Kazaa-lite Shut Down

atari2600 writes "Finally it has happened. Zeropaid is reporting that the Kazaalite K++ project has been shutdown by Sharman Networks. The project, which had been set up to block spy and ad ware within the Kazaa Media Desktop Program has achieved notoriety within the P2p world through its simplistic approach and success in reverse engineering the Kazaa application."

GiFT

[marcelC]

Who cares, there ae enough GiFT frontends for both linux and windows available which will give you the same functionality.

The K++ Network

[SYSS Mouse]

I ran K++ today, and it is still running.

Well, it is a decentralized network, so it cannot be shut down. Nut there will be no more updates, I suppose.

Re:The K++ Network

[cyberfunk2]

Uhm.. They shutdown K++ , the CLIENT, not the fasttrackk network...

the story at slyck

[real_smiff]

Zeropaid /.'ed. Alternative article [slyck.com]. Probably the original anyway.. zeropaid has a habit of ahem 'stealing' news.

Obligatory mirroring

[JayBlalock]

Speaking with RatFaced, one of the Kazaa Lite forum moderators today and our contact at K-Lite, I have uncovered news that the Kazaa Lite K++ project has been shut down by Sharman Networks on grounds of copyright infringement.

The project, which had been set up to block spy and ad ware within the Kazaa Media Desktop Program has achieved notoriety within the P2p world through its simplistic approach and success in reverse engineering the Kazaa application.

However, the program infringed on the copyright of Sharman Networks, the company that now own and program the Kazaa Media Desktop application, after the purchase of the code and copyright in 2002. The FastTrack (Kazaa) network is financed through advertising systems, which Kazaa Lite K++ does not include, and so was seen as a threat by the owners.

Sharman have threatened legal action, and ordered that the offending content be removed from the official Kazaa Lite sites, including http://www.kazaalite.tk/ which now contains no reference to the existance of the application.

RatFaced said that the decision was ?Ironic, that Kazaa is complaining about copyright issues, especially as K-Lite ++ stands for everything that Kazaa CLAIMS to stand for... but fails to deliver.?

We will perhaps never see Kazaa Lite again, but we can hope that users will remain aware of the spyware that is hidden inside the Kazaa application, which is used to finance the creation of the software.

eMule and WinMX offer spyware-free alternatives to Kazaa.

Re:The K++ Network

[p0rnking]

K, it's one thing not to read the original article, and another to not read what was posted on /.
"... that the Kazaalite K++ project has been shutdown by Sharman Networks. The project, which had been ..."
Kazaalite is just a "hacked" up version on Kazaa ... it runs on the same network. What Sharman Networks has done, is shutdown the project (K++).

Re:Was RIAA involved

[klparrot]

showing RIAA's over zelousness in attacking computer technology.

It wasn't the RIAA that took down Kazaa Lite, it was Sharman Networks (the creators of the "real" Kazaa). Kazaa Lite was a reverse engineered and modified version of Kazaa, and Sharman complained it was copyright infringement.

Re:A little ironic, don't you think?

[bconway]

A couple weeks ago: the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs were available on Kazaa.

Re:thats one way

[42forty-two42]

What about giFT-fasttrack [berlios.de]?

How to get K++ Lite...

[Anonymous Coward]

1.) Download Kazaa
2.) Run Kazaa and search for K++ lite
3.) Download K++ lite from Kazaa
4.) Install K++ lite and delete Kazaa

Presto!

Re:The K++ Network

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only has Sharman Networks succeeded in eliminating nearly every major resource of Kazaa Lite K++, they are systematically forcing it off the network.

How you ask?

Recent upgrades to Kazaa clients (2.5 and higher) make them less tolerant with outdated or non official clients such as Kazaa Lite K++. Kazaa Lite is based on a version prior to 2.5, therefore a current supernode will not accept its shares. Although this will cause network headaches in terms of traffic, the client will not be able to participate or download off the main FastTrack network. This will effectively cluster and isolate all modified Kazaa clients from FastTrack.

from http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=339

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Oh Well, there not the first, there not the las

[kryptkpr]

I've said this before, and I will say it again. BT is not a good network for illegal content.

It's efficient in distributing large files quickly, especially if lots of people want them. However, it does so at the cost of any and all anonymity.. It's trivial to find IPs of people sharing any file (just ask the tracker; it'll give you a FULL LIST), without even downloading the file/joining the swarm yourself.

The MPAA at least has already begun sending DMCA-ish notices to ISPs stating "BitTorrent" as the network name..

As I've also said before, Don't do things illegal in your country!

(And if you want to do them, maybe you need to move to a different Country? God bless Canada and the blank media tax; I don't mind paying a little bit on every CD-R for a music piracy license!)

Re:Still works for me...

[p0rnking]

from another article ....

"Recent upgrades to Kazaa clients (2.5 and higher) make them less tolerant with outdated or non official clients such as Kazaa Lite K++. Kazaa Lite is based on a version prior to 2.5, therefore a current supernode will not accept its shares. Although this will cause network headaches in terms of traffic, the client will not be able to participate or download off the main FastTrack network. This will effectively cluster and isolate all modified Kazaa clients from FastTrack."

Re:A little ironic, don't you think?

[DiscoOnTheSide]

Not to mention publicly released music by the bands of 3 of my friends...

Here's how you download Kazaa K++

[schnits0r]

Download Kazaa
Search for KAzaa K++
download it
Install it
And delete the regular KAzaa

I know it works because I did it on a computer I was setting up.

Re:Are you an RIAA spokesperson?

[TwinkieStix]

I work for a band merchandising company, and I can tell you that if you really want to give the band something for their work, buy their OFFICIAL merchandise. The merchandise linked to from their OFFICIAL web site. They get as much as 50% of the price you see on the screen, even if the merch company designed the logos and bought the materal to create it.

Re:I was wondering

[dnaumov]

"

Imagine if someone released a free product called "Windows Light" that was just like M$ Windows but faster and hassle free."

Windows Lite [litepc.com].

Alternate Kazaa-Lite download source

[joel8x]

You can always download it here: OldVersion [oldversion.com]

Specifics from the Slyck Article

[Yi Ding]

The main thing that people may not be getting is that not only is Sharman shutting down the Kazaa Lite download sites (which in it of itself would not be so much of a problem since it can be distributed over P2P), it's also making the new client (2.5) not let K-Lite (or any Kazaa under 2.4 for that matter) participate in its shares, basically banning it from the mainstream Kazaa network. If we factor in the fact that K-Lite users generally disable becoming a supernode, this becomes a real problem.

However, the article also mentions that there is DietK [dietk.com] which strips all of the adware off of Kazaa (although it doesn't have all of the other nice features of K-Lite), and other clients which are still compatible with the fast track network.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Are you an RIAA spokesperson?

[pyros]

Artists have given breakdowns of the economic side to siging with the RIAA. You give the copyrights of your music to the studio (look at CDs and notice that barely any from RIAA studios attribute any copyright to the artist). The studio lends you money for studio time. The studio promotes the album and a subsequent tour. You raise money through ticket sales and CD/merchandies sales at the concerts. You use that money to pay off the original loan for studio time. Royalty payments go to the copyright owner, which is the studio, so the artists make very little. The whole point is to get the promotion, which gives you better income from touring. Once you have money, you can sign with a label that lets you keep the copyright. The business-smart artists create their own label, and sign other bands, because that's where the real money comes from. Copyright is for, I believe, 70 years after the artists death, thanks to the Sonny BonoCopyright Extension Act, so having the copyright on the songs means a revenue stream for decades.

Re:Oh Well, there not the first, there not the las

[gad_zuki!]

Bittorrent is centralized for P2P.

Shareaza 1.9 is out. [shareaza.com] It supports 4 protocols.

Re:Are you an RIAA spokesperson?

[ClarifyAmbiguity]

Ah, you neglect that tons of CD's out there are non-RIAA.

kazaa functionality with K++ tidiness

[igorxa]

there is also an alternative to the adware/spyware-free K++. diet kazaa [dietk.com] is an add-on for kazaa that strips it of adware and spyware. so who really needs K++ anymore?

Try shareaza

[Seves]

www.shareaza.com connects to multiple networks at one time and is a bitorrent client.

Takes a little longer to get music files, but for larger downloads, it's worked faster than kazaa.

Re:thats one way

[red_gnom]

Download k-lite 2.4.1 from:
Kazaa Lite [tripod.com]

Get your old versions here

[santos_douglas]

The excellent old version archive site OldVersion.com [oldversion.com] has old versions of the K-lite client, plus many other 'out of print' apps. It is unclear if the 'legit' Kazaa will be able to block access even by existing K-lite installs, anyone more knowledgeable care to comment?

I could care less, I stopped downloading from it some time ago. Another /.er recommended iRate, [sourceforge.net] which is quite good.

SIMPLE SOLUTION!!!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Use VMware to run the P2P client in. After downloading the file, ftp it to the main box. No shared drives, and with sw firewall on main box AND inside the VMware session, the main box is clean from whatever nastyness is happening inside VMware. RAM is cheap. Get 2 gigs of it. It'll change your life.

I could care less what a program wants to "spy" on when it's on a VMware os with a bare bones WinXP Pro install. Shut down VMware, don't save the changes, and I start VMware every time with a fresh, uh... virgin :) os and my P2P app.

www.vmware.com

Here's a tip, make one VMware session that has all the known P2P apps outthere. Let the spyware install! Horray! Bwcause there is nothing to spy on. Inside the dedicated "P2P machine" I keep all the P2P's in the startup and hide all desktop icons and even the taskbar is set to autohide. Start the machine, download stuff, then just ftp to main box. Then shut down vmware without saving. Simple.

Open source equivs to VMware? There are some I think. Know of any?

T-shirt sales

[Facekhan]

While a band does get a large chunk of the price of their shirts and other merchandise, a lot of times the shady vendors simply never send them their check.

Re:The REAL tragady of P2P

[Polyhazard]

I must say I agree completely. I'm a bit of an audiophile with "eclectic" taste in music.

I managed to build up my (purchased) CD collection substantially with music I may have never discovered were it not for P2P. A search by genre or tracks I discover completely by accident are often a major source of titles for my wish-list. As someone who has pretty much completely abandoned radio, P2P is a great alternative.

Another one of my favorite uses for P2P collecting episodes of cancelled TV shows. A lot of great shows have not, and may not ever be released on DVD. Thanks to K-lite, I now have a full collection of Twin Peaks, Sifl and Olly, Invader Zim and others. (yes I know the first season of Twin Peaks is on DVD. unfortunately, years have passed with no plans to release any more.)

Here [evolution-control.com] is a page describing a couple of the other more unusual uses for P2P, such as "napster bombs" and "napster nuggets.

internet radio

[adamruck]

Ever since I started to listen to internet radio I never used a p2p network again, and I havent looked back. Go to www.shoutcast.com. They have all types of music, for free, at decent quality. You can use winamp to play streaming audio for windows, or xmms to play streams on linux. No more dicking around with dcc or kazaa networks. Oh yeah.. unlike normal radio there are no commercials either.

Re:In other news...

[dalutong]

I assume that your comment is meant call gift-fasttrack "yet another kazza clone." It is not. What it IS is very worth your consideration.

GIFT (http://gift.sf.net) is now a wonderful program that connects to Fasttrack (kazaa,) the old fasttrack network (openfasttrack), the opennapster network (old napster), and gnutella. When you do a search in one of the gift frontends you do a search in all of those protocols.

The interfaces could use some polishing (i like giFTcurs the best), but I think gift has a tremendous amount of potential.

Re:just a simple yet profound question..

[numark]

The difference is that the radio station has to go out and buy ASCAP and BMI licenses to distribute the music. That license only applies to the first distributor, i.e. the radio station.

RIAA is keying on KAZAA mainly since they don't

[zymano]

hide you IP number . Very easy for them to bill you.

Use anonymous P2P. [guardian.co.uk]

Other P2P software.

[zymano]

The Riaa is on to Kazaa. Hell they probably have everyone's ip number from that P2p. Try these alternatives !! [guardian.co.uk]

Re:DietK

[joe_bruin]

diet kazaa is an interesting product.
it modifies the kazaa client at runtime, and therefore is not in dmca-trouble (the authors are rather careful about it).
it suppresses ads, paid search results, and kazaa spyware. it also allows more than the limited number of searches, automatic re-searching for files, and other nifty things.
the only problem with it, is that you need a full kazaa install, and therefore must install the kazaa spyware (which is then removed by dietk).
i would recommend it.

Re:Well crap. Help me with a new program

[generationxyu]

giFT is good for a few reasons: 1. OpenFT is kind of in shambles now, but 90% of the time, if you find a file on OpenFT, you'll be able to download it at 100kB/sec. 2. giFT supports plugins for different networks, like gift-gnutella, gift-fasttrack, and the soon coming gift-opennap and gift-soulseek. 3. One of the lead devs on the gift-fasttrack plugin, Julian Ashton, has just cracked the Fasttrack 0xA9 encryption, so gift-fasttrack can connect to new (Kazaa 2.5) supernodes. It currently takes about 30 seconds to connect to Fasttrack with giFT. 4. It's open source (GPL I believe). 5. No malware of any sort (it's open source, after all). 6. gift-fasttrack supports malicious host blocking with a long list of hosts that aren't friendly for p2p sharing.

Re:GiFT

[Dave2 Wickham]

giFToxic [sourceforge.net] is a Gtk2 frontend (development seems to have stalled); giFT [sourceforge.net] and giFT-FastTrack [berlios.de] are needed to use it with FastTrack.

Re:Thanks a lot, Sherman

[macdaddy357]

That won't happen. Sharman is secretly in league with them. All that spyware crap in Kazaa is there to rat you out to the RIAA and MPAA. P2P is not what it was in the Napster era. Still, this won't make Kazaa lite go away, it will just make it go back underground, which will make it even cooler.

Re:thats one way

[norsk_hedensk]

apollon is a great QT frontend to giFT. http://apollon.sourceforge.net

Re:In other news...

[alpharoid]

You are forgetting the crucial network supported by giFT: OpenFT. The old fasttrack network is long gone, dead ever since Sharman Networks dumped it for the new version. OpenFT is being developed exactly because it's tough to depend on proprietary software that chooses which platforms to support and leaves everybody else in the dark.

We should benefit a lot from OpenFT as it matures. So far, it's the best offering we have for a non-centralized, Kazaa-style network.

Poisoned

[useosx]

Who says Macs don't have good P2P? Poisoned [poisonedproject.com] is an excellent giFT [sf.net] front end for OS X. Open source and everything. Supports OpenFT, Fasttrack, Gnutella, with OpenNapster and eDonkey on the way.

Re:thats one way

[sploxx]

Yes, P2P has good uses. But your mentioned Video/Audio streaming for the masses can be accomplished in an even better way:

MULTICASTING!

This is completely ignored by today's networking people.
Somehow, P2P got buzzword status and now noone thinks of multicasting any more. But it has been invented just for efficient 1 to n distribution of data.

Hopefully, with IPv6, multicast will spread.

Re:In other news...

[moranar]

There's an excellent graphical frontend for giFT: Apollon, which uses the qt libraries. After using it, even kazaalite seems confusing and bloated!

On the other hand, I've had troubles connecting to the OpenFT network (read: I cannot connect). Perhaps it's just me...

Anyway, the links:

1. giFT, the daemon [sourceforge.net]
2. giFT-FastTrack, the plugin [berlios.de]
3. Apollon, the frontend [sourceforge.net]

Poisoned works well...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are privilaged enough to use a mac you can download Poisoned [poisonedproject.com] and search the FastTrack(Kazaa), giftd, OpenFT and Gnutella network all at the same time! No adware here either!

Download Kazaa Lite 2.4.3 from:

[red_gnom]

Download Kazaa Lite 2.4.3 from:
Kazaa Lite 2.4.3 [download.de]

Re:thats one way

[Catbeller]

"MULTICASTING!"

Broadcasting on MC requires an expensive contract with a provider, whereas P2P simply requires one, single, node. Cheap, simple, and very scary to people who want control.

P2P can be largely untraceable, barring massive government involvement around the world, while multicasting is as controllable as TV. The company providing the MC is a single point of control; P2P is democratic, spontaneous, and as hard to control as the Internet itself.

Re:What I'm wondering is...

[scenturion]

This is exactly what I use WASTE [sourceforge.net] for. They descibe the project as "a mesh-based workgroup tool that allows for encrypted, private communication between distant parties on the internet, independant [sic] of local network organization."

I'm hooked up with my brother, my friends and his friends. Granted it's not ideal for obscure searching, but it's the best we can do while still flying under the radar, so to speak.

Besides, I wouldn't trust my friend's friend's friend's friend's friend that you never met and whose name you don't know as a source to download from. That's what gets people into trouble for using Kazaa/whatever.