Kazaa Forced To Modify Search Engine 258
An anonymous reader writes "Eminem, Madonna and Kylie Minogue are just some of the popular artists whose songs are to be blocked from being illegally distributed on the peer-to-peer network Kazaa following Federal Court orders in Australia yesterday. Sharman Networks, the owner of Kazaa, was ordered by the courts to modify the file-sharing software to block a list of search terms -- primarily artist and song names. The search terms are also to be supplied by record companies. The directive follows the record companies' court victory in September against individuals and organizations associated with Kazaa."
Call me stupid, but? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the newbie people I've helped with their pc's, I've only seen 1 with kazaa still installed.
Most of them have moved on to other "better" methods of downloading their music/etc.
Does Kazaa still have spyware btw?
This will block legal file transfers (Score:4, Interesting)
What about the kids? (Score:2, Interesting)
But I guess there is no money in stopping child porn.
Blocking searches by artists' names (Score:2, Interesting)
The inteersting bit from the article (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe it's a large scale meatware solution where a downloading clip is streamed in real time into a room full of music experts, probably in Bombay?
Plus they will stop being p2p (Score:3, Interesting)
"Audible Magic involves getting the fingerprints for all songs," said a QC acting for Sharman, John Ireland. "You put a black box between two peers and if someone wants to copy something on the list, you can't do it," he said.
They want to basically make all transfers centralised through this black box, making Kazaa nothing more than a glorified web-based download service.
Not that it matters to anyone...does anyone use Kazaa anyway? Those who want to obtain their music via questionable means probably use other services nowadays.
Re:A simple solution. (Score:5, Interesting)
And notice how many games I haven't mentioned which have been hacked by dis-assembly alone and JMP instructions to bypass the copy protection checks.
The world is now a world where digital information is passed from point to point without any real interference. A "recording industry" is a relic of times gone by -- if they'd slim down and offer cheap recording to all then they'd be able to make a tidy profit 'cause _everyone_ wants to record something these days and studio space is not that expensive to maintain...
Control (Score:5, Interesting)
Prevent your competition from getting exposure = preventing them from becoming 'real' competition.
Me? Paranoid? naaaaaaa.
Re:what next? - PAY ATTENTION HERE. (Score:3, Interesting)
The goal of anti piracy measures is not (realistically) to eliminate all piracy. Rather, it's to make piracy a relative hassle so that more people will stay clear of it.
For EVERY anti-piracy mechanism there will be some workaround - be it a rename, a magic marker, a shift key, a crack, a patch, or whatever. That's not the point. The point is that the more of a pain or the more specific knowledge it takes to do such a workaround, statistically fewer people will do it. Every fake file, threat of lawsuit, etc is an attempt to curb the RATE of piracy, not some idyllic attempt to eliminate it altogether.
Re:RIAA get it right please. (Score:2, Interesting)
When is the Roman Catholic Church (Score:3, Interesting)
Works both ways? (Score:3, Interesting)
Although it still might make an interesting court argument for someone with the means and motivation to actually fight one of their lawsuits. In others words, the fact that such a list, controlled by them, exists, and they fact that they chose to exclude a certain work, might be construed (by the right judge/jury at the right time) as an implicit license to share that work. So, in the best case (from the users' point of view) this could backfire on the RIAA.
Re:kazaa is dead long live p2p. (Score:3, Interesting)
An while I am at it, emule is excellent, and they are probably the next target, they better get ready for it.
Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
A little more hard work, but once again, a little thinking flattens the RIAA's spectacular uselessness. I think that they need a new body in charge of their anti-piracy initiative as they're clearly hopeless at it.
Re:Control (Score:4, Interesting)
My favorite band (And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead) has an LP named Madonna. While I believe they're on a major label now, and I don't know their stance on filesharing, anyone who wants to check out that CD can't, especially since they're sure as hell not gonna play it on the radio. (By the way, check them out. They're not death metal, despite their name.)
Re:what next? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know, damn them, selling products for money. That's the most disgraceful thing I've ever heard.
How can they be so audacious to want to prevent the illegal distribution of things they sell?
LimeWire, eMule, BitTorrent (Score:4, Interesting)
10,000 words list? I can pretty much bet that most of these will be very general i.e. 'Kylie' instead of 'Kylie Minogue', so any artist named Kylie who want to bypass the grabing hands of the record industry and distribute themselves will now have a much harder time.
No. Independent artists can use LimeWire, which now recognizes Creative Commons licenses on shared media. Or she can use eMule or BitTorrent. But then, independent songwriters will still run into the risk of subconsciously copying a copyrighted song [slashdot.org].