p2pnet - rss feed: StreamCast watches Kazaa raids
StreamCast ceo Michael Weiss is watching developments in Australia with interest, wondering if the authorities will find evidence of Kazaa having control over its network, or the ability to track users’ identities, "as many have suspected all along".
Yesterday, a pseudo-police force, organized and funded by Big Music through its ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association), raided homes and properties of Sharman Networks, owners of Kazaa, and Altnet parent Brilliant Digital.
Not at all coincidentally, and with Kazaa in the background, StreamCast’s Morpheus and p2p business rival Grokster are currently taking on the major record labels and movie studios in a legal battle which could ultimately decide how much direct control Hollywood is able to exert on the way people around the world use the Net.
Morpehus is closing in on Kazaa as the most popular commercial p2p application and StreamCast has just released Morpheus 4.
"The difference between Morpheus and Kazaa is significant," says Weiss, commenting on the raids.
"The US Federal Court has ruled that the Morpheus software is legal, applying the precedent of the Supreme Court’s ruling 20 years ago in the Sony Betamax case, and having recognized that Morpheus software operates in a 100 % decentralized environment, and has no control over the network of users of the software.
Weiss says, "We certainly would like to know how they [Sharman] cut off 28 million Morpheus users in February 2002."
He also took a swing at Sharman’s business location based, as it is, in the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, well out of reach of US authorities.
"As an American-based company, unlike the secretly stashed international locations of Kazaa where even their developers hide out and grant interviews in clandestine places, we operate in full view in plain sight," Weiss says. "We will continue to innovate and develop legal file-sharing software, under the letter and spirit of US law and as such law is applied internationally."
February 7th, 2004 at 7:54 pm
What a horses ass! Can’t this media hungry clown realize that he and Kazaa are in the same position? They are poised to change the world file distribution paradigm and all he can think to do is take cheap shots at everyone.
How about acting like an adult and accept the fact that he, like Grokster, Kazaa and many others are in this together. They will sink or swim as one. So, what is the point of accusing anyone of anything, particularly things he knows are not true. Both companies are built on the same software, so what is it he doesn’t understand? Tact, Class and a little discretion.
February 7th, 2004 at 8:40 pm
Yep. He’s a crakhead like Wayne.
February 8th, 2004 at 12:54 am
matematicaly, it is possible to create a computer software, for the purpose of file sharing, with search capabilities and totaly descentralised. the only question I have is about the servers maintaining the index of all online sharing users. When you run your kazaa (or other sharing program), you connect to one of these indexing servers that keep information about other online computers. where is my kazaa application getting the information for a server to connect to, and who owns those indexing servers? Take for example mirc. When you connect to mirc, you login on one of the servers (undernet servers, dalnet servers etc.) Once you’re in, you can exchange files with other users (dcc send). It is the same thing.
February 8th, 2004 at 5:02 am
that’s the whole point…there is no centralized server, each client is also a server…