Quote:
Originally posted by jaan
not true. i guess you are referring to altnet, which BDE owns 51% indeed. ownership-wise altnet has nothing to do with kazaa/sharman -- it's just a company that has partnered with kazaa/sharman to provide paid keyword search results on kazaa.
yes. basically, what this feature does is that whenever you connect to a supernode, it asks the supernode for files from users whose media collections are similar to yours. nothing centralized nor mysterious there.
- jaan
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Yep, jaan is right - I did many tests in the past to try and find out if KaZaA is doing anything which might break one's privacy, but found nothing except for the already known Cydoor and BDE issues.
The recommendations engine has nothing to do with what you download - it's what you SHARE. So it also works with files that you downloaded from somewhere else and files that were on your computer before you installed KaZaA. So even if this information of your SHARED files was sent to KaZaA's server (and it probably isn't - the supernode you're connected to can find recommendations on its own) no one could use it sue you or anything like that, because probably you would never be blamed for SHARING your files (as long as you're not being payed for that), just for DOWNLOADING somebody else's files.
But regarding Brilliant Digital... Well, they sure do have very deep relationship with Sharman Networks, as previously revealed at sources like CNET's News.com. For the very least, Brilliant was involved in the talks of Sharman and KaZaA BV (previous owners of KaZaA) when the KaZaA software was sold to Sharman. Brilliant and Sharman are also the owners of Altnet (Brilliant owns 51% and Sharman holds the remaining 49).
Indeed, Brilliant was in contact with Large record companies and developed anti-piracy products (this information is probably still at Brilliant's website, unless they removed it since my last visit).
And, well, Sharman does have its reasons to get rid of its users. KaZaA Lite is taking over, and there's no revenue from those clients, and who knows if their revenue now is enough. Also the RIAA might already be pushing them. So basically I think it's very logical for Sharman to try and move its users to a paid version, and we already know that they can sometimes do ugly things to get to their goals...