ends to one or more protocol plug-ins. giFT then in turn makes use of the giFT-FastTrack plugin which actually communicates on the FastTrack network.
Anway, those of you using KCEasy might want to look into some of the other giFT front-ends, I don't know of any others for windows offhand but I'm guessing they are out there.
Googling for giFTcurs, appolon, giftui will bring up some for *NIX.
Perhaps the best example is their aquisition of patent #5,978,791, filed in 1997, which claims to cover the retrieval of a file across a network using a hash of the file's contents.
Set aside, for a moment, that this technique is completley obvious and has been around for decades (the earliest reference I can find is the Xanadu project from the early 90s - but I haven't looked very hard), and consider the fact that these guys could use this patent to effectively shut down almost anyone that comes up with a P2P app that doesn't have the funding to fight them in court (since most if not all modern P2P apps use this technique).
The bottom line is that companies such as Brilliant Digital Entertainment (the same nice people that were behind the adware that Kazaa is now famous for) are almost as much a threat to P2P as the better known people everybody loves to hate.
If anyone is interested, here is a more detailed article I wrote on the subject.
Kazaa Lite Resurrection. Basically a continuation of the KL project. If you MUST use Kazaa, use this.
http://mxp2.free.fr/P2P/KLR007.exe
For those of you unfamiliar with Kceasy, or windows in general, KCeasy is only a client for the giFT server http://gift.sourceforge.net/ . However, an additional plugin is required to access the Fasttrack network (Kazaa). Thus, I think that only the development of this plugin will cease, and that giFT and KCeasy will live.
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
Putting "the genie back in the bottle" is not something the patent holder is requried to do, it's simply a practical measure, but that's where the lawsuits come in.</IANAL>
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
There is one group of people that cannot be stopped from using information protected under trade secret law. These are people who discover the secret independently, that is, without using illegal means or violating agreements or state laws. For example, it is not a violation of trade secret law to analyze (or "reverse engineer") any lawfully obtained product and determine its trade secret.
EXAMPLE
XCEL glue is comprised of a trade secret protected formula. Phil, a chemist, analyzes the contents of XCEL glue, determines its composition and recreates the formula. Phil can legally use this information to make and sell his own glue.
The law in the USA is quite different in this respect and it could be that you'll be fried when attempting such a thing there. (Jon Johansen was acquitted in Norway for DeCSS, while those in the US that only linked to it were convicted.)
IANAL, if you want to try this at home see one (a lawyer) first.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
Most laws on copyright (e.g. in the UK the CDPA 1988) have _actual_ statutory provisions that allow reverse engineering for interoperability purposes. Of course, as was seen with IM systems, this rapidly becomes an arms race. Kazaa may have sent a C&D, but my strong belief is that it would not be enforceable.
The question is whether the guy who received it understands his rights or is just going to let himself be brow-beat.
(Disclaimer: This only applies when the patent process works the way it was intended . . . the silly patents of late may not apply)
As for intruding on a private network, the network is composed primarily of users, if I'm not mistaken. Still, companies like E-bay have been successful in using trespass (to chattles) to keep people off their servers if they make it clear that they don't want them on there.
"I feel that inclusion of FastTrack access with KCeasy is not worth a legal battle between Sharman and myself"
Couldn't someone, who is willing to fight Sharman Networks, fork KCeasy and then await another letter? Also if you want, you can still access the fasttrack network with a previous version here (0.11) I think it was 0.12 that was nerfed.
Nope, Kazaa is fully decentralized. They wouldn't want to run any services themselves, since that would line them up for a quick legal defeat, much like Napster. If they are running any services on their own machines, they certainly wouldn't admit it.
It is just finding a node to connect to that is hard to do without centralization, and as I recall, the client comes with a list of IPs to try first. If for some reason none of those IPs are running Kazaa, it starts scanning the 24.* domain (the cable internet providers) until it finds someone. There is no central server telling you where to find peers or super-nodes, and all routing of searches is done through super-nodes.
This *is* funny, but true as well. Few seem to have noticed that KaZaA is countersuing the music industry for 'hacking' into their network using an 'illegal' client. See here:
a .s ues.ap/
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/09/24/kaza
This coincided with the time Sharman cracked down on Kazaa Lite. I think they have to continue to crack down on unauthorized clients if they want to have a leg to stand on in court.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.