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Kazaa Forced To Modify Search Engine
An anonymous reader writes "Eminem, Madonna and Kylie Minogue are just some of the popular artists whose songs are to be blocked from being illegally distributed on the peer-to-peer network Kazaa following Federal Court orders in Australia yesterday. Sharman Networks, the owner of Kazaa, was ordered by the courts to modify the file-sharing software to block a list of search terms -- primarily artist and song names. The search terms are also to be supplied by record companies. The directive follows the record companies' court victory in September against individuals and organizations associated with Kazaa."
Who still uses Kazaa?
From the newbie people I've helped with their pc's, I've only seen 1 with kazaa still installed.
Most of them have moved on to other "better" methods of downloading their music/etc.
Does Kazaa still have spyware btw?
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Here is an example of one of the song names that was a part of the complaint against kazaa "Yellow". This basicly means anyone searching for "yellow something" is going to have their download blocked.
It's a shame no-one has thought of including a list of child porn related keywords to help prevent file sharing of images and movies that exploit children.
But I guess there is no money in stopping child porn.
Please mod me only (+) Underrated or (-) Troll
Funny, this is exactly what they tried with Napster back in my days ...
Maybe it's a large scale meatware solution where a downloading clip is streamed in real time into a room full of music experts, probably in Bombay?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
They will also want to eliminate the p2p aspect of it. From the article:
"Audible Magic involves getting the fingerprints for all songs," said a QC acting for Sharman, John Ireland. "You put a black box between two peers and if someone wants to copy something on the list, you can't do it," he said.
They want to basically make all transfers centralised through this black box, making Kazaa nothing more than a glorified web-based download service.
Not that it matters to anyone...does anyone use Kazaa anyway? Those who want to obtain their music via questionable means probably use other services nowadays.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
And notice how many games I haven't mentioned which have been hacked by dis-assembly alone and JMP instructions to bypass the copy protection checks.
The world is now a world where digital information is passed from point to point without any real interference. A "recording industry" is a relic of times gone by -- if they'd slim down and offer cheap recording to all then they'd be able to make a tidy profit 'cause _everyone_ wants to record something these days and studio space is not that expensive to maintain...
Like you said, it's about lining their pockets. One method : Deliberately add words to the list that end up with independant artists (who might release their music on Kazaa themselves) getting blocked.
Prevent your competition from getting exposure = preventing them from becoming 'real' competition.
Me? Paranoid? naaaaaaa.
The goal of anti piracy measures is not (realistically) to eliminate all piracy. Rather, it's to make piracy a relative hassle so that more people will stay clear of it.
For EVERY anti-piracy mechanism there will be some workaround - be it a rename, a magic marker, a shift key, a crack, a patch, or whatever. That's not the point. The point is that the more of a pain or the more specific knowledge it takes to do such a workaround, statistically fewer people will do it. Every fake file, threat of lawsuit, etc is an attempt to curb the RATE of piracy, not some idyllic attempt to eliminate it altogether.
I don't quite go as far as downloading them, but instead I rent DVDs - currently paying 93p per rental at Blockbuster (thanks to a Tesco Freetime offer!) so if it's a great film then I've got more left over to be able to buy the film, and if it's a waste of plastic, then that's 93p lost, not £3.95. Best of all, it's 100% legal.
-- Soruk
Going to file suit and demand that Mrs. Ritchie stop using their long term established brand name "Madonna" because it brings the brand owner into disrepute? Or have they just left it too late? I would really love to see a shootout between the RIAA and the people who gave the word "Propaganda" its modern meaning. Truth is, these "artists" have all stolen other people's words for their names - so how did they acquire rights in them?
Pining for the fjords
Although it still might make an interesting court argument for someone with the means and motivation to actually fight one of their lawsuits. In others words, the fact that such a list, controlled by them, exists, and they fact that they chose to exclude a certain work, might be construed (by the right judge/jury at the right time) as an implicit license to share that work. So, in the best case (from the users' point of view) this could backfire on the RIAA.
I am pretty sure that we will soon have a p2p 2.0 as we had a Web 2.0. What the music industry doesn't seems to get it, this a Darwinian process, by acting like this they only manage to strengthen this technology. There is already plenty of new concepts floating around that will bring a new revolution into this field (anonymous, decentralised, underground, private, freenet, overnets, darknets, and so on)
An while I am at it, emule is excellent, and they are probably the next target, they better get ready for it.
Based on what has been suggested so far, I propose an "aliases list". Use absurdly commonplace strings to represent specific keyword-blocked artists/albums, and publish a lookup table. For example, "fish" could equate to "Kylie" and "the" could related to her most popular album at the time the lookup is published. Possible problem: all the false hits containing "The fish" when searching. Solution: search by file type and file size.
A little more hard work, but once again, a little thinking flattens the RIAA's spectacular uselessness. I think that they need a new body in charge of their anti-piracy initiative as they're clearly hopeless at it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
But of course this matters not so long as the RIAA can line their pockers with consumers' money.
I know, damn them, selling products for money. That's the most disgraceful thing I've ever heard.
How can they be so audacious to want to prevent the illegal distribution of things they sell?
10,000 words list? I can pretty much bet that most of these will be very general i.e. 'Kylie' instead of 'Kylie Minogue', so any artist named Kylie who want to bypass the grabing hands of the record industry and distribute themselves will now have a much harder time.
No. Independent artists can use LimeWire, which now recognizes Creative Commons licenses on shared media. Or she can use eMule or BitTorrent. But then, independent songwriters will still run into the risk of subconsciously copying a copyrighted song.