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Kazaa Blocks Australian Users
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."
It's kind of funny.. they're based in Australia, and they can serve everyone but citizens of their own country...
Looks like those 14 people are going to have to find another method to all their copyright infringed material from.
NEWSFLASH: Kazaa is still around.
people still use that?
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Just like America has nothing but Britney spears and Gigli. Serious, how does such an ignorant troll get modded "insightful"?
Why are they voluntarily blocking downloads? It's not like there's a Great Firewall of Australia to block them, and they're not based in Au
From Wikipedia:
Consumer Empowerment responded by selling the Kazaa application to a complicated mesh of offshore companies, primarily Sharman Networks, headquartered in Australia
So actually, yes they are based in the AU. So yes, they kinda do have to follow rulings made by Australian courts.
This IS slashdot after all.
You Australians are pretty uppity for being down under.
What is stopping Sharman Networks from closing down and starting up under a different company and name. I would think that brand has almost zero good-will when it comes to p2p clients... why bother jumping through hoops when it seams like they could start again at very low cost and have **AA begin their whole lawsuit process again (at great expense of both time and money).
serenity now!
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.
I thought the story headline was slightly misleading. People in Australia with KaZaa can still use the service, they are just trying to block new users downloading the software. Bit pointless really given any number of other P2P applications will turn up versions of KaZaa or KaZaalite.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
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
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?
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."
Meh, damn shaman are overpowered anyhow.
[2:10]I just tried to install this Kazaa program but this anoyng MS Anti-Spyware doesn't like me installing it.
[2:15]Ok Iv disabled anti-spyware and I am installing it again.
[2:20]Just finished insntalling #ddffh@4(*(&^#*&%*&%^&^%76#$*7$%[CARRIER DISCONNECTED]
Limewire is another p2p service which is pretty good. The more popular songs are corrupted, and I don't know how RIAA'd it is, but it's an ok kazaa substitute for now. Also, with bittorrent you can download a torrent for an entire album which has your song in it, and using the Azureus bittorrent client you can go into the separate files and highlight everything but your desired song, right-click->priority->Do Not Download.
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.
So they'll use another P2P software to get Kazaa now?
On the announcement, Telstra said it would proceed with shutdown of several OC-48 backbones as spyware traffic falls.
Uh... Kazaa not spyware ridden? Since when?
As if half a dozen of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
Favorite quote: "
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.
Kazaa is centralized; all Kazaa queries go through the Kazaa network. So no, the original inventors of the FTP protocol aren't going to be busted - unless they coincidentally happen to be running an illegal warez FTP.
That's what's happening with Sharman. They're not being busted for creating a client that other people use illegally, they're being told to implement blocks on certain traffic that passes through their network. They didn't do the blocks, so instead they pulled access from Australia in order to comply.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
You can use Bittorrent for individual songs as well. Most Bittorrent clients these days allow you to view the files within the torrent itself, and either rank them in priority, or choose to not download them at all.
So, all you have to do is find a .torrent of the album that the song you want is from, open the .torrent, and set all the files to not download, except for the one(s) that you want. Of course, this won't work if the .torrent contains a .zip, .rar, or another archive file with the songs inside.
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?
Down under? A popular misconception. Hold on a sec, just gotta feed my kangaroo and get the dropbear of the kid...
Yeah, it's modded flamebait, but it's also funny. Anyway - some clarification on that statement for future reference. Not all of Australia's states were convict settlements, just most of them. South Australia (Adelaide) was settled by law abiding citizens in 1836 and not by convicts. However, I'm not sure if we currently have access to the Kazaa network or not...
Does this make my brain look big?
You know, I must say, presently Kazaa is the best filesharing protocol in the world! At least for us overweight hairy horny sweaty geeks living in mothers basement. Whatever I search for, I get more pr0n for my ever growing collection! Sure, a few broken files, but it is quantity that matters, not quality!
Of course... in reality I long since moved out of mothers basement, she died, and so did Kazaa. I'm still overweight, hairy, horny and sweaty, but nowadays I use the ed2k and bittorrent protocols for filetranfers instead. These days I only get the good pr0n.