Kazaa Totally Explained

Everything about Kazaa totally explained

Kazaa Media Desktop (once capitalized as "KaZaA", but now usually written "Kazaa") is a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol and is owned by Sharman Networks.
Kazaa is commonly used to exchange MP3 music files over the Internet. However it can also be used to exchange other file types, such as videos, applications, and documents. The official Kazaa client can be downloaded free of charge, bundled with adware and spyware, although there are "No spyware" claims found on Kazaa's website. Throughout the past few years, Kazaa's developing company has been the target of many copyright-related lawsuits.

History

Kazaa and FastTrack were created by Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and Priit Kasesalu (all of whom were later to create Skype and later on still Joost). It was introduced by their Dutch company Consumer Empowerment in March 2000, near the end of the first generation of P2P networks typified by the shut down of Napster on July 2002.
   Initially, most users of Kazaa were users of the Morpheus program, formerly a client of MusicCity. But once the official Kazaa client became more widespread, its developers used their ability to automatically update it, changing the protocol in February 2002, to shut out Morpheus clients when its developers failed to pay license fees. Morpheus later became a client of the Gnutella network.
   Like the creators of similar products, Kazaa's owners have been taken to court by music publishing bodies to restrict its use in the sharing of copyrighted material. Consumer Empowerment was sued in the Netherlands in 2001 by the Dutch music publishing body, Buma/Stemra. In November 2001, the court ordered Kazaa's owners to take steps to prevent its users from violating copyrights, or else pay a heavy fine. Consumer Empowerment responded by selling the Kazaa application to a complicated mesh of offshore companies, primarily Sharman Networks, headquartered in Australia and incorporated in Vanuatu. In late March 2002, a Dutch court of appeal reversed an earlier judgment, and stated that Kazaa wasn't responsible for the actions of its users. Buma/Stemra lost its appeal before the Dutch Supreme Court in December 2003.
   However, the legal problems for Kazaa were only just beginning. Kazaa's new owner, Sharman, was sued in Los Angeles by the major record labels and motion pictures studios and a class of music publishers. The other defendants in that case—Grokster and MusicCity (makers of the Morpheus file-sharing software)—initially prevailed against the plaintiffs on summary judgment (Sharman joined the case too late to take advantage of that ruling). The summary judgment ruling was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but unanimously reversed by the US Supreme Court in a decision titled MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd..
   Following that ruling in favor of the plaintiff labels and studios, Grokster almost immediately settled the case. Shortly thereafter, on 27 July 2006, it was announced that Sharman had also settled with the record industry and motion picture studios. As part of that settlement, the company agreed to pay $100 million in damages to the four major music companies—Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music—and an undisclosed amount to the studios. Sharman also agreed to convert Kazaa into a legal music download service.
   While the U.S. action was still pending, the record industry commenced proceedings against Sharman on its home turf. In February 2004, the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) announced its own legal action against Kazaa, alleging massive copyright breaches. The trial began on 29 November 2004. On 6 February 2005, the homes of two Sharman Networks executives and the offices of Sharman Networks in Australia were raided under a court order by ARIA to gather evidence for the trial.
   On 5 September 2005, the Federal Court of Australia issued a landmark ruling that Sharman, though not itself guilty of copyright infringement, had "authorized" Kazaa users illegally to swap copyrighted songs. The court ruled six defendants—including Kazaa's owners Sharman Networks, Sharman's Sydney-based boss Nikki Hemming and associate Kevin Bermeister—had knowingly allowed Kazaa users illegally to swap copyrighted songs. The company was ordered to modify the software within two months (a ruling enforceable only in Australia). Sharman and the other five parties faced paying millions of dollars in damages to the record labels that instigated the legal action.
   On 5 December 2005, the Federal Court of Australia ceased downloads of Kazaa in Australia after Sharman Networks failed to modify their software by the December 5th deadline. Users with an Australian IP address were greeted with the message "Important Notice: The download of the Kazaa Media Desktop by users in Australia isn't permitted" when visiting Kazaa website. Sharman planned to appeal the Australian decision, but ultimately settled the case as part of its global settlement with the record labels and studios in the United States.
   In yet another set of related cases, in September 2003, the RIAA (trade association of the music industry) filed suit in civil court against several private individuals who had shared large numbers of files with Kazaa; most of these suits were settled with monetary payments averaging $3,000. Sharman Networks responded with a lawsuit against the RIAA, alleging that the terms of use of the network were violated and that unauthorized client software (such as Kazaa Lite, see below) was used in the investigation to track down the individual file sharers. An effort to throw out this suit was denied in January 2004. However, that suit was also settled in 2006 (see above). Most recently, in Duluth, Minnesota, the recording industry sued Jammie Thomas, a 30 year old single mother. On October 5, 2007, Thomas was ordered to pay the six record companies (Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.)$9,250 for each of the 24 songs they'd focused on in this case. She was accused of sharing a total of 1,702 songs through her Kazaa account. Along with attorney fees, Thomas may responsible for owing as much as a half a million dollars. Thomas testified that she doesn't have a Kazaa account, but her testimony was complicated by the fact that she'd replaced her computer's hard drive after the alleged downloading took place, and later than she originally said in a deposition before the trial.(External Link

)

Nikki Hemming sues p2pnet

In an unrelated case, Sharman Networks and Nikki Hemming, the Kazaa CEO, is suing Canadian digital media news site p2pnet, claiming it defamed Hemming in an article quoting an Associated Press story and a reader's comment.
The case was widely reported in the mainstream media, including an article in the BBC (External Link

)written by Canadian internet law expert Dr Michael Geist.
   "The suit, launched by Sharman Networks' Nikki Hemming, has attracted considerable international attention because of the parties involved - Sharman Networks is the Australian-based owner of Kazaa, the peer-to-peer file sharing service that last week agreed to pay the entertainment industry $100m (£53m) to settle ongoing litigation," says Geist in the article.
   "It also highlights the vulnerability of thousands of individuals to defamation lawsuits merely for providing access to other people's comments. "Even individual bloggers who permit comments face the prospect of demands to remove content that's alleged to violate the law
   "Both Sharman Networks and Hemming sued P2Pnet last spring, claiming that an article and accompanying comments posted by readers of the site were libelous.
   "Jon Newton, the owner of the site, has vigorously disputed the suit, pointing to the need to protect free speech and to ensure that defamation laws can't be used to stifle comment.
   "Sharman Networks recently dropped its claim, however the Hemming suit continues."
   Newton has elected to go to trial and the case is expected to be heard in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, sometime in 2008. p2pnet is based on Vancouver Island off the BC mainland.

Bundled malware

Kazaa has, from early on, been suspected of putting installed malware onto users' computers. Sharman, Kazaa's home company, claims that the products are not adware and don't collect personal user information. At one time, the part of the Kazaa code which was considered adware was an optional part of the Kazaa program, albeit one technically difficult to omit during installation. Since the allegations have surfaced, however, the code has been bundled into the main Kazaa software, and it isn't possible to uninstall it. Also, spyware detection and removal software has frequently failed to delete the code without special actions taken by the PC user. Spyware components detected and deleted by removal programs will often render Kazaa unusable and require reinstallation of the program. This forces the user to allow these programs on their computer to keep Kazaa working. The malware can't be ended with conventional methods, and the Windows Task Manager must be used. Malware installed by Kazaa includes the following:

Cydoor (spyware): Collects information on the PC's surfing habits and passes it on to the company which created Cydoor.
B3D (adware): An add-on which causes advertising popups if the PC accesses a website which triggers the B3D code.
Altnet (adware): A distribution network for paid "gold" files.
The Best Offers (adware): Tracks your browsing habits and internet usage to display advertisements similar to your interests.
InstaFinder (hijacker): Redirects your URL typing errors to InstaFinder's web page instead of the standard search page.
TopSearch (adware): Displays paid songs and media related to your search in Kazaa.
RX Toolbar (spyware): The toolbar monitors all the sites you visit with Microsoft Internet Explorer and provides links to competitors' websites.
New.net (hijacker): A browser plugin that lets you access several of its own unofficial Top Level Domain names, for example, .chat and .shop. The main purpose of which is to sell domain names such as www.record.shop which is actually www.record.shop.new.net.

As a result of these additional components, CNET's Download.com site stopped the distribution of KaZaA in April 2004.
Kazaa is also known not to uninstall completely, leaving behind several executables, files, and the Kazaa installer. It also leaves behind all the malware initially installed. In an effort to remove the files left behind, Merijn Bellekom (the creator of HijackThis) has created KazaaBeGone

, attempting to remove any remnants left behind by Kazaa's uninstaller program.

Current state

Kazaa's legal issues have ended after a settlement of $100 million in reparations to the recording industry (External Link

). It still offers a download on its official website for Kazaa 3.25. However, copyrighted music or movies can no longer be downloaded or shared. Copyrighted music can't be purchased from the website (like Napster, etc). However, Peer to peer clients can still share their personal or non-copyrighted files. The traffic on Kazaa is very low, with a new interface that hasn't been popular and isn't being widely used. The site no longer seems to be updated, judging by the unchanging number of total and weekly downloads. The contact links on the website also don't work (not even for advertisers) which may indicate Kazaa is no longer technically in business. Nothing has been updated or changed for one year as of July 2007.
   Some users still use the old network on the unauthorized versions of Kazaa, either Kazaa Lite or Kazaa Resurrection, which is still a self-sustaining network where tens of thousands of users still share unrestricted content. This fact was previously stated by Kazaa when they claimed their fastrack network was decentralized (like the old Napster), but instead a link up between millions of computers around the world.
   However, in the wake of the bad publicity and lawsuits, the numbers of users on Kazaa Lite has dropped dramatically. They have gone from several millions users at a given time to mere hundred thousands or now just tens of thousands. Before, all users were combined on the same fastrack network, with some using the ad-supported Kazaa, and others using Kazaa Lite and other non-authorized versions all sharing countless songs, movies, etc. The size of the lawsuits Kazaa settled is said to only have been insignificant compared to the amount of media that was illegally duplicated and delivered to millions of users on Kazaa previously to the suit.
   Without further recourse, and until the lawsuit was settled, the RIAA actively sued thousands of people across the USA for sharing copyrighted music across the network. College campus networks were also a focus of the RIAA's many lawsuits. Many of these cases are still in the process of being settled or are headed for trial. Although the lawsuits were mainly in the United States, other countries also began to follow suit.

Variations

� This section is limited to those programs which are based on the official Kazaa client. For other FastTrack-compatible clients, see FastTrack.

Kazaa Lite is an unauthorized modification of the Kazaa Media Desktop application which excludes adware and spyware and provides slightly extended functionality. It became available in April 2002. It can be downloaded free of charge, and as of mid-2005 was almost as widely used as the official Kazaa client itself. It connects to the same FastTrack network and thus allows to exchange files with all Kazaa users, and was created by third party programmers by modifying the binary of the original Kazaa application. Later versions of Kazaa Lite included K++, a memory patcher that removed search limit restrictions, multisource limits, and set one's "participation level" to the maximum of 1000. Sharman Networks considers Kazaa Lite to be a copyright violation.
After development of Kazaa Lite stopped, K-Lite v2.6, Kazaa Lite Resurrection and Kazaa Lite Tools appeared. Although K-Lite is related to Kazaa Lite and the name sounds similar, they're actually different projects. K-Lite isn't an update to Kazaa Lite, and was instead written as a separate loader with many fundamental changes. Unlike Kazaa Lite, which is a modification of an old version of Kazaa, K-Lite v2.6 requires the original KMD 2.6 executable to run. K-Lite doesn't include any code by Sharman: it requires the user to supply the original, unpatched Kazaa Media Desktop, which is executed in an environment which removes the malware, spyware and adware and adds features. It is believed this version might therefore be legal because an original binary is required. Since this client uses a newer version of the actual Kazaa program, it may not affected by attempts to block Kazaa Lite from the FastTrack network.
In November 2004, the developers of K-Lite released K-Lite v2.7, which similarly requires the KMD 2.7 executable. Currently, other clean variants use an older core (2.02) and thus, K-Lite has some features that others will never have. K-Lite includes multiple search tabs, a custom toolbar, and autostart. It also has auto search more, a download accelerator, an optional splash screen, preview with option (to view files you're currently downloading), an IP blocker, Magnet links support, and ad blocking, although the clients based on the 2.02 core abstract these functions to third-party programs. Kazaa Lite Tools on is an update of the original Kazaa Lite. It is a copy of Kazaa Lite, with modifications to the third-party programs included, it's newer and includes more tools. Kazaa Lite Resurrection (KLR) appeared almost immediately after Kazaa Lite development was stopped in August 2003. Early reports on US national television claimed the original developers were behind KLR, however this isn't the case. KLR is an updated version of the never released Kazaa Lite 2.3.4, with newer tools and extra functionality, and is maintained by FileSharingPlace.be - Home of Kazaa Lite Resurrection.

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