Secret Kazaa Documents Revealed in Court

Dan Warne writes "A fascinating range of Kazaa's internal documents were revealed in Federal Court in the ongoing court case against the Australian-based company today. One extraordinary philosophical manifesto by the company's chief technical officer showed that he was aware that Kazaa's activities were a huge legal risk. He also feared being 'out-innovated' by other P2P programs that didn't come bundled with adware. "if consumers can connect to FT (as well as Gnutella 2, eDonkey and Bittorrent) and it has no ads or adware then it would seem a good choice," Philip Morle says in the his manifesto. The documents are full of all sorts of other admissions-that-you'd-be-crazy-to-put-on-paper like how Kazaa employees "hate" installing the Kazaa Media Desktop on their machines because all the bundled adware slows your machine down and can hijack your web browser."

Comments

Currently...

[gandell]

If you go to Kazaa right now, however, you'll note that they say that there's no spyware bundled with the software. Thanks, but no thanks...I'm sticking with bittorrent and Winmx.

How much does this matter?

[mistersooreams]

I can't see that this is going to blow major holes in Kazaa's legal defense, although I do think they'll lose anyway.

I don't think Kazaa's argument was ever that they "didn't know" about all the illegal P2P traffic they were generating. Surely their argument is the old "Common Carrier" one, where they aren't responsible for anything Kazaa transports and responsibility is shifted to the software user? Maybe I've misunderstood, feel free to correct me.

Now, this is clearly embarrassing for the company, and the CTO especially, but I can't see that it's of much legal importance. Everyone knows about Kazaa and spyware by now, don't they/

Still...

[DoubleDangerClub]

I'm still amazed that the people in charge of companies like Sharman, etc. think that chocking their software full of crap programs that infect and make peoples' pcs run poorly (to say the least) is the correct way to go. I guess it just shows that in the end, a proper p2p program needs to be open sourced. It seems the only way we'll get something people will want (want is emphasized) to use. It takes real people to make software to be used by real people I guess.

Re:It just goes to show...

[Eminence]

This sounds very rational. And this is probably what people should do. However, both the original poster and you assume that other fellow's lawyers' right to read anything that you've written is natural and obvious. But shouldn't there be a limit? If that would be technologically possible to subpoena someone's thoughts would you see it as natural and right? I really don't like the idea that anything I write or draw might be used against me - I thought this rule applied only to testimonies after being arrested.

I understand that from the court's point of view such memos and letters are an important evidence that would allow them to judge not only the actions but also the intentions. Maybe that's what we should worry about? After all, it is really hard to prove intentions in cases like this - and even harder to judge them. An intention to rape & kill are obviously bad, but it is not as obvious with intention to develop a way for people to freely share files over the network. Here it depends on one's beliefs and interests whether he would see it the way I put it or as an intention to develop a way for people to steal precious and highly valued intellectual property of media companies. Are beliefs to be tested in court?

Why not much free software innovation?

[br00tus]

I develop a Gnutella p2p application (Gnutizen) and have often wondered why so much of the popular and innovative products are propietary, and not more open. Napster was the first. Kazaa was the first to have "superpeers", but its network is now totally locked. Edonkey was the first good program for downloading big files, but it is propietary (there are decent Windows clients, but I haven't found any on Linux I like yet). And now eXeem has a propietary on may levels network technically superior to Edonkey in terms of speed.

I don't know the answer, but I guess I'm more qualified to answer than many because I've been coding one on and off for the past three years. I guess the answer is it's hard work. You're also not "following head lights", as even the eDonkey clones do. And the programming is not easy - with C language it's socket programming, which means all kinds of strange things can come over the network which have to be defensively coded against, and since you're using multiple sockets that means threading. And it takes a lot of code to just get a decent app, never mind cool bells and whistles. One reason mine is GPL is, aside from liking the GPL, this is my first big software project so I don't feel I'm at a level where I can sell my code yet. I've also borrowed GPL code from a program called gnut which helped. I would borrow from one called GTK-Gnutella but it's so big and complex it's hard to directly borrow from.

Of course there are exceptions - Gnutella (although AOL/TW killed the eponymous one, leaving only the protocol clones), and Bittorrent. With the Gnutella protocol, Limewire and Bearshare are commercial companies, but they agree on an open protocol, which they share with some free clients (like mine).

There are so many innovations possible - Bittorrent is one of the recent ones - it built on what Edonkey did, allowing hundreds of megs of files to be transferred, except with Bittorrent, it added speed to the picture. So because Bittorrent exists, people now have a better chance of getting ISOs of Linux distros, Indymedia videos or whatnot. It's such a cool area I wonder why the propietary folks so often beat the free ones in terms of innovation. I guess it's a wash now with who innovates more. And also, with sockets, trheading and protocols that obsolete older versions as time goes on (ay de mi!), it takes so long to get a decent app together that innovation seems a long way off.

I suppose another reason is the RIAA/MPAA is suing p2p developers left and right - that might explain why people are hanging back somewhat. It's unfortunate this fear is stifling p2p innovation. In many ways it seems ridiculous to me - on BBSs in the 1980s you had a file section and a message board system. Sometimes you didn't even have a message board - just a file section. People have been trading and sharing files on computers for decades, all of a sudden such communal practices are tainted, with accusations flying on Slashdot on how people use p2p to break some new laws that the big corporations passed recently in Washington DC that protected their soi disant intellectual property. It's ridiculous - there were normal BBSs and warez BBSs back then, just as there is an equivalent nowadays on the Internet. It would be insane for US-legal (for now) things such as sharing ISOs or Indymedia videos is crushed by the evil capitalist bourgeois corporations.

Re:Why not much free software innovation?

[Kjella]

I think I can come up with a few more reasons.

1. Lack of goal cohesion. In a proprietary company, you have a few people who design, and many who do as told. There are far too many variables around, often contradictory, like anonymity vs speed, centralization vs searchability, trust vs open network, leeching vs entry barrier and so on. Many networks have become not only a jack, but a deuce of all trades that way.

2. Lack of vision. Those capable of coding a network application are rarely the same ones who can imagine a working concept of a million nodes. In OSS, it is my distinct impression that those who can do, and those who can't are ignored. Such a network can never be simularted properly in a test lab, you have to do it in your mind. Which means others will disagree, and badly.

3. Standing on the shoulders of the wrong giant. By OSS's cross-breeding nature, it is much easier to keep building onto what is, than to change the fundamentals. In a proprietary network you're starting from scratch anyway, might as well do it "right", for whatever you believe is right. In networks, scaling is everything. If the way you construct the network is putting a ceiling on your app, the only thing you'll do is hit the roof again and again.

And what experience do I have about that? :) Let's just say that there might be a few surprises left...

Re:Sure there ain't no spyware...

[Phisbut]

Note that their Skype website says: No Spyware, Adware or Malware
Kazaa says: No Spyware

Funny when companies have to explicitly mention they're not evil. Funnier is that Microsoft also says: "We're not saying there's no virus or malware in our product". Seriously... The MSN-Messenger license states that :

disclaimer of warranties. to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, microsoft and its suppliers provide to you [...] as is and with all faults; and microsoft and its suppliers hereby disclaim [...] all warranties and conditions, whether express, implied or statutory, including, [...] lack of viruses, [...]