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P2P Scammers' Lawyers Attack Open Source Team
An anonymous reader writes "Late last year a company affiliated with the French RIAA hijacked the Shareaza.com domain name from the original, open source project's owner. They are passing off their own for-pay software, which violates the GPL, as the real thing. Now, having stolen the Shareaza project's identity, the scammers are threatening legal action to shut down the real open source team."
Exactly if Discordia took the source, modified it and do not provide access to it as has been implied then they are far game for a copyright infringement lawsuit. If the original authors don't want to do it then maybe give the copyright to the EFF who WILL go after them. Also maybe drum up some press about the copyright infringement and their link to the French RIAA as that will surely stink PR wise.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Aw, someone stole the Shareaza name and used it for their own proprietary crap. I seem to remember something like this from a few years back, except the term is question was Gnutella and an incompatible protocol stealing its name and calling itself "Gnutella 2." Karma can be a bitch sometimes.
Make cheese not war 8:)
You can't handle the truth.
Andy
I downloaded the exe from shareaza.com and unpacked it (strings showed it was a wise installer, google wise unpack)
strings shareaza.exe gave loads and loads of function names error messages etc.
Downloaded the source from real shareaza (from sourceforge) ran grep against those names and everyone tried matched.
I need to try and do a proper comparasion, but IMHO the exe is created from the a branch of the open source 'true' version
It wouldn't be an extensive P2P network if they didn't distribute their client. :)
Anyway after digging around they rebranded their own client they use for their other networks thus didn't violate the GPL at all. Maybe the open source guys can register the name as a trademark and go after them that way.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Although TFA mentions the French equivalent of the RIAA, I'm puzzled at which it could be. Is it the IFPI, or the only group with legal jurisdiction in France, the SNEP? I can't find any other reference to France or French companies.
The original shareaza.com site resolves to an IP address (207.232.22.55) in New York, but listed with a fake front company with an Israeli ISP. The ISPs netvision.net.il and elron.net are known pink-contract, i.e. spammer friendly, hosting companies, they've been known to set up netblocks for spammers and run them until they are in every blacklist, then migrate in another netblock for the spammers. Most of the dodgy hosting is done in the U.S. and Russia. elron.net has been associated with the Russian Business Network, but a quick google doesn't turn up any easy links to back that up.
Someone posted above about shareazasecurity.be (195.47.247.137), but that goes to a server hosted in Denmark.
Although there is some mis-direction by throwing international company names into the mix (a classic scammer tactic), this appears to be mostly a U.S. based operation.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
It is ironic that the only connection to oil is also the french's rejection of the war. It has been shown that France has secrete oil deals in violation of UN sanctions worth billions that they stood to lose with an invasion and war in Iraq. It has also been suggested that their chumming with Iraq and their promise of a Veto on a war resolution in the UN was connected to those deals. I can also understand the UN's reaction to us invading around them when the top leaders family was tied in with the French corruption and took part in the Oil for Food scandals first hand.
I'm drawing the connections seeing how we never got any cheap oil from the ordeal, that the only connection to the Iraq war and oil was the corrupt countries who stood to lose by a war and rejection one on those grounds.
So yea, you have been marked funny for your comment. I just think some people don't realize how funny it really it.
They don't seem to be distributing the Shareasa client. They seem to be distributing the iMesh client rebadged as Shareasa 4. The only copyright infringement seems to be the use of the Shareasa project's logo on their website. The biggest problem is trademark infringement and passing off, but the former is going to be difficult to pursue without registering the trademark first, which they don't have the money for.
As many observant /.ers have pointed out, it is not the French RIAA, since the last 'A' is America, and last time I looked France is in Europe (despite some beliefs). The French equivalent of the RIAA is the SCPP (Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques).
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
...from a while back in which some hardware counterfeiters in china got to the point where they where actually paying a firm for R&D for new products.
A hundred years ago the same thing was happening here in the US. Intellectual property law enforcement was non-existent in practice. US companies were ripping off European IP and then grew to the point when they needed their own R&D to compete with other US companies doing the same thing. Oddly enough, right about the time when serious commercial research was starting to take off in the States, the US IP laws grew some real teeth.
History is a funny thing. It almost seems like it keeps repeating itself.
DNS1=NETVISION.NET.IL
this is all in a hebrew-looking language and unreadable by me
DNS2=ELRON.NET
nowhere did I find in the list of companies they own for IT software does it list Shareaza
Many might already have noticed that Firefox flags this as a possible hijacked site and it sure looks like a strange partnership is behind this. IMO.
raw whois data: $ whois shareazaweb.com
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net/
for detailed information.
Domain Name: SHAREAZAWEB.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com/
Name Server: DNS.NETVISION.NET.IL
Name Server: NYPOP.ELRON.NET
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 28-nov-2007
Creation Date: 22-nov-2007
Expiration Date: 22-nov-2008
>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:28:26 UTC
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
If you go to the actual 7-zip web site and look in the right-hand column there is a link to jZip, so it seems highly unlikely that the 7-zip author is unhappy with them.