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Court Docs Reveal Kazaa Logging User Downloads
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Feb 07, 2005 05:28 AM
Dan Warne writes "The most explosive documents in the ongoing Kazaa court case have emerged today, including logs of discussions between parent company Sharman and the Estonian developer of the Kazaa Media Desktop. They include extraordinary admissions like: "Reporting will make Kazaa look like spyware, as soon as it becomes evident we record downloads and playbacks, users will flee to competitive networks" and then "One can argue that we have knowledge of copyrighted material being downloaded in our network and have to install filters. If we are reporting [gold] files, then technically we could do the same for every file." Finally, "RIAA [could] collect the IP addresses for everyone who has searched for or downloaded that file." Despite the Kazaa developer's concerns over these issues, Kazaa went ahead with the logging." (More below.)
Warne continues "APC Magazine journalist Garth Montgomery, who has covered every day of the trial in the Australian Federal Court, says: "In a nutshell, this has got to rate as the most explosive document revealed. It makes it damn near impossible to maintain the separation theory that Sharman and Altnet rely on in terms of business independence and technical infrastructure. The control they exercise over the system is complete." Montgomery has also scanned in all the documents and made them available in PDF format, including the confidential Kazaa purchase contract and technical specifications for the Kazaa Media Desktop."
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WOW (Score:5, Insightful)
use earth station 5 (Score:4, Informative)
pS,
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IPX time baby! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:WOW (Score:5, Interesting)
And really, good riddance. If they're logging all their users' downloads, installing all kinds of adware, spyware, and other crapware on your systems (which they also admitted in court documents), and just generally acting not only as a bad corporate citizen but also an evil software developer in terms of their own users' interests, then this is most definitely not a company we need in existence in the world.
Whether you're for or against P2P in general (I'm for it), the world will be better off with Kazaa completely out of the picture.
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Re:WOW (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, Good for them. I never trusted Kazaa one second. There was something about it that I didn't like but could never really pinpoint on what it was outside of spyware infestation. Personally I was a ED2K fan until leeching made the devs put Anti-leeching programming into ED2K. Now all the ED2K clients are so stingy it takes days to get a file started.
I wonder how far back the logs go. With data like that the RIAA/MPAA could have a field day suing users.
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Re:WOW (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how far back the logs go. With data like that the RIAA/MPAA could have a field day suing users.
I wonder how often they'll sue 127.0.0.1.
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Re:WOW (Score:5, Funny)
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Once again... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I am reminded of why I use a reputable, private bittorrent server and alternative (read: under-the-radar) means of P2P. Hasn't this been suspected about Kazaa for quite some time?
Re:Once again... (Score:5, Informative)
Piratebay is hardly private, although I think your response is a bit of a troll-if they were doing that, they'd hardly have any users left, not to mention they'd be on PG's blacklist by now.
Evidence of what you're claiming aside, though, I've never used piratebay, although I have had a look at their legal correspondence. The site I use has, to my knowledge, not had its url posted here, and I'm not going to change that today.
A good private tracker, registration and ratio required, is a good degree of protection. I've never gotten -one- hit against my protowall while using those torrents.
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Re:Once again... (Score:5, Informative)
The first example that springs to mind is the Space Madness episode of Ren and Stimpy. Stimpy would normally never press the History Eraser Button, but when he's not only deliberately put in proximity to it, and the narrator keeps pushing his face in it, that's basically how much effort is needed for something to be entrapment.
Just being undercover -- that's not entrapment.
You could probably google for a discussion of the issue with some good case cites or something.
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Re:Once again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did he post anything about stealing peoples property? You're as bad as the xxIA.. p2p is evil, its STEALING, which even in the case of piracy (of which the parents post in NOT talking about) is not stealing.. its copyright infringement.
p2p can be used for many legitimate purposes.
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Re:Once again... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're as bad as the xxIA.
People demonize the RIAA in order to remove the guilt they feel and paint someone else as the bad guy doing wrong in order to justify their actions.
p2p can be used for many legitimate purposes.
But 99% of the time, it's not.
Why would someone on a P2P network worry about downloads being logged by the servers if they weren't trading anything illegal? Come on, we're not stupid. I wouldn't give a crap if some Kazaa server recorded that I shared Slackware 10.1. Did you know--gasp--Slashdot is logging your actions on its site right now? Horrors!
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Re:Once again... (Score:4, Funny)
What? Like Gold Dubloons and Pieces of Eight?
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Re:Once again... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Once again... (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of electrons in a wire as a pipe full of ping-pong balls glued to each other. The electric company is just pushing and pulling on ping pong balls they have, so that the ping pong balls you have will move.
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Re:Oh, Lordy, here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)
And complaining about those who object to calling infringment "stealing" twisting words is getting it entirely backwards. It's those who call infringement "stealing" who are trying to sidestep the entire question about what, if anything, is being done wrong.
If you want to say that copyright infringment is immoral behavior, you have to make that argument. Not declare the case closed by calling it "stealing" and ridiculing anyone who objects to the metaphor.
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Re:Oh, Lordy, here we go again (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody defines it becuause it's brain-dead obvious. The fact you've clouded your own mindset to the point you feel it's not obvious is telling. For instance, taking Doom 3 without paying for it is immoral. A lot of people spent years working on that game to make a living, and you're taking it while not paying for it--that makes it immoral.
It's brain-dead obvious.
These are basic concepts of right and wrong taught when we're three years old. This moral relativism, pro-piracy spiel I sometimes see on Slashdot where "I'm so used to the convenience of downloading that I've justified it in my mind so that I'm not doing anything wrong" is pretty childish. Funny how this attitude disappears when Slashdot posts articles about companies using GPL source code. Not only is it referred to as "stolen" code, but the companies are dumped on for violating the GPL copyright! By your reasoning, why should anybody follow the GPL? What's wrong with breaking it?
This generation of computer users seems to be all about "Gimme that, it's mine! Gimme that, it's mine!" The sense of entitlement is amusing and creates these sorts of hypocritical situations.
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Re:Oh, Lordy, here we go again (Score:5, Informative)
You're not saying why it's obvious (apparently it isn't obvious enough for the parent, or for me, or for most people for that matter). You're even using the language you're trying to defend in your argument, which is classical circular reasoning.
Also, you're attacking the person, not the argument, by calling him childish and stuffing words into his mouth.
As far as a counter-argument goes, you haven't even produced an cohesive argument, so why bother.
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Re:Once again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your ability to setup a bunch of different programs and scripts has NOTHING to do with privacy.
Privacy is all about trust and knowledge of the people you're talking to. Nothing to do with removing logs and setting up eggdrops.
It's SO OBVIOUS that this site is moderated by young children now, you can see them reading the parent and thinking "Oh yea, I can do that, I totally agree"
He's trolling about rooting a server then handing out logins to his l33t mates.
You probably can't mod this post down any lower, but please think about modding the parent down. Or if you choose not to do that, please post here why it's informative.
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Woah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Woah (Score:5, Informative)
Bzzzt! Wrong! This is one of the biggest Urban Myths out there right now. It seems I see this every copld months or so.
The internet began as a RFP in ARPA(long before ARPA became DARPA). It was started as way to:
1 - eliminate the need for 4 different terminal types on one desk.(that was how the idea germinated)
2 - Facilitate the sharing of information beteween gov't contractors and researchers who had ARPA grants.
3 - A way to timeshare systems for researchers who would not oridinarily have access to such systems.
It was US centric at the beginning and ARPA and ARPA's subcontractors/researchers only.
ARPA net was not designed for fault tolerence of command/control during a nuclear war. That was the impetus behind Paul Baran's development of the idea of packet-switching networks (that wasn't his name - the term "packet" came from Davies who sorta developed the same idea concurrently). He could never drum up support for the idea with ATT (really the only entity that could impliment it at the time). They said it was stupid idea. ARPA later grabbed the idea of packet switched networks and used it because it lent a robustness to otherwise unreliable lines of communications and the IMPs that terminated each line. The fact of the fault tolerence in terms of catastrophic destruction due to war is simply a coincidental side effect when you take into account the reasons the ARPA project was using packet switched networks.
Sorry. Got on my high-horse there. I just can't stand when people say that ARPAnet was designed in a distributed manner to survive a nuclear war. Not true. It was the basis of Paul Baran's conceptual model of a packet switching distributed network.
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I could care less (Score:5, Insightful)
Good riddance.
Re:I could care less (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:I could care less (Score:5, Insightful)
Any time I see someone utter or write the incorrect version of the phrase I picture the kind of person who says the latest catchphrase or buzzword without a clue to its origin and/or meaning.
Call me a snob, but I'm proud of our beautiful language (yet still more forgiving of American English than a lot of my fellow Brits).
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open source (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:open source (Score:5, Insightful)
It could have been completely open source, and Kazaa could still keep track off all the requests that your client made.
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They are... (Score:5, Insightful)
And stupid. They knew that they were walking a very narrow path with respect to legality. They had to be like Caesar's Wife - not only pure but seen to be pure. But instead they took their behaviour well over the line into things that they knew were illegal. And then recorded the fact that they were doing it.
Breathtaking.
They're just clueless (Score:5, Interesting)
And wth is with all these companies and collecting data about their users? Everyone must track you, profile you, and make you go through an intrusive registration just to (for example) download a patch to a product you've bought.
Now I _know_ that you're not really anonymous on the Internet, they can collect a ton of data about you, bla, bla, bla, Sure, they _can_. But do they even have a _legitimate_ use for that data? I.e., one that doesn't boil down to "we can sell the list to spammers later."
Most of the collected data nowadays (and again I don't only mean Kazaa) is plain useless for anything even resembling an aggregate statistic.
E.g., in Kazaa's case can they even do an automated aggregate statistic over the filenames? How? There must be hundreds of different ways to write the same filename, so good luck telling whether more people download Britney Spears or Eminem. Or which genre do people download more. And even if (ad absurdum) they could get an aggregate statistic, what would they do with that data?
E.g., in the case of some companies' intrusive registration forms and out-of-hand data collection, wth are they gonna do with such pieces of trivia as my house number or telephone number? _How_ does one use that in an agregate statistic?
I mean, "How many people bought our product in Europe vs USA?" is a statistic. "How many people with an even house number bought our product?" is at most useless trivia. There is _no_ useful information in there.
Dunno, reminds me of dogs chasing a car. They have no idea what they'd do with it if they caught one, but they just must do it anyway.
Sad.
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Re:They're just clueless (Score:5, Interesting)
On spelling, you can use a soundex function to reduce all to simular sounding groupings.
Collection of personal information like house number or telephone number- these can be mapped back to a phycial real-world location and then shown with other statitical information.
Try this out- to go Google and enter in your home phone number ( (xxx)-xxx-xxxx format ) and watch Google return your home address, and then be able to map near by businesses.
And since you can break things down by areas, and know what is being viewed / downloaded where, that information has value to others trying to sell stuff to you- Sherman networks knows that you liked SNL with Ashly Simpson- so in theory they could sell your name / address to companies that sell SNL videos and to record companies that produce crappy singers. Plus I'm sure Ms. Simpson would love to know that she's even more famous for just being famous.
Go read up on data mining sometime.
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Re:They're just clueless (Score:4, Informative)
You can remove [googleguide.com] your phone number from that feature.
"If you wish to remove your listing from Google's PhoneBook, complete the name removal form, which you can find at Name Removal [google.com] or by searching for [ remove phone number Google ].
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Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
That's Richard-Nixon-tastic.
So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably. Got your ticket to Brazil ? (Score:5, Funny)
Other contries to consider are Mexico and Argentina.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Just one more excuse to bash the door down.
Disclaimer: Cops are generally good people, in fact I have relatives who are cops.
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glad i never used kazaa (Score:5, Interesting)
They had it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Management ignored the developers? (Score:5, Funny)
News Flash!
Management may at times ignore developer concerns, although developers can have insight into the customer base not obvious to management.
It's been that way at every company I've worked at...and usually ended up in tears.
Tears for customer support, that is.
Film at 11.
Who installed Kazza Media Desktop??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Later all eDonkey [edonkey2000.com] users switched to Overnet [overnet.com] and later on to eMule [emule-project.net] and BitTorrent [bitconjurer.org]
An open source P2P application is more safe in use than a closed source application because clever people can read and understand the code.
Oh I forgot:
1) Idea
2-6) see above
7) ???
8) No Profit
9) Sued by RIAA/MPAA...
Re:Who installed Kazza Media Desktop??? (Score:5, Insightful)
The server still tracks your downloads.
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Just KMD? (Score:5, Interesting)
The revolution will not be webcast (Score:5, Insightful)
As with the United States' ill-fated experiment with "Prohibition" back in the 1930s or whenever it was, attempts to pressure a legitimate society-wide demand with artifical "legal" constraints simple result in a Newtonian counterforce of equal strength
Mark these words it is only a matter of time before the RIAA and company unleash one legal sully too many and the citizenry responds with clandestine acts of violence and possibly even people and/or animals.
It is clear that the individuals behind Kazaa are just a bunch of crooks trying to get rich of bootlegged goods, but so were the rum-runners of yore, and in the end, after much bloodshed and suffering , it was seen that rum could indeed be run legally with out the "sky", as it were, "falling". Let us hope those in power today come to a similar realization soon.
Re:The revolution will not be webcast (Score:5, Insightful)
As with the United States' ill-fated experiment with "Prohibition" back in the 1930s or whenever it was, attempts to pressure a legitimate society-wide demand with artifical "legal" constraints simple result in a Newtonian counterforce of equal strength.
History has shown us that the government and their backers are quite prepared to fight battles they have no hope of winning.
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logged IP addresses (Score:4, Informative)
Glad... (Score:5, Funny)
Thats my story and I'm sticking with it. (That was a bad pun...)
Out of Context (Score:4, Insightful)
Can Skype be trusted? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know that I use it for personal calls with no inherrent value but there are compaanies who are starting to use it to cut inter-office and employee communications bills - they could very easily be concerned about this.
Stop the Bullshit Now (Score:5, Informative)
For example, they're not actually logging file downloads, nor what you do. All they acknowledged is that they do this for Altnet, which you must have figured out (How can you buy a file from Altnet without the owner knowing about it?), and that they could potentially do this for Kazaa if they were so inclined and able:-
"Pritt: Posting stats to to 3rd party servers...."
it starts. But then, the fact of the matter follows:-
"Of course we won't know about downloads and playbacks of non-signed content, but it doesn't make a difference because:-
1) It's hard to communicate this to lawyers and users.
2) If we are reporting signed files [Ed: Altnet] then technically we can do the same for any file."
See for yourself, http://www.apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/2F22997D6933B1
Bottom of page 4.
In other words, they only logged what they said they would in the user agreement, but they didn't broadcast it because people who don't check their fucking facts will post it on large public forums for debate, and immediately leap to all the wrong conclusions.
It's not the dynamite people think it is. All it shows is that they can log, it means that the next few moves are foretold:-
1) The argument will be made that they can log, and therefore are complicity.
2) The counter-argument will be that logging on
such a scale is an invasion of privacy, illegal and out of the scope of the user agreement.
3) The argument will be made that the agreed upon logs with the users can be used as evidence against P2P users. It's not a serious logistical blow, but will be the *real* credibility damage Kazaa will face.
The endgame is either a Kazaa concession to log all activity, another sale to a different country or just a block on un-authorized files through a deliberately dis-incentivised weak version of Kazaa noone will want, and the winding down of the network will play to the Napster tune.
The dangers of decentralized business? (Score:5, Insightful)
As I remember reading, Kazaa was such a hard legal target to bring down because of how decentralized the business is. Servers in one jurisdiction, employees in another, the company registered in a third, bank accounts in another, and onwards, etc.
While it offers an extraordinarily complex legal knot to untangle for anyone trying to bring a suit against them, once they do land in court, the company's internal workings will all be well documented because everyone communicates through email or IM. Oops.
subject goes here (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, don't be a moron then either.
Re:P2P=Stealing? It's going the other way now. (Score:4, Insightful)
If P2P really kicks off then they're not going to be able to "push" their latest crap at people any more. Using P2P transfers everything to a "pull" model and, who knows, people may actually start looking for new interesting stuff on their own. Before too long independent artists/small time players will get equal access to "ear space".
And once their distribution monopoly is cracked they'll go the way of the dinosaurs. They know this, we know this. That's why they're after P2P.
"Illegal" downloads are the best free advertising the music "industry" ever had (just look at the relationship between CD sales and downloads from Napster and Audiogalaxy)
Their problem is that they just can't sell the same amount of crappy advertising or rig the playlists any more. Their payola funds will come to nothing and the "indutry" parasites will have to work for a living.
That's why they're crying.
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