Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Kazaa Blocks Australian Users

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the taking-my-ball-and-going-home dept.

afaik_ianal writes "The Sydney Morning herald is reporting that Kazaa is blocking Australian downloads of their client, just a day after the deadline passed for implementing keyword filters. According to the article, Shaman networks were still working on installing the filters yesterday."

12 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That's okay by mattjb0010 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just like America has nothing but Britney spears and Gigli. Serious, how does such an ignorant troll get modded "insightful"?

  2. Irrelevant by bwd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Kazaa has been relegated to the trash-heap of the net with the advent of bittorrent and registration-only bittorrent trackers. They went the same direction of Napster, because they were litigated into nonexistence.

    Decentralization is key to survival now if you want to avoid litigation on the infrastructure.

  3. Time vs Money by Bifurcati · · Score: 4, Insightful
    These days, I don't (er, and never have) download music from filesharing networks - sites like AllOfMP3.com, where I can download music for 6-10 cents a song means that it is far easier for me to get on there, find the album I want, choose the exact encoding I want and get the album fast and conveniently. Plus, I know for certain that it's a good quality encoding, that it's actually the right file, and that I can get all of the album. (Provided, of course, that the album's actually on there!)

    Ultimately, the death of pirating shareware is going to be governed by the pricepoint more than anything else. Sure, free is always cheaper, but if you can get the music at the right price (and I certainly think allofmp3.com has got it!) then that's going to be a major player.

    (And yes, I know there are questions about the legality of the service. But so far it's stood up the legal challenges presented, and it's got to be "more" legal than filesharing, right? :) Not that that matters twojots to the RIAA I guess :)

    --

    Physicist, consultant, science communicator
    1. Re:Time vs Money by StikyPad · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As a wise man once said, "The reports of piracy's death have been greatly exaggerated." Or maybe it was an insane man. Nevertheless..

      I don't think there will ever be such a thing as the death of filesharing, licit or otherwise. I agree, however, that extremely low price points and faster-to-market than pirates (which seems rarely the case) will wipe out the bulk of illicit filesharing. Further, I think publishing companies stand to make even more money through bulk than they do right now. If we could download a song for 5 cents, we'd probably download 20 songs for a dollar instead of just 1 song. The lower profit per song would be offset by the number of songs downloaded, and more music for the dollar means more artists stand to reach an audience, which in turn fuels demand. That's good for the artists, the audience, and the recording companies.

      --
      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
  4. Nobody will care by Mancat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Kazaa was good in its day, but offers little to no anonymity, and is completely infiltrated by RIAA/MPAA/*. So, if you want to go to jail, go ahead and use Kazaa to download your copyrighted material.

    That being said, few people are still using it. Nobody will care. Those that do care, can now move on to a better client/network.

    --
    hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
  5. Re:It's kind of funny... by kocsonya · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > It's kind of funny.. they're based in Australia, and they can serve
    > everyone but citizens of their own country...

    What's new? The government in Canberra has been doing it for ages...

  6. Re:Irrelevant -- reasons for trash heap by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Kazaa has been relegated to the trash-heap of the net with the advent of bittorrent and registration-only bittorrent trackers.

    Kazaa has been relegated to the trash-heap of the net because it's laden with spyware, has an ineffective hashing system that has allowed it to become more polluted by OverPeer and its ilk than any other P2P system (in excess of 50% of the files on KaZaA are damaged, in excess of 90% for some very new releases), hasn't been updated in 3 years, and gathers more lawsuits of users than all other P2P systems combined.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  7. "More" legal? by Nerdposeur · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And yes, I know there are questions about the legality of the service. But so far it's stood up the legal challenges presented, and it's got to be "more" legal than filesharing, right?

    Not necessarily. According to an IP trace, that site is based in Russia. They're selling songs for a fraction of the going rate here, and if they don't have an agreement with the labels, they probably aren't paying the labels anything for it. (I don't know that for a fact.)

    *IF* these guys have stolen the music and are selling it illegally, then paying them is ethically worse than not paying at all - not only are the copyright owners screwed, but you feel justified in screwing them and are supporting their (unfair) competition.

    Yeah, you can gripe about the price of music, but supply and demand says that if it's too expensive, you shouldn't buy it. Buy indie stuff for cheap, or listen to the radio, but don't think that as long as you pay someone for your Gorillaz mp3, it's ok.

    And yes, as you can see by my sig, I do have a bias. :)

    1. Re:"More" legal? by geminidomino · · Score: 4, Insightful

      not only are the copyright owners screwed, but you feel justified in screwing them and are supporting their (unfair) competition.

      Whereas if you pay iTunes for it, you're supporting THIER mafia-like tactics.

      Thank the gods for cdbaby.com :)

  8. P2P Profit Model Changing by burningion · · Score: 4, Insightful
    With all the litigations coming from the music and movie industry, it just doesn't make sense for a company to try to own the P2P software.

    Instead, companies should develope and release the software for free, into the wild, and create a profitable market using the network itself. It's time for a really creative person to figure out how to release a lasting P2P client/network and make a profit from it in a really untraditional way.

    Like utilising all the traffic to build models for what people are searching for. Selling the information to marketers. Letting people sell content through P2P networks, whatever. I'm not the one to create the next fix for P2P, but it is out there, and I'll be the first one to use it.

  9. Re:LATE BREAKING NEWS by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I said the exact same thing.

    Myself, I couldn't see myself trusting any company or application like this. Seems like every time I have to fix someone's computer, it's because of shit they got from kazaa or whatever.

    On the other hand, people keep smoking.

    --
    Pretty Pictures!
  10. Multichoice test by skingers6894 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When all current filesharing systems have been hunted down and destroyed the users of those systems will flock to:

    a) CD Stores
    b) The next, better, faster, more anonymous filesharing system

    What do you think?