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Court Docs Reveal Kazaa Logging User Downloads
Dan Warne writes "The most explosive documents in the ongoing Kazaa court case have emerged today, including logs of discussions between parent company Sharman and the Estonian developer of the Kazaa Media Desktop. They include extraordinary admissions like: "Reporting will make Kazaa look like spyware, as soon as it becomes evident we record downloads and playbacks, users will flee to competitive networks" and then "One can argue that we have knowledge of copyrighted material being downloaded in our network and have to install filters. If we are reporting [gold] files, then technically we could do the same for every file." Finally, "RIAA [could] collect the IP addresses for everyone who has searched for or downloaded that file." Despite the Kazaa developer's concerns over these issues, Kazaa went ahead with the logging." (More below.)
Warne continues "APC Magazine journalist Garth Montgomery, who has covered every day of the trial in the Australian Federal Court, says: "In a nutshell, this has got to rate as the most explosive document revealed. It makes it damn near impossible to maintain the separation theory that Sharman and Altnet rely on in terms of business independence and technical infrastructure. The control they exercise over the system is complete." Montgomery has also scanned in all the documents and made them available in PDF format, including the confidential Kazaa purchase contract and technical specifications for the Kazaa Media Desktop."
It looks like bye-bye kazaa. It will soon join Napster (The real one, not roxio).
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
You mean that when I use an electronic network to transfer information, that information travels in orderly patterns that can be tracked? What happenned to the magical fairy of the internet that made all things miraculously anonymous?(/sarcasm)
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Kazaa has always been the seamy underbelly of the internet. While Napster at least had a little swagger as the slick pirate software, Kazaa has been plagued from the start with spyware and other malware.
Good riddance.
... so dead.
And stupid. They knew that they were walking a very narrow path with respect to legality. They had to be like Caesar's Wife - not only pure but seen to be pure. But instead they took their behaviour well over the line into things that they knew were illegal. And then recorded the fact that they were doing it.
Breathtaking.
These people are stupid. Not only do they discuss matters as whether they're arguably criminal conspirators / facilitators -- but they do so in on the record documents, as opposed to quiet chats in the cafeteria.
That's Richard-Nixon-tastic.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Piratebay is hardly private, although I think your response is a bit of a troll-if they were doing that, they'd hardly have any users left, not to mention they'd be on PG's blacklist by now.
Evidence of what you're claiming aside, though, I've never used piratebay, although I have had a look at their legal correspondence. The site I use has, to my knowledge, not had its url posted here, and I'm not going to change that today.
A good private tracker, registration and ratio required, is a good degree of protection. I've never gotten -one- hit against my protowall while using those torrents.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I was assisting in installing KazaA once. It was like: "What do you think," the librarian asked me. "According to this EULA they could log our downloads," I said. "So? Is it good or is it bad?" (She's so cute!) "Bad. I do not authorise it. Remove it, add to the black list, never bother me again." Now, if anyone is screaming bloody murder because a program does something that was explained explicite or implicite during the installation, one is not the brightest individual under the Sun if you ask me.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Seriously only internet newbies, grandmas & grandpas installed the Kazza Media Desktop. All other installed Kazza Lite (No Adware!) or eDonkey.
Later all eDonkey users switched to Overnet and later on to eMule and BitTorrent
An open source P2P application is more safe in use than a closed source application because clever people can read and understand the code.
Oh I forgot:
1) Idea
2-6) see above
7) ???
8) No Profit
9) Sued by RIAA/MPAA...
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
What strikes me as remarkable is that anyone thinks so-called "lawsuits" of this nature will in any way stem the Niagra-like flow of files being shared on computer networks.
As with the United States' ill-fated experiment with "Prohibition" back in the 1930s or whenever it was, attempts to pressure a legitimate society-wide demand with artifical "legal" constraints simple result in a Newtonian counterforce of equal strength
Mark these words it is only a matter of time before the RIAA and company unleash one legal sully too many and the citizenry responds with clandestine acts of violence and possibly even people and/or animals.
It is clear that the individuals behind Kazaa are just a bunch of crooks trying to get rich of bootlegged goods, but so were the rum-runners of yore, and in the end, after much bloodshed and suffering , it was seen that rum could indeed be run legally with out the "sky", as it were, "falling". Let us hope those in power today come to a similar realization soon.
Well, the recording part is the part that's really sad. It's such massive lack of clue, it's... well, come to think of it, probably standard for management.
And wth is with all these companies and collecting data about their users? Everyone must track you, profile you, and make you go through an intrusive registration just to (for example) download a patch to a product you've bought.
Now I _know_ that you're not really anonymous on the Internet, they can collect a ton of data about you, bla, bla, bla, Sure, they _can_. But do they even have a _legitimate_ use for that data? I.e., one that doesn't boil down to "we can sell the list to spammers later."
Most of the collected data nowadays (and again I don't only mean Kazaa) is plain useless for anything even resembling an aggregate statistic.
E.g., in Kazaa's case can they even do an automated aggregate statistic over the filenames? How? There must be hundreds of different ways to write the same filename, so good luck telling whether more people download Britney Spears or Eminem. Or which genre do people download more. And even if (ad absurdum) they could get an aggregate statistic, what would they do with that data?
E.g., in the case of some companies' intrusive registration forms and out-of-hand data collection, wth are they gonna do with such pieces of trivia as my house number or telephone number? _How_ does one use that in an agregate statistic?
I mean, "How many people bought our product in Europe vs USA?" is a statistic. "How many people with an even house number bought our product?" is at most useless trivia. There is _no_ useful information in there.
Dunno, reminds me of dogs chasing a car. They have no idea what they'd do with it if they caught one, but they just must do it anyway.
Sad.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Glad I only use Kazaa for porn!
Thats my story and I'm sticking with it. (That was a bad pun...)
I've had enough of /. lately, whats with the unchecked facts? I know it's claimed that its up to the users in comments to identify this, but when the site constantly posts such trashy and unsubstantiated nonsenese it's hard to keep the faith.
5 ECA256FA1000FB45F/$FILE/TopSearch%20specifications .pdf
For example, they're not actually logging file downloads, nor what you do. All they acknowledged is that they do this for Altnet, which you must have figured out (How can you buy a file from Altnet without the owner knowing about it?), and that they could potentially do this for Kazaa if they were so inclined and able:-
"Pritt: Posting stats to to 3rd party servers...."
it starts. But then, the fact of the matter follows:-
"Of course we won't know about downloads and playbacks of non-signed content, but it doesn't make a difference because:-
1) It's hard to communicate this to lawyers and users.
2) If we are reporting signed files [Ed: Altnet] then technically we can do the same for any file."
See for yourself, http://www.apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/2F22997D6933B1
Bottom of page 4.
In other words, they only logged what they said they would in the user agreement, but they didn't broadcast it because people who don't check their fucking facts will post it on large public forums for debate, and immediately leap to all the wrong conclusions.
It's not the dynamite people think it is. All it shows is that they can log, it means that the next few moves are foretold:-
1) The argument will be made that they can log, and therefore are complicity.
2) The counter-argument will be that logging on
such a scale is an invasion of privacy, illegal and out of the scope of the user agreement.
3) The argument will be made that the agreed upon logs with the users can be used as evidence against P2P users. It's not a serious logistical blow, but will be the *real* credibility damage Kazaa will face.
The endgame is either a Kazaa concession to log all activity, another sale to a different country or just a block on un-authorized files through a deliberately dis-incentivised weak version of Kazaa noone will want, and the winding down of the network will play to the Napster tune.
How does Kazaa being closed source make a difference here? Kazaa was tracking requests/downloads server-side... which means, I would think, that there isn't neccessarily any logging going on in the client.
It could have been completely open source, and Kazaa could still keep track off all the requests that your client made.
Your post should be mentioned whenever there is debate on the meaning of 'jumping to conclusions'. It defines it perfectly.
Where did he post anything about stealing peoples property? You're as bad as the xxIA.. p2p is evil, its STEALING, which even in the case of piracy (of which the parents post in NOT talking about) is not stealing.. its copyright infringement.
p2p can be used for many legitimate purposes.
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
Why the hell is this marked informative?
Your ability to setup a bunch of different programs and scripts has NOTHING to do with privacy.
Privacy is all about trust and knowledge of the people you're talking to. Nothing to do with removing logs and setting up eggdrops.
It's SO OBVIOUS that this site is moderated by young children now, you can see them reading the parent and thinking "Oh yea, I can do that, I totally agree"
He's trolling about rooting a server then handing out logins to his l33t mates.
You probably can't mod this post down any lower, but please think about modding the parent down. Or if you choose not to do that, please post here why it's informative.
As I remember reading, Kazaa was such a hard legal target to bring down because of how decentralized the business is. Servers in one jurisdiction, employees in another, the company registered in a third, bank accounts in another, and onwards, etc.
While it offers an extraordinarily complex legal knot to untangle for anyone trying to bring a suit against them, once they do land in court, the company's internal workings will all be well documented because everyone communicates through email or IM. Oops.
Entrapment is far more limited than people normally think. Basically it's where you're enticed to do something you would otherwise not have done, as opposed to merely being given an opportunity to do something you would've done elsewhere anyway.
The first example that springs to mind is the Space Madness episode of Ren and Stimpy. Stimpy would normally never press the History Eraser Button, but when he's not only deliberately put in proximity to it, and the narrator keeps pushing his face in it, that's basically how much effort is needed for something to be entrapment.
Just being undercover -- that's not entrapment.
You could probably google for a discussion of the issue with some good case cites or something.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.