Kazaa deploys an IOS before Morpheus

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by snowman
Think about it for a second. Microsoft with its zillions of dollars has extreem difficulty keeping IIS, IE and Outlook safe from hackers how in the world is Kazaa and/or Brilliant Digital ever hope of pulling it off.

My thoughts precisely. Implementing a safe distributed computation engine to be used as a commercially available resource in a p2p network would be a challenge even to a resourceful giant like Microsoft - how could the near-bankrupt BDE manage it? It can't.

Even the respectable SETI@home project has had its own security problems but at least we know that they have serious resources to address those problems and that they don't sell access to our computers to the highest bidder with unknown motivations.

- tg

[snowman]

I think the word you wanted was "sold".

The license agreement "grants" them access for undisclosed and undefined purposes.

Probably going to open themselves up to all kinds of questions the minute somebody thinks something working properly is perceived as off the rails by somebody who does not know the difference.

Anyway, it got kind of boring around here once Morpheus died and went to Gnutella. We needed some more hot button issues.

[TankGirl]

In WalkTalker's latest newspaper there was a link to this fresh News.com story where Nicola Hemming, the chief executive of Sherman Networks (the Oz company that presently owns Kazaa) throws some interesting comments about Kazaa and BDE:

News.com:

The news has also thrown the program's owner into the defensive. Hemming defended Brilliant Digital's plan as a way for all Kazaa users to have a "richer P2P experience," including faster downloads, new kinds of content, and the ability to be compensated for use of their extra computing power.

But Hemming also spotlighted her own companies' privacy policy for the first time, describing exactly what information Kazaa keeps.

The policy reads much like other Web sites'. The company collects a considerable amount of data in its log files, including Internet service provider, Internet address, date and time of visit, and number of clicks. It does not collect personal information from log files, the company says.

The company also does not collect information on what files people are searching for or storing as part of the file-swapping program, a representative said.

Knowing some of their background one gotta smile to these expressions like 'richer P2P experience'. Why don't they leave our P2P experience as it is and give us money instead? After all, they plan to use our computers for their business...

- tg

[twinspan]

To those of you deciding to leave Kazaa/FastTrack coz of this BDE stunt, why don't you just block the hosts? Or run regedit and eliminate all the BDE stuff? In short, why panic?

D/l KazaaLite, a big fat list of hosts to block, and maybe eDexter too. Am I wrong or is there nothing to worry about if you just take a few precautions?

[TankGirl]

Originally posted by twinspan
To those of you deciding to leave Kazaa/FastTrack coz of this BDE stunt, why don't you just block the hosts? Or run regedit and eliminate all the BDE stuff? In short, why panic?

D/l KazaaLite, a big fat list of hosts to block, and maybe eDexter too. Am I wrong or is there nothing to worry about if you just take a few precautions?

The recent software upgrades and BDE have obviously been pushed to FastTrack clients through supernodes and p2p communications instead of blockable ad servers. So even if you clean BDE out of your system there is no guarantee that it - or something else - will not be pushed again to your system as soon as you connect to the FastTrack network.

- tg

[TankGirl]

Brilliant Digital's CEO Kevin Bermeister has given an interesting interview to ZDNet news, providing more details of how Altnet, Brilliant Digital's piggybag network, was conceived and how it is linked to the 'public' FastTrack network:

from the story:
Did you bring the idea, or was it the programmers from FastTrack?

I actually brought the idea. But obviously, it was just an idea. Niklas Zennstrom and Janis Friis had access to the technologies that would enable the idea to come to fruition.

So Brilliant decided to create a business that would utilize the technologies and create a secure peer-to-peer network. User-propagated peer-to-peer networks have some significant issues associated with them, primarily related to security issues, but more importantly, related to the progressive improvement of content that is being offered. Unless there are some centralized controls, content owners cannot really put their best content forward and at least maintain some semblance of control over the end-user experience.

So Altnet, as conceived now, is primarily a way to distribute secure content.

One hundred percent secure. Users cannot propagate their own content through Altnet.

How does it work with Kazaa? What is its relationship to Kazaa?

The protocols of the technology, which are essentially based on the same technology that Kazaa is using from FastTrack, are essentially the same. The technology is different, the stacks are different, the functionality is somewhat different, but the protocols are the same. So Altnet can listen for Kazaa search requests and can even decide whether to respond to them or not. If it responds to them, then Altnet can propagate search results into the Kazaa (program).

But not the other direction?

But not the other direction.

Bermeister is clearly trying to repair the PR damages that Brilliant Digital suffered after sneaking their software into FastTrack users' computers. But this late 'openness' does not convince me at all. Brilliant's business partners would mostly be from the same content industries that have been fighting against the p2p revolution from the beginning, including the harassment of individual p2p users. Giving these guys such an uncontrolled access to the computers of millions of p2p users is a chilling idea. Hollywood would not need any hardware spy/control chips with this arrangement - they would just need to buy Brilliant Digital to suddenly have a direct view and access to everything that you have on your hard disk. No thanks.

- tg

[snowman]

Hey I been saying this all along.

Somehow I don't think these advertising marketers get the point yet though.

The risk of somehting like this far exceeds the potential profit. That is why most corporate apps use the client server model. They want the risk all in one place in the data center where it can be controlled and managed.

You can't eliminate your liability if you harm the 3rd, 4th, 5th computer after the 1st and the 2nd compain of injury if you don't do something. Their EULA only grants then access to the PC, it does not yet waive any form of liability however caused by their software or products to unrelated data files or services.

Somebody's word files are goiing to be toasted and then the fur is going to fly in the courts.

[JackSpratts]

Links to BDE Uninstalls:

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-875274.html

~ And ~

http://www.zeropaid.com/cgi-bin/ub/U...age=0&Session=

~ And ~

http://www.lsfileserv.com/downloads.html - Ad-Aware Signature File Reflist

~ And ~

http://www.napsterites.net/undergrou...107#post123107

- js.