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."

Comments

Methinks

[DrXym]

That Erminem and Mardonna are the new hot searches on the Kaaza network

Re:Methinks

[obeythefist]

Please, don't be so amateurish, the files are all still there. I will be downloading $sys$Madonna and $sys$Eminem songs for years to come. For some reason, however, as soon as I finish downloading them I can't see them in explorer anymore!

what next?

[hug_the_penguin]

Perhaps the banning of the keyword phrase `fuck the riaa`? In case they haven't noticed, there are so many fakes on there anyway that a name isnt an accurate guarantee of what a file contains. But of course this matters not so long as the RIAA can line their pockers with consumers' money.

Re:what next?

[TubeSteak]

There are so many fakes because the RIAA has been happily hiring companies to pollute the search results for certain terms.

They filed this lawsuit so they could cut some annual spending. /tongue in cheek

The court has ordered Sharman to release a new version of Kazaa by 5 December that includes a non-optional keyword filter, restricting users' ability to illegally access and swap copyright music.

Unless Kazaa rolls out a change to the fast track network as well... why the f*** would anyone update their client? Some of the people using such software may not be to brightest lightbulbs in the house, but everyone is going to know this update will break certain functionality.

Re:what next?

[KiloByte]

There are so many fakes because the RIAA has been happily hiring companies to pollute the search results for certain terms.

Actually, I doubt the fakes can be much worse than the originals. Call me a troll, but blocking access to Eminem, Madonna and Kylie Minogue's songs is a step towards improving the quality of music.

Re:what next?

[jd nerd]

"downloading and uploading copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder is illegal. It is theft."

it is illegal because the music industry has lobbied for it to be so. that doesn't mean it *should* be illegal, though. file sharing networks *should* be available to facilitate legitimate fair uses such as sampling and space-shifting.

for example, if i want to sample a new song, i shouldn't have to go to a friend's house, go to the music store, or wait for it to come on the radio. if millions of people already have it, and we have the technology to transfer it, why shouldn't i be able to sample their copy? (and i'm not refering to abusive sampling--i'll get to abuse in a second). moreover, if i own the cd at home, i should not have to go to an online music store and purchase another copy of my songs just to listen to them at work.

these uses should be fair. at some point, however, they do cross over into infringement. we all know the guy who loaded a hard drive with napster music back in the day. i agree that that is wrong. but if we agree, as a society, that mass-piracy is wrong, it doesn't follow that the fair uses i described above are wrong as well. but your approach, and the one taken by the riaa, seeks to ban any unauthrized copying

note that the last time a shift in technology produced a mixed bag of fair use and abusive copying, the consumers won. that was when the supreme court ruled on what we now call the vcr. copyright holders demonstrated that about 80% of vcr copying was unauthorized. the equipment makers showed that although the uses were unauthorized, many of them should be fair. for example, people used the machines for time-shifting, or viewing programs at a later time. the supreme court allowed the manufacturers to continue selling the machines because of the fair uses

can you imagine the world if that decision had gone the other way? no vcrs, so probably no video stores. no tivo. perhaps no dvd players, because the video industry and video rental industries would never have developed. perhaps no cd-rws, because they can be used to make unauthorized copies. well, this time around, it has gone (and is still going) the other way, with absolute bans on file sharing, criminal punishments for dmca violations, etc.

the balancing approach used in the past, and the approach i advocate for file sharing, is reasonable: it provides the music industry a return on its investment (and thus gives incentives for creation) and allows consumers some flexibility over their expressive environment. but that's not the approach advocated by the music industry. they take the approach you advocate: *any* unauthorized copying is theft. that approach is foreign to our intellectual property tradition, which allows for fair uses designed to protect our first amendment freedoms.

so, you can go around chanting your "any unauthorized copying is theft" mantra, but know that your approach is not necessary, and that it is highly unusual in a legal system that has traditionally allowed flexibile fair uses.

Re:what next?

[drsquare]

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?

Re:what next?

[PhreakOfTime]

Exactly!

Personally, Ive found so may more groups that are orders of magnitude better than the garbage found on the radio and what is 'popular'. But then, the only reason its popular is because people want to buy the song they have heard 50X in one day... for some reason...

When did it end for me? Around 1999-2000 when the group 'metallica' put their ugly mugs before congress and told of the big bad wolf out on the internet that was stealing from them. There was no bigger irony I have seen than the group that wrote the song "Master of puppets" themselves being the biggest puppet ever. If you looked real close, you can see the RIAA's hand up their ass moving their mouth. That was the last year I bought a 'hardcopy' CD.

There is just so much more better music out there, I wonder if the RIAA has a clue how much they are pushing people twords it?

Re:what next?

[Catbeller]

theft rampant?

TV sets, cell phones, cars, that sort of thing? really?

must be hard to digitize. bandwidth's pretty expensive for transporting physical objects.some sort of macro version of quantum teleportation.

OH, you mean ideas, like music? i didn't know one could steal music from people. wow.

the only solution to this problem will come from further advances in fMRI mind monitoring technology over the next couple of decades. we will finally stop the theft of immaterial objects from people's minds when we can stick their heads in a scanner and search for stolen intellectual property. then, and only then, will the world be safe from this unprecedented criminal activity.

Same legal battle

[newell98]

Is this the same legal battle thats been going on for the last few years? Or is this a completely new one?

Bring on the l337 speak!

[Samir Gupta]

or Pig Latin, etc... when will they learn?

Eh?

[LiquidCoooled]

Apart from the obvious slashdot also has this technology in place:
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

I thought kazaa was long dead and buried and reduced to nothingness.

I know noone who uses it anymore, its all BT and eDonkey type stuff.

Another obvious thought here, could I supply my own list of copyrighted files and make sure they aren't searchable, my company has copyrighted files which should be protectable, wheres the web interface to do it?

Or is this another anal raping by the music industry just to get their own way?

Call me stupid, but?

[Killjoy_NL]

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?

Problem with generics...

[Denyer]

I highly doubt Kylie Minogue is the only Kylie out there with recorded material, for example. Blocking specific artist+album+song combinations might be reasonable, but there's a lot of room for false positives.

In time, even more absurd terms may become blocked... eg, The.

This will block legal file transfers

[bloodbob]

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.

kazaa is dead long live p2p.

[leuk_he]

You can always use eMule (win32) / amule (linux/max/e.a.) Shareaza (win32) or limewire (win/max/javathingy) to perform those searches for you.

The music labels got to realize if they push the p2p networks too hard the p2p clients will go underground into anonymous networks

Re:kazaa is dead long live p2p.

[Khalid]

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.

Kazaa history

[putko]

So they started out in Europe, and only moved to Australia/Vanuatu because of RIAA pressure. Why don't they just sell the assets to a Vanuatu company and move the whole thing offshore?

Are the new guys, operating out of Australia/Vanuatu, somehow more legit than the guys who ran it before?

I thought the Kazaa guys were the sort to do "anything to win", including fairly Talmudic stuff like what they've already done (splitting the ads from the network itself, so that they can claim that they aren't really able to know about or stop infringing).

What about the kids?

[5, Troll]

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.

Let the syntax war begin!

[file-exists-p]

So what are the standard rewritting rules to evade dumb pattern matching ? Writing backward ? L33tsp33k ? doubling characters ? Cockney Rhyming Slang ?

The W3C should set up a list of standardized procedure.

Blocking searches by artists' names

[gaijinsr]

Funny, this is exactly what they tried with Napster back in my days ...

Arrogance of the RIAA

[martinmcc]

Yet again, we have the RIAA showing their complete ignorance of technology, and applying bullish tactics that will only succeed in irritating.

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.

It is absolutely crazy how this can happen. RIAA get a levy on blank media because some might end up with their copyright material. They install software on you machines becuase you might try to copy one of their cds. They now block 10,000 search terms on Kazaa because they might be used to 'steal' their copyright material. And for the many people who wish to use those terms for ligitimate reasons? Tough luck.

Have a look at the riaa web site, and you will read much about how they see themselves as the protectors of culture and music. What a load of crap. They are just middle men, and middle men that have no purpose, now that technology can provide the functionailty that they have in the past.

Re:Horay!

[Mr2001]

Now, Independent artists artists who actually want to have their music shared can actually find a market.

Don't try to spin this as something positive. Those independent artists could already use Kazaa as a marketing/distribution channel.. the presence of Eminem and Madonna songs on Kazaa wasn't stopping anyone from finding independent music.

This won't make it any easier for people to find legal downloads, it'll only make it (trivially) harder to find illegal ones.

Re:Horay!

[newell98]

If anything I would think that it would actually hurt them. If keyword filtering results in less people using the network, then thats one less avenue that an independent artist can use to get their music out. Popular artists will still be availible illegally from bittorrent etc., but people will be less likely to run accross a lesser known artist.

This changes nothing?

[Ilex]

I thought the whole idea of these new p2p networks was that they were decentralized which means any form of censorship has to be imposed at the application level. So doesn't this mean that third partly clients like KazzaLite are immune to these block lists?

And as nobody uses Kazza because of it's malware payload putting a blocklist in Kazza alone has about as much affect on piracy as blocking searches in bittorent.com

Please correct me if I'm wrong!

The inteersting bit from the article

[Zog The Undeniable]

...was about Audible Magic, a technology that is supposed to identify music from a "fingerprint", regardless of what it's called, and theoretically would negate the need for a keyword search filter. I'd be genuinely interested to see how this works, given that different mp3 encoders produce different results given the same CD or can use different bitrates - and that's without OGG, WMA and other home-creatable formats.

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?

Several Obvious Problems:

[mrRay720]

1) Generic terms to block will make it difficult to search for other items. My favourite artist, "Kylie Kylie" distributes only through Kazaa. Now I can't find her stuff.

2) Not everything related to those the scum are allegedly protecting is copyrighted. I'm sure there used to be several free public domain photos of Eminem that you could find on Kazaa. No longer possible.

3) They just plain suck, don't they?

Idiots. Instead of researching the reason why people are willing to download music from P2P (such as CDs no longer being a trustable source, and legally downloadable music has impractical DRM and low quality sound, prices too high across the board) they sue people and make stupid keyword blocks on software.

I always used to do the best job I could to ensure artists are compensated, by buying music I listen to (ok, the suits and lawers got the money not the artists, but that's not the point). Nowadays they're making it increasingly hard for people to actually do the right thing. Sorry, I don't want a virus ridden PC thanks to your infected CDs - I feel much safer downloading my music. And since your stupid DRM sites don't work with my music player, I have no choice but to P2P. It's your own fault, guys. Give me no valid source, and I have no choice but to make my own.

Re:Several Obvious Problems:

[Halfbaked Plan]

Give me no valid source, and I have no choice but to make my own.

So you're taking piano/guitar/singing lessons, or do you really _not_ get it at all?

Plus they will stop being p2p

[riflemann]

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.

Update: only 26 search terms will be blocked:

[Anonymous Coward]

a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y, z

The riaa is certain their minimal search restriction (only 26 terms!!!) will improove their popularity, since they're usually known for draconian measures!

Re:Update: only 26 search terms will be blocked:

[91degrees]

So I'll just search for |\/|@|)|)0|\|@ and |<'/713.

Re:A simple solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

*shrug* Just like every other form of copy protection this inconveniences Average Joe but doesn't stop a dedicated attacker. Remember the old C64 days with software that would check for bad sectors on the floppies they were distributed on? Remember "fast hack'em" which copied discs bitwise to avoid the trap? Remember codewheels and how folks dis-assembled the app to provide the answers the game would actually ask for? Remember manual checks and how folks just shared photocopies of the relevant portions of the manual? As I recall SimCity originally had a copy protection screen which required you to hold a small red lens against the page in order to read the right answer -- I seem to recall that the solution was to wrap the entire manual in three wraps of the pink Reynolds wrap before copying it with the brightness turned down a touch.

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...

Erotica...

[EzInKy]

...is a title that Madonna has used for both an album and a song, which seems to make using Kazaa for anything "interesting" kind of pointless.

Control

[KitesWorld]

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.

Re:Control

[hug_the_penguin]

That's an interesting point i hadn't thought of. If it comes to the day when they're using it to monopolise, that's the day we can take the entire institution down. Mod guys, that post deserves points.

Re:Control

[falsified]

Example:

My favorite band (And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead) has an LP named Madonna. While I believe they're on a major label now, and I don't know their stance on filesharing, anyone who wants to check out that CD can't, especially since they're sure as hell not gonna play it on the radio. (By the way, check them out. They're not death metal, despite their name.)

Re:Control

[tepples]

It's by no means similar to web page censorship that confuses breast cancer with porn.

How not, specifically?

Re:what next? - PAY ATTENTION HERE.

[mumblestheclown]

Repeat After Me: Fighting Piracy is a war of attrition, NOT a war of absolutes.

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.

And remember the DMCA

[DrYak]

rot13, l33t, pig-latin, backward spelled....

all these are methods used to *crypt* the filename.
under the DMCA it *IS COMPLETLY ILLEGAL* to the ??AA to try to circumvent them.
If they try to add "3m1n3m", "adona-may", or "brit. sraeps" to the list, they're breaking an encryption scheme and that's illegal for them !!!

Re:RIAA get it right please.

[Soruk]

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.

When is the Roman Catholic Church

[Flying pig]

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?

Works both ways?

[ortholattice]

So, does this mean Kazaa users can safely share downloads that made it through the filter, without fear of being sued by the RIAA? No, I didn't think so.

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.

Solution

[Sockatume]

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.

Time for artists to sue the RIAA

[Zunni]

I would think this would be an interesting case for lawyers to debate over. After all if the RIAA are preventing artists from distributing their music by a specific means, that certainly would be actionable.

Time to get a few lawsuits moving in the opposite direction against the RIAA, after all in their bubble they actually think they are speaking on behalf of all recording artists, someone needs to step up and show them through the only means that seem to get through to them that they are missing the boat and actually hindering independant artists.

From "Name That Tune" to "Block That Tune"...

[The_REAL_DZA]

[Constestant] I can block that tune in ONE search phrase.
[Host] Ok, Block That Tune!!
[Contestant] Asterisk.

Other clients?

[daikokatana]

Last time I checked the Kazaa network, there were still some 3 million users counted, so that gives me the general idea that Kazaa is still in use... or is it?

Didn't everybody already move to KazaaLite, K++, or whatever hacked/rewritten client there is out there? Who is still using the original Kazaa client?

And how is the RIAA going to force those clients to include the forbidden search list?

so is Google next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they now go and try to make Google block certain search terms?

Re:But wait!

[rcamera]

and i only had 1 step left with my AA program...

LimeWire, eMule, BitTorrent

[tepples]

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.

Go away, you're not 21

[tepples]

available downtown at record stores and gigs

RIAA music is intensely popular among minors. How does one get into "gigs" until age 21 if most "gigs" put on by independent recording artists are in bars?

Go away, you're not 21

[tepples]

Record music, put it on Kazzaa, play in local clubs, develop word of mouth

Problem is that a large portion of your target audience isn't allowed into local clubs because they're minors.