KaZaa Suspends Downloads

chill writes: "'Download Temporarily Suspended -- Download of the KaZaA Media Desktop software is temporarily and voluntarily suspended pending Dutch court decision on January 31. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please check back at www.kazaa.com for more information.' --- Both the Linux and Windows client downloads are offline. I wonder what the judge thinks this will do to the tens, if not hundreds of thousands who already have the software?"

Morpheus - still available

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still download Morpheus, another Fasttrak-100 client from CNET [cnet.com]. According to my packet sniffer, it connects on port 1214 of these hosts:
12-230-133-211.client.attbi.com
cs2416272-88.jam.rr.com
scooby.videomaker.com
d226-68-164.home.cgocable.net
cs2424242-147.hot.rr.com
resnet129-210.medford.tufts.edu
orinoco.portland.co.uk

Except for the ads servers, no commericial servers appear to be contacted. So once KaZaa gets shut down, we just won't see their ads.

Morpheus is still going

[asv108]

For windows users, you can still use Morpheus [musiccity.com] for all your mp3 and pr0n downloads. I wouldn't be suprised if Morpheus is next considering Kazaa and Morpheus are based on the same technology from fastrack [fasttrack.nu]. Both morpheus and kazaa are similar to napster in the sense that they have centralized authentication, but they differ in the fact that there is not a centralized index. There is a good writeup on morpheus and kazaa available here [openp2p.com].

Doesn't matter too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, lots of people use Fasttrack, and the network is fairly decent (in that it sort of works sometimes), unlike Gnutella, Open Napster, and Direct Connect. But now that Fasttrack implemented a cryptographic challenge (such that no open source client can enter the network easily without cracking the code) they have shot themselves in the foot since it's easier to shut down with only one company licensing the technology. I wouldn't download Kazaa anyways, since it's loaded with sypware, 3rd party programs, and the like. Morpheus is another Fasttrack program, and it is pretty decent, although it does have ads that popup through Internet Explorer (!) and they even often have sound or shockwave, or take up the whole screen! Your best bet is to use Freenet [freenetproject.org] once version 0.5 is released (really soon now) with Frost [sourcefoge.net]. All those who know the old, non-working Freenet will be impressed by 0.5, as it works incredibly well now.

One other thing worth mentioning: Kazaa wants you to use it so that it can make money off your processing cycles, memory, and network connection. That's right; Kazaa plans to introduce technology to allow businesses to use the Kazaa network to burden the load of distributing large quantities of data.

Re:Who cares?

[VA Porware]

Actually you can get mp3s higher than 128kbps. In regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Morpheus or Kazaa, change LimitBitrate to 0 and reboot!

Get your Kazar right here

[XenoBOFH]

It is still possible to download KaZaA, a quick search found a copy here [pcworld.com]

C|Net Reporting on this...

[instinctdesign]

C|Net [news.com] is reporting on this, check out the article [com.com] which includes a few more details that haven't been mentioned here.

Upload a mirror today!

[GuNgA-DiN]

I uploaded a mirror here: Windows [tripod.com], Linux [tripod.com]. If everyone uploads a copy of the program this thing will never go away!

Gee...

[NoWhere Man]

Looks like I might just have to download it from 1 of another billion locations like this one:

http://www.mpex.net/software/download/kazaa.html

Misleading Topic

[Jucius Maximus]

The topic "KaZaa Suspends Downloads" is very misleading and is making people think that the ability to download content people have shared on the network is being halted.

This is not the case. They have taken the CLIENT software download off the website. The actual service seems unchanged.

This is the wrong way to do it.

[arikb]

KaZaA are supposedly acting in accordance with the court decision by stopping download of their software - BUT - this will not stop the network from existing.

In order to really stop the network from existing, the KaZaA guys nead to really break it - for instance, force a download of a newer version of KaZaA media desktop and disable it on a particluar date.

Thinking about it, maybe the versions we all have contains a remote control code which disables them, thus disabling the entire network.

It is enough that the network is inactive for a few days or fragmented enough to make it stop. There are some mechanisms built into KaZaA to prevent that from happening, but it is not impossible.

-- Arik

Napshare

[evilviper]

It's amazing how closely this lawsuit coincides with the release of Napshare v1.0 [sf.net]. Napshare v1.0 being the best Gnutella client out there.

Based loosely on GTK-Gnutella, it has the best features I've seen in any type of downloader. You feed it a string to search for, the minimum file size, a string that the files SHOULD NOT contain, and the minimum server speed if you like. (someone I know *cough**cough*) personally downloaded Jurassic Park 3 and Pulp Fiction in the past 2 days since they got Napshare... and that's 700MB/piece over a SLOW cable-modem (30KBps/7KBps).

Did I mention it's been running for two days constantly, under heavy load, without any memory leaks, and not a single crash.

Re:This is the wrong way to do it.

[josh crawley]

Still, this is yet another version of Obscurity. So what if they release a broken client/server. I've already got source to kazaa-like places (I used it to connect my linux box to them). Personally, I archive everything I get my grubby fingers on. As an example, I found a place I could download VirtualDub 1.3d, the avi editor that could convert ASF's. Yet another example is that I still use WinAMP 2.23 , and yes it's still shareware. I don't trust the AoL version until I comb the code. It'll have to be ASM, but I want to look for network tattletale code. Well, all of my data (in collecting rarelike downloads), I have about 4 archive cd's.

Josh Crawley
contact if you need something ,ahem, rare.
jwcrawle aght iupui daught edu (just say it out loud)

Terror sponsors came from Saudi, Egypt, Pakistan

[meehawl]

Afghanistan is just the fall guy, and a convenient site for a new oil pipeline [counterpunch.org]. How many Afghanis were on the planes in 9/11?

It's a good thing that the Bush Gang have frozen many "suspect" international bank accounts... but they specifically excluded those with ties directly to Bush [guerrillanews.com] or his dodgy family oil company, Harken. That banks in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia are not being investigated, where most of the Al Qaeda funding must have come from, is ludicrous and abdurd and patently dishonest.