Kazaa pays 100 million and goes legit

Kazaa pays 100 million and goes legit
File sharing giant, Kazaa recently agreed to pay the sum of $100 million for damages to the music industry, to avoid further legal actions that have plagued Kazaa for some time now. This follows in conjunction with a report released saying that some 20 billion music tracks had been downloaded illegally through their service in just the last year.

"We have won another battle in an ongoing war, said John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI). "We move forward with a spring in our step."



Kazaa has now announced that it will follow suit like the once big media giant Napster and offer only legal downloads in which users must pay for in order to download.

Source:
BBC News

Written by: Dave Horvath @ 27 Jul 2006 6:05
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  • 43 comments
  • sukhvail

    WOW... that is huge news. i dont think anyone uses Kazaa anymore but they were the biggest p2p service after napster went legit. this is a dark day in the p2p world

    27.7.2006 06:53 #1

  • KhmerKing

    If sooo many things with free download are illegal, is there any that IS legal? Is Limewire and Bittorrent LEGAL?

    27.7.2006 07:28 #2

  • backupguy

    no they're not but they're good at dogding the courts.

    27.7.2006 07:55 #3

  • little155

    I wonder how much the artists are getting from this $100,000,000?

    27.7.2006 08:02 #4

  • mJoshua83

    I doubt that the artists will see a dime.

    27.7.2006 08:39 #5

  • Halen5150

    This reminds of those times when the 'big names' in antipiracy make an announcement that they've seized xxxx's servers;;;; yet what they don't understand is that 5 more of them are created when one is taken down...........they just don't realize that piracy will always exist; whether it be downloads through bittorrent or as simple as recording your favorite song off the radio......people will always find an alternative to legitimately purchasing music/movie/the like......


    "If you can hear or see it, you can copy it" so the saying goes;;

    27.7.2006 08:41 #6

  • domie

    this report by davedough is incorrect, this was an out of court settlement to stop two court actions in australia and california and prevent even bigger damages being awarded against them.
    he obviously hasn't read the bbc report closely enough.

    27.7.2006 09:24 #7

  • GrayArea

    KhmerKing

    Knives are not illegal. Cutting bread with a knife is not illegal. STABBING someone with a knife IS illegal.

    P2P apps are not in and of themselves illegal. Filesharing as an act is not illegal. Copyright infringment is technically illegal. BTW, in the US no one has been sued for downloading copyright song files. They have gotten in trouble for making them available to upload. AKA your "shared" folder.

    27.7.2006 10:11 #8

  • Pop_Smith

    I think this is stupid, yet funny. The reason it is stupid:

    20 billion tracks downloaded in ONE year? Sounds like BS to me. Anyone who used KaZaA in the past (I believe it was about 3 years ago, correct me if I am wrong) should know the RIAA setup a program that made it nearly impossible to get a good song from KaZaA. It made it so there was thousands of copies of a song but when you downloaded it all it was was white noise (kind of like the sound of a modem dialing up, really annoying and really loud.)

    As with the 100 million bucks, the Artists WON'T see a dime. You know this to be true because its how these big names work. They simply say "It will all go to help our "Anti-Piracy" efforts". When in reality the CEO and other high ranking b*****d's will get most of it so they can continue to drive their Lambo's and Porsche's and pay, in cash, off there houses etc.

    I wish I could talk to a few artists themselves that are signed by the IFPI, to prove that they really didn't, and never will, see a PENNY of this 100 million.

    27.7.2006 10:11 #9

  • Davedough

    Quote:this report by davedough is incorrect, this was an out of court settlement to stop two court actions in australia and california and prevent even bigger damages being awarded against them.
    he obviously hasn't read the bbc report closely enough.
    A minor oversight in which I stated it was the result of a loss of a lawsuit, instead of preventing further legal action. The report is not incorrect, however I appreciate you pointing out the misuse of words in my article. It has been edited as per your eloquent request.

    For the record also, had the report been read close enough by you as well, the legal actions from Australia happened last year in which Kazaa was asked to alter it's code.

    27.7.2006 10:23 #10

  • yourdvd

    It's not that LimeWire and BitTorrent are illegal (unless legislation has been passed that I am not aware of), there are legitimate uses for such software. There are, however, illegal uses of such software. For example, I use bittorrent to distribute freeware that I have written. This keeps me from having to pay servers to host my software. A perfectly legit use of the Bittorrent client. Unfortunately, most p2p is being used for less than legit purposes. For example, in my state, it isn't illegal to own a gun, knife, or car, but any of the three could be used to commit any number of illegal activities. In the end, it is the users, not the recording industry, that will seal the fate of p2p. Sorry for the soapbox ;-)

    27.7.2006 10:56 #11

  • lxfactor

    Quote:but when you downloaded it all it was was white noisethat wasn't the RIAA it was a company the RIAA hired, it worked by connecting to your computer and acting like a peer and when it uploaded the song to you it distorts it, well if you have peer guardian it blocked it out therefore downloading the song would come out perfectly, also kazaa had 3 million users daily so think about it 3 million users a day, downloading 1 thing a day, it all adds up, even tho some people download a bunch of tracks at once i mean come on who goes on Kazaa and says hey, i want just 1 song and then im off. i never really got into all that because i had dial up until just last year.

    27.7.2006 11:16 #12

  • dude845

    haha. Now we must find a new p2p gian to look up too as being worthless but popular, well it won't take long for the RIAA to higher a company to mess up another app. XD.

    ~Dude845 (wow i posted on these forums XD).

    27.7.2006 12:27 #13

  • garmoon

    There's still Limewire and it seems to work well. There will always be a next best. Burn on!

    27.7.2006 12:58 #14

  • borhan9

    Well that will defently give good pay days for the layers.

    But I feel that it was going to happen like that anyway.

    And what is this limewire talk go with frostwire.

    27.7.2006 13:08 #15

  • mundens

    Yea Limewire's going down soon too, better switch to Frostwire

    27.7.2006 15:31 #16

  • vgaddict8

    Who's gives a sh*t about kazaa anymore anyways.........Use Limewirepro instead punks.....

    27.7.2006 16:00 #17

  • Zippy84

    P2P apps are dead... move on.... Bit Torrent is the way to go. Only kids and noobs use P2P apps...

    27.7.2006 17:25 #18

  • dude845

    Quote:P2P apps are dead... move on.... Bit Torrent is the way to go. Only kids and noobs use P2P apps... P2P is great for finding single songs if you use the right program so no it's not just for kids or noobs. bittorent is good for movies games full cd's or any larger files.

    27.7.2006 17:57 #19

  • Niobis

    Quote:P2P is great for finding single songs if you use the right program so no it's not just for kids or noobs. bittorent is good for movies games full cd's or any larger files.Agreed!

    I'm happy about this. Kazaa wasn't a good P2P program anyway. It was full of adware and a trouble on the system. It offered no more than pure junk.



    "I may find peace within the emptyness...how pitiful"

    27.7.2006 19:14 #20

  • scorpNZ

    I can't disagree with agaddict8 that lime pro is the way to go, i've used it for the past year and it's filtering works well against false files etc ,the only pain is the odd song sometimes have the wrong artist written into the title,as for the noddy that said use frostwire pfffft,frostwire is limewire the diff being is it's open source and has no decent filtering so you end up with a lot of crap files going lime pro is best,tho now with the kazaa settlement out of the way how long morpheous and lime last is anybody's guess

    frostwire is made by the guys at limewire

    27.7.2006 19:32 #21

  • towlies

    I never thought that Kazza would go legit. I mean they I dont know how they got this cash.

    27.7.2006 19:51 #22

  • ofolion

    $100million?! where is this money going to? The MPAA and the IFPI no doubt.

    I see why they are doing this; many people are switching off Kazaa with torrents and different p2p apps. But how many people will switch if they are using Kazaa at the moment? NONE! They will switch to Shareaza or LimeWire or something similar...

    Some people will use it as it might be cheaper and not have DRM like iTunes or something but still...

    Also were the hell did they get $100million?

    If you ask me piracy needs the balance; if there wasn't people trying to stop it everyone would do it and it would seriously damage the industry but if no-one did any piracy then it would also cause all sort of problems.

    28.7.2006 00:32 #23

  • hughjars

    The 'industry' think they're stopping (or even slowing) something with these tactics.

    They aren't.

    Ever since analogue cassette tape recording became a mass-market item they've been bleating about this 'copying is killing music' idiotic nonsense.
    It's a self-serving lie.
    They delude themselves that all that copied stuff = a lost sale, another lie, or that 'intellectual property' is exactly the same as any other 'property', yet another ridiculous lie.

    They deny all and any concepts of 'fair use' and end up in this mess because of it (I suppose it keeps the lawyers happy).
    But when I've paid for my British TV licence, or my Sky (so I am contributing financially to 'the industry') or bought my CD or DVD or game they can get stuffed telling me what I can or can't copy to keep.

    Perhaps if they'd produce better goods (the anti-scratch coatings on their discs are pathetic and practically beg us to 'pirate' a replacement) or make 'legal' downloads available at a sane price (the current situation of paying almost the price of a rental is laughable considering 'we' have all the over-head costs and they so few) things might change.
    No sign of it yet though.

    As has been pointed out 'the artists' (if such individuals really exist anymore) will see a small fraction of nothing of this money.

    ......and one last thing, I've yet to meet the artist that didn't want their art distributed as widely as possible.

    28.7.2006 04:10 #24

  • omar3333

    WELL THIS SUCKS! i wonder how much they'll have to pay per song...

    28.7.2006 11:45 #25

  • Sniping_G

    I used to use kazaa,that was the first illigal thing i did on my pc which i got about 6 years ago wow,thats a long time....who cares limewire pro12 pawns all

    28.7.2006 13:54 #26

  • Cinnjerm

    Yeah, have to agree with most here that Kazaa has been dead for some time( even before the foney files containing white noise). I do find it interesting that no one has said anything about edonkey, which by the way is a p2p app and still serves a purpose. Usually i just use bittorrent, but for old torrents that have all but gone dead, i use edonkey. It's slow, but it will find almost anything when connected to the right servers. It also has a raiting system so if there are bargage files 9 times out of 10 youll know before its finished downloading.

    Bottomline- seeing kazaa go kind of reminds me of that old riddle about the tree in the woods, the answer is irrelevant if im not interested in knowing.

    28.7.2006 21:28 #27

  • halfhere

    Oh, well. Another one gives in

    29.7.2006 08:22 #28

  • ChiefBrdy

    LOL. Kazaa. There's a blast from my past.

    29.7.2006 13:59 #29

  • LionelS

    If Kazza was a free file sharing program and I don't recall any advertising on there, where did they come up with $100 million??

    29.7.2006 17:25 #30

  • NINVIN21

    How did they got 100 million to give away??

    29.7.2006 20:56 #31

  • AIM2Shame

    ^^^^^^^^^^ Ignorance is bliss.


    Anyone that pays attention knows they dont have a $100 million dollars, they were FINED to pay that much. What happens when you dont have that much money like every other company that clocks massive fines like this?

    They claim BANKRUPTCY, Thus no money to pay, company closes, they sell off and move there assets before they claim it of course, and start new under a new
    name.

    Its a pretty dam common practice when shit like this happens of other reasons like money owing to other companys personal etc... Just this one managed to make the papers.

    29.7.2006 21:11 #32

  • digital99

    just came across this article and found it quite amusing. It never ceases to amaze me what the RIAA would do to make a few quick bucks:

    http://www.randomspot.com/2006/07/29/124/

    30.7.2006 00:07 #33

  • Bushed

    i find it interesting that people are taking the opinion 'who cares about kazaa'. what where you using at the time napster official ended? probly kazaa ide guess

    napster and kazaa served a perpose of being the big ilegal music industry destroyer while ever one with half a clue found a new program

    the question is whats it gona be next?
    everyone i know users limewire thats a bad sign

    nice to talk to some sane people on the internet

    30.7.2006 07:47 #34

  • XPraYeRX

    well I can see what they are saying , but yes I remember the white noise and dial up sound songs, thats why I got rid of that crap.

    30.7.2006 10:44 #35

  • madman91

    They will never kill filesharing. Its that simple.

    30.7.2006 19:39 #36

  • geraldx

    The reported $100 million settlement figure by Kazaa to the big 4 record labels is almost certainly a phoney. It's been rigged to make it appear the music
    industry has had a win. In return Kazaa (who pay nothing) get to go legitimate, something they've been working towards for the past 12 months. And they'll go broke! Who's going to pay for inferior *.mp3 format files when you can get them for free elsewhere?
    Who's going to use a program the riddles the PC with spyware? Where Napster is now (i.e. nowhere) is where
    Kazaa will be in 6 months time.

    31.7.2006 06:00 #37

  • Bestmiler

    Is limewire pro legal?

    31.7.2006 08:42 #38

  • ZippyDSM

    Kazaa pays 100 million and goes under.


    gee I see a trend here...LOL


    P2P is dead,however limewire and Edonkey are still worth fooling with.


    p.s:most stoped useign Kazaa 2 or 3 years ago when the lite version become add/spy ware riddled 0_o

    31.7.2006 09:19 #39

  • ZippyDSM

    Zippy84
    *pokepoke*
    :P

    31.7.2006 09:20 #40

  • mark5hs

    Kazaa Lite Ressurection was pretty good but torrents are the way to go.

    1.8.2006 03:58 #41

  • goodswipe

    I eat liquid poo...i also pay for all my audio cd's...

    1.8.2006 12:49 #42

  • ularu

    Quote:Bit Torrent is the way to go . Only kids and n00bs use p2pwhat do you think bit torrent is and the programs used to use it are n00b...there file sharing .p2p ..lol..

    1.8.2006 22:17 #43

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