Kazaa: Happy In the Global Legal Briarpatch 262
Steve0987 writes "The Washington Post has an article on the entertainment industry's atempts to close down the file-sharing system Kazaa. I agree that copyrighted material shouldn't be freely distributed from an ethical standpoint. However, the entertainment industry has been acting in an arbitrary manner trying to impede anything remotely impinging on their industry. Go Kazaa."
Re:Wow, I'm actually one of the first 20 posters.. (Score:5, Informative)
A brief history of the Kazaa empire. (Score:5, Informative)
So we begin.
A few internet cowboys, seeing the demise of Napster, cobble together Kazaa -- a decentralized filesharing network.
Originally, the software was licensed for distribution under three names, Kazaa, Morpheus, and Grokster, each of which was essentially the same program, with a different skin.
Kazaa was known for making an attempt at placating the record industry by only allowing lower bit-rate songs to be downloaded, whereas Morpheus had no such restrictions.
Forgive my lack of knowledge about Grokster -- the programs were all so close to identical that I never tried it.
Now, Kazaa came under legal fire in the Netherlands, but didn't get an official shut down.
Fearing their investments (and possibly their freedom), the original owners of Kazaa sold Kazaa to Sharmin Networks, who are perhaps the dodgiest software company I've ever seen.
Sharmin is also infamous for their spyware, and Bonzi Buddy. I can't remember who the founder was -- and Sharman Network's web page has mysteriously disappeared, but they were involved in some great scandal in Australia, and even a cursory Slashdot search (of the kind I'm unwilling to do on a saturday morning) will turn up the details, undoubtedly.
Sharmin was the one who loaded up Kazaa with enough spyware to make Back Orifice look like a legitimate client application, and has a EULA including a clause giving Sharmin permission to use your clock cycles, bandwidth, and hard drive space however they want.
This was part of what is known now as AltNet, Sharmin's answer to the Seti@Home project, or ud.com's Cancer curing project. Turn Kazaa users into a giant super computer... And then sell the time to the highest bidder.
Only one problem -- Kazaa's reputation was so bad, everyone was using Morpheus, who's tagline was something along the lines of "File-sharing without spyware".
Kazaa responded by ejecting Morpheus from their network by poisoning all the Kazaa hosts that upgraded to the new version. Any Morpheus client that touched an infected node was killed -- Kazaa overwrote a part of your registry to ensure you would never be able to use Morpheus again.
Around that time, they put up a button on the front of their site offering amnesty for refugees in this file-sharing client war, and Morpheus released Lime-Wire as Morpheus 2.0b.
Basically, the new morpheus was an old fork of the limewire code with an M for a logo, and was just a klunky gnutella client. There was some hullaballoo about open source this, and no source code that, and then Morpheus released the code again. Checking their web page now, they claim to have a final 2.0 out, but I haven't used it and cannot vouch for its quality.
Since then, Sharman Networks has been keeping a fairly low profile, and a hacker named Yuri has started releasing KazaaLite. KazaaLite is not a stripped down version of the software, so much as a stripped down version of the installer.
One without Bonzi Buddies, or yellow link underliners (remember that little ad-fad?) or any of the other myriad hacks and stupidities which Kazaa inflicts on your system.
KazaaLite does actually include a few patches to the executable, mostly to ensure Kazaa can't monitor your usage or install spyware on your system, and new versions are released with some regularity.
Well. Now we're up to the current date, with somewhat foggy bits along the way, and probably a few confused details by myself. I would appreciate any clarifications or corrections, as this all came from memory.
Cheers, and remember: KazaaLite is the answer.
Re: Kazaa-lite is illegal. They told me so. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Notoriety (Score:2, Informative)
You make it sound like Napster actually went to court and was found guilty by a judge and a jury -- when in fact, they never got to the trial stage at all.
You don't have to be right when you have enough money to sue the other guy into bankruptcy.
Kaaza Lite (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A brief history of the Kazaa empire. (Score:5, Informative)
A few internet cowboys, seeing the demise of Napster, cobble together Kazaa -- a decentralized filesharing network.
Nope, a Dutch software firm set up a daughter firm called FastTrack which set out to make a File-sharing program. They (seemingly from the article) got a few Estonians to make it. The software was targeted at business. To get more intrest from businesses they made a Public version called KaZaA, which they housed in another daughter firm (called KaZaA).
Originally, the software was licensed for distribution under three names, Kazaa, Morpheus, and Grokster, each of which was essentially the same program, with a different skin
correct.
Kazaa was known for making an attempt at placating the record industry by only allowing lower bit-rate songs to be downloaded, whereas Morpheus had no such restrictions.
This move made KaZaA a tad bit less popular, and Morpheus got a few more users out of it.
Now, Kazaa came under legal fire in the Netherlands, but didn't get an official shut down.
They did come under legal fire: They had to pay (i think) a million Euro's a day, for each day the network was still active. KaZaA said that it couldn't be shut down because it was "more p2p than napster" (which is true, but not to the extent of Gnutella for instance)
(inbetween here is correct)
Only one problem -- Kazaa's reputation was so bad, everyone was using Morpheus, who's tagline was something along the lines of "File-sharing without spyware".
Kazaa responded by ejecting Morpheus from their network by poisoning all the Kazaa hosts that upgraded to the new version. Any Morpheus client that touched an infected node was killed -- Kazaa overwrote a part of your registry to ensure you would never be able to use Morpheus again.
Nope...Morpheus was kicked off the FastTrack Network because it hadn't paid it's bills! (In the same move they kicked off giFT, the GPL FastTrack program..) Sharman did this by encripting it's login-servers authencation system.
Though by doing that they actually showed that KaZaA could be stopped, as Morpheus was now left with no central login servers. However, downloads allready begun could be finished & if you had a network of pure Morpheus users around you, you could still search each other.
Around that time, they put up a button on the front of their site offering amnesty for refugees in this file-sharing client war, and Morpheus released Lime-Wire as Morpheus 2.0b.
Basically, the new morpheus was an old fork of the limewire code with an M for a logo, and was just a klunky gnutella client. There was some hullaballoo about open source this, and no source code that, and then Morpheus released the code again. Checking their web page now, they claim to have a final 2.0 out, but I haven't used it and cannot vouch for its quality.
Correct info, wrong name...it was gnucleus. However, this move did have massive impact on the Gnutella network (which gnucleus, limewire, bearshare, shareaza, etc. use). The network just couldn't handle the massive increase in non-sharing bandwidth slurping morpheus users. (Not all, but most of them actually are that)
- the rest is correct -
Well. Now we're up to the current date, with somewhat foggy bits along the way, and probably a few confused details by myself. I would appreciate any clarifications or corrections, as this all came from memory.
You have a good memory, but my part is also from memory, though I actually read a article about it (in the time that KaZaA (the Dutch firm) was under legal fire.
Cheers, and remember: KazaaLite is the answer.
Well, ehm, partly. For now it is, though I would advise you to run giFT (gift.sf.net) under linux. It now has a FastTrack-Network lookalike plugin: OpenFT. Really cool. Scales well & really fast searches.
In the long run w'll probably want to run Freenet, but that isn't going to be done for a very long time.