AfterDawn: News

Very important documents reveal Sharman lies

So far in the Kazaa trial, Sharman Networks and Altnet have been claiming they are two separate companies and have nothing really to do with each other. Sharman also claim that they cannot control what Kazaa users share, and have no way of filtering their network. However, important documents disclosed today tell a different story. In fact, instead of Sharman appearing to have no control over the network, they appear to have complete control

Logs of discussions between parent company Sharman and the Estonian developer of the Kazaa Media Desktop were revealed and have some pretty startling quotes in them. It appears that Sharman can log user activity. To make it worse, they were aware that this logging could lead to legal troubles with the entertainment industry and would cause some privacy concerns. Kazaa has already got a failing reputation due to spyware they pack with KMD.



Here are just some of the amazing quotes you can take from the logs of discussion...

Reporting will make Kazaa look like spyware, as soon as it becomes evident we record downloads and playbacks, users will flee to competitive networks

Not much can be said about the above; only that it supports the recording industries claims that technically the network can be monitored.

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.

Well this kind of gets rid of the "WE HAVE NO CONTROL" claim that Sharman has been spitting out in court. What this document has just done, is proven that filtering is in fact possible on the network and could have been implemented. Oh and last but not least…

RIAA [could] collect the IP addresses for everyone who has searched for or downloaded that file.

Is there any need to comment on that quote?

KMD desktop has been downloaded more than 380,000,000 times to date according to their website. That’s an awful lot of nasty spyware to be sending around the world to computer users. So has Sharman finally completely lost support and trust of the filesharing community yet?

Source:
APCmag

Written by: James Delahunty @ 7 Feb 2005 6:44

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• 7 comments

• c4iscool

  kazza is going to die. And I think its great because I hate them. Imesh and bitTorrent are so much better.

  7.2.2005 07:10 #1

• Ghostdog

  Well then one could argue that the same thing is probably true for most P2P-networks. That last quote is especially troubling and I hate to think what the entertainment industry can do with this material.

  7.2.2005 08:04 #2

• int3gr4

  Yes, the last quote is very disturbing. I stopped supporting Kazaa myself long ago. I agree that BitTorrent is very good alternative to using p2p programs such as Kazaa. Although, having the IPs of users who downloaded a certain file may be more difficult to use than it seems. The RIAA is going to have fun with this regardless. IMO Kazaa should immediately either stop logging ips and other information from its user, or should scrap support for the software altogether.

  7.2.2005 09:11 #3

• c4iscool

  u if they stop logging ip addresses the mpaa and RIAA will still be breathing fire down their ass because they know that kazza can do it. Kazza just needs to roll over and play dead!

  7.2.2005 09:57 #4

• daemonzx6

  doesn't iMesh use the Kazaa FastTrack network?
  anyway, Kazaa has been dead to me for probably 4 years. I would never go crawling back to them when BitTorrent is so much better.

  7.2.2005 10:41 #5

• Toiletman

  Things are not looking good for Sharman.

  7.2.2005 11:23 #6

• punx777

  we all know whats going to happen, kazaas going to shut down, then they are going to start selling legal tracks.

  7.2.2005 13:18 #7