Court Docs Reveal Kazaa Logging User Downloads 514
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."
open source (Score:4, Interesting)
So... (Score:4, Interesting)
glad i never used kazaa (Score:5, Interesting)
well... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Once again... (Score:3, Interesting)
Although no-one is likely to listen I can attest that it would indeed seem Piratebay is doing just what the grandparent of this says. Download a few torrents from them and find out the hard way....
Just KMD? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be surprised if Kazaa kept logs for more than a few months, the size of the data would be vast. They probably overwrote the logs after they'd got what they needed from them. I suspect the logging was only so they could create stats for each file downloaded to see how well files were spreading.
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.
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.
Re:WOW (Score:3, Interesting)
Both of them, let's hope.
Re:They had it coming (Score:3, Interesting)
I read this in a recent Billboard magazine... (Score:3, Interesting)
[The labels' lead barrister] Bannon also asked [Sherman chief technologist] Morle to sign on to Kazaa using a "special command line." This lead to those in attendance witnessing a connection to an alleged central server in Denmark, which Morle said he thought had been "phased out." The labels claim there is a "bank of some 20 computers in Denmark" contolling Kazaa.
During the 13-day trial, the parties submitted "hundreds of pages" of documents and sworn affidavids of expert witnesses as evidence. Only a portion of these winesses provided live testimony.
Attempting to establish the operators' ability to control the network, other industry experts said user statistics have been collected by Sharman, users' activities could be monitored, and logs could be maintained to trace users' locations.
Re:Skype (Score:3, Interesting)
Log files (Score:1, Interesting)
Expect a call?
Re:Stop the Bullshit Now (Score:1, Interesting)
The endgame is either a Kazaa concession to log all activity
Which would bankrupt them in half a year. This is where someone should have realized the slashdot headline was misleading, and 99,9% succesfull at that, looking at the many paranoid posts.
Ask yourself this simple question, how does one pay for the huge pipes needed for collecting data about all fasttrack usage? Remember we are talking about companies that have a couple of former soviet state coders and a webserver, thats it! They can make millions in spyware, I am sure, but whats the point if you have to spend most of it on monitoring/policing users or end up in court again for failing to comply with court orders?
Just think about it, a central statistics hub for every fasttrack peer? That needs insane amounts of bandwith! It might actually eat the most part of whatever fiber is going toward australia ;-) (Is that still a one telco, one under sea cable situation, or did the forced peering work out?)
Ofcourse once these download reports (5/client/hour?), and maybe search queries (15/client/hour?) come in from *millions of clients* they have to be processed (ebay size server cluster?) and stored (terrabytes?) on systems that are carfully maintained (8 engineers/coders full time?). All of this would serve *no business purpose whatsoever*.
subject goes here (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, don't be a moron then either.
kazaalite has no "topsearch.dll" file to do this (Score:1, Interesting)
Correct?
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.
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.
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.
Re:glad i never used kazaa (Score:2, Interesting)
And this is why democracies are always doomed to failure.
A few quotes:
"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
Thomas Jefferson
"Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property;
and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death."
James Madison
"A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic, negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy."
Democracy, 1927, The U. S. Army Training Manual
"Remember, Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself! There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide."
Samuel Adams
"If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of public expenditures You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete."
1850, Benjamin Disraeli
Now according to the CIA World factbook here:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbo
Australia is:
democratic, federal-state system recognizing the British monarch as sovereign
So your argument would actually work in Australia but not in the U.S. which is "Constitution-based federal repulbic" where the rule of law governs the land and not the majority.
Look at it this way, if the majority wants you dead and your belongings scattered to the wind, they can do that in a democracy as long as 51% of the people agree.
You missed one... (Score:3, Interesting)
For a group of people supposedly at least remotely qualified to perform scientific analysis, there is a whole hell of a lot of disregard for any sense of logic here at Slashdot.
Re:WOW (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:IPX time baby! (Score:3, Interesting)
Are MPAA/RIAA etc modding posts on this thread? (Score:1, Interesting)
THen go back and see the posts that say that the server will log all kazaa downloads. See how those are modded up.
Is it possible that the public relations arm of MPAA/RIAA is action right here on this thread?
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.
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.
Re:Once again... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say he's pushing it with the "majority" remark, but it makes me wonder if the 99% claim often made is close to the mark.
Re:Just KMD? (Score:3, Interesting)