How to not get caught downloading from Kazaa

July 2, 2003 8:58 PM

How to not get caught downloading from Kazaa.Download Kazaa Lite 2.1.0. Delete your old kazaa through add/remove. After installing, go to Options-More Options and check prevent other users from getting a list of all your files. You will still be able to share your files, but people cant see an entire list of the files you are sharing! Brought to you by the same people who made Quicktime Alternative, the alternative quicktime codec that doesn't require bloatware.
posted by Keyser Soze (40 comments total)

Kazaa Lite also removes all spyware and advertisements from Kazaa. Very useful software indeed.
posted by Keyser Soze at 9:00 PM on July 2, 2003

Hulk bootleg, here I come!
posted by pemulis at 9:04 PM on July 2, 2003

In other hot news, bears shit in the woods, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Thanks for hastening the day through more exposure when the RIAA and MPAA try to shut down the Kazaa Lite people, too. Well done.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:07 PM on July 2, 2003

good to know. i use kazaa lite [a super old version] to try before i buy cds. my /mp3 folder might be what the riaa calls substantial. don't want to be a test case in an upcoming lawsuit.
posted by birdherder at 9:08 PM on July 2, 2003

Stavros, that seems a tad harsh? Why shouldn't this kind of information be posted, for those who would be interested?
posted by jonson at 9:22 PM on July 2, 2003

Yeah Stav, the RIAA vaguely knew about Kazaa Lite, they were just waiting for it to become slightly more popular.
posted by Hildago at 9:29 PM on July 2, 2003

Then THE HAMMER FALLS!
posted by Hildago at 9:29 PM on July 2, 2003

Why shouldn't this kind of information be posted, for those who would be interested?

Because it prety much doesn't meet the guidelines of the site, perhaps? Ah well, I'm just a grumpy old fart who doesn't like his toys to be taken away, perhaps. Carry on.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:33 PM on July 2, 2003

BTW NE1 gots Jena Jamison pr0n 4 trade?
posted by Hildago at 9:35 PM on July 2, 2003

It will take them at least a few months to notice...

I find this fascinating though that there's Kazaa which makes money through the pop ups and whatnot, and facilitates something which is illegal but popular. Then another group comes along, uses the Kazaa backbone, gets rid of the things that help Kazaa make money and only ask for donations.
posted by drezdn at 9:36 PM on July 2, 2003

thanks, keyser!
posted by mcsweetie at 9:44 PM on July 2, 2003

Hey stav, what does it matter? If the RIAA takes away kazaa lite, something else will come along and take its place. Happened with napster, scour, audiogalaxy, etc, etc. Of course, kazaa's gonna be a much bigger pain in the ass to get rid of, since there isn't anything centralized.
posted by graventy at 9:51 PM on July 2, 2003

How exactly is this gonna work? If you do a search, doesn't it show the IP number of the host with the files? Even if it doesn't, one can still get the IP during a download.

With enough RIAA pressure everyone is just going to move to completely anonymous networks, such as freenet.
posted by phatboy at 10:07 PM on July 2, 2003

Heres how it will work: Maybe the RIAA can still sue you for that hulk file. But when they try to view your shared files, they wont see anything. So you can get screwed for 1 file. Isnt that better than 2,000 files?

"If the RIAA takes away kazaa lite, something else will come along and take its place." Bingo. Together we are stronger than a handfull of paid techs hiding behind the curtain of the RIAA.
posted by Keyser Soze at 10:27 PM on July 2, 2003

Shareaza also has this feature.

Its like the bastard son of gnutella and edonkey.
posted by skallas at 10:38 PM on July 2, 2003

Yeah but when you search for files it still shows what users are hosting what files.... How hard would it be for the RIAA to get a program that would search for a bunch of illegal files and then track the users that are sharing those files. Maybe I don't understand how it works exactly, but it seems like this is pretty little protection. I don't see why there isn't a big move to totally anonymous p2p applications or why more of them have not been created yet.
posted by banished at 11:16 PM on July 2, 2003

I agree banished, this is merely a stepping stone and a little insurance.
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:31 PM on July 2, 2003

Once again I get to plug freenet here. From the "what is freenet" page:

Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.

Also of interest is GNUnet, which is slightly closer to the classic file sharing p2p model, though it is still as general-purpose as freenet is.

GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking. The current primary application implemented within the GNUnet framework is anonymous censorship-resistant file-sharing.

GNUnet is unix only at the moment though.

I can definately advise everyone to check out one or both, not only to get your (legal, ofcourse!) mp3s safely, but more importantly, to contribute some computer resources to these bastions of anonymity/information freedom, and possibly even some code or documentation, or whatever you feel you can do.
posted by fvw at 11:49 PM on July 2, 2003

Kazaa. Only abut 30% of people on kazaa (I think that's right) share any files, and these are the people the RIAA are going to go after. Of course you can stop sharing your copied MP3s, but doing this just makes it easier for the RIAA to sue that smaller minority who are sharing. Personally, I'm thinking of taking a leaf out of madonnas book. Create a bunch of "empty" mp3s with names like "Full Metallica Album", and when I get my go to jail free card from the RIAA, I'm just going to laugh at them.

Signal to noise ratio. I'll show them a signal to noise ratio.
posted by seanyboy at 12:25 AM on July 3, 2003

As cool as freenet sounds the downside is that there will be someone else's data on your PC. Sure its encrypted and even you don't know what it is, but until there's some legal precedent along the lines of freeing users from liability from unknowingly hosting copy protected works, child porn, classified documents, etc I'm a bit wary of running it.

The freenet faq responds:

I don't want my node to be used to harbor child porn, offensive content or terrorism. What can I do?
The true test of someone who claims to believe in Freedom of Speech is whether they tolerate speech which they disagree with, or even find disgusting. If this is not acceptable to you, you should not run a Freenet node. There is another thing you can do. Since content in Freenet is available as long as its popular, you can help limit the popularity of whatever information you do not like. For example, if you do not want a file to spread you should not request it and tell everyone you know not to request that specific key. However, keep in mind that freenet is not designed so as to only allow communication between people if a sufficient number of people agree with the communication. Freenet is designed to make communication possible even if there's just one publisher and one reader, and this is already reasonably feasible on the current freenet.

Kinda of side-steps the issue, but I'm sure once the RIAA starts suing Joe Filetrader people will be flocking to freenet. Of course the RIAA et al are probably going to use this issue to demonize file traders. Interesting times lie ahead for the P2P community.
posted by skallas at 12:35 AM on July 3, 2003

Because it prety much doesn't meet the guidelines of the site, perhaps? Ah well, I'm just a grumpy old fart who doesn't like his toys to be taken away, perhaps. Carry on.

I'll second that.
posted by scarabic at 12:42 AM on July 3, 2003

I mean, like, in agreement, dude.
posted by scarabic at 12:43 AM on July 3, 2003

I am probably one of the few people here that doesn't have to worry about RIAA at all. The primary thing I use Kazaa for is hunting down anime that I want to watch, and no one cares enough to hunt me down for that.
posted by stoneegg21 at 12:47 AM on July 3, 2003

It should be pointed out that no native Linux Kazaa client exists. The Kazaa people closed the network into some proprietary format because an ad-free linux client would have defeated their revenue model. It is possible with some difficulty to run Kazaa under Linux with 'Wine' with some windoze dll's.

I'll be quite happy to see the demise of Kazaa and a movement towards a free(as in freedom) p2p network and an anonymous one(freenet) if necessary(assuming the droids continue to fight the inevitable.). True freedom is not anonymity but being able to say anything you want without someone gagging you and with no fear of reprisal other than counter-speech against your ideas.

I think bit-torrent is also quite good and I like the illegal rave spirit it has the potential for. A bit torrent links page could appear on a web page and users could swarm it for 24 hours in a file-trading free-for all and then disperse until the next happening...Unfortunately it might be just as easy for the narcs to be in on it to and get in and start taking names.
posted by nasim at 1:13 AM on July 3, 2003

what about Xnap?
posted by matteo at 1:38 AM on July 3, 2003

The other problem with this new Kazaa-lite feature is you can't realistically use the "Find more files from this user" option to check if the person downloading from you is sharing files. I've cancelled many a leecher download using that option. Since, as someone has already pointed out, this hide files option offers little real protection from the RIAA, I hope that they get rid of it so that we can at least still be able to hamper that other scourge to P2P trading, the leech.
posted by sic at 3:24 AM on July 3, 2003

I gave up on Kazaa a while ago. Too many useless or wrongly named files and a bazillion ads.

I do still use an old kazaa lite version every now and again, so I'll probably get the update, thanks for the post.

I am a big electronica fan, so I use soul seek for music. It's the first place I have ever been able to find and download my own "holy grail" of an mp3, this mix on warp records. The only other place I ever saw this was on Napster but the guy who had it had low bandwidth.
posted by davehat at 4:12 AM on July 3, 2003

Shhh! Don't tell them about SoulSeek!

Freenet isn't really designed for, and isn't even really useful for sharing multimedia files. Firstly, it's painfully slow and inconsistant, due to the way it's designed. If you're a Chinese dissident alerting the world to what's been going on in an anonymous and un-censorable way, Freenet is a blessing. If you're looking to sample some tracks by Liquid Morphine...good luck.
posted by Jimbob at 4:23 AM on July 3, 2003

You'll never get an incorrect file on the Fasttrack network if you use sig2dat or something similar to load hash files from one of the many sources available. If you don't know what I'm talking about, do some research. Also, bit torrent is crap, in my humble.

Damn kids these days. Get the heck outta my yard!

[/old crank]

What we really ought to do is the same thing The Site That Cannot Be Named has done and set up a private Direct Connect hub for our community. For all I know those wacky kids in #mefi already have, though....
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:43 AM on July 3, 2003

Do many people use Quicktime Alternative? I do and find its excellent - especially with Media Player Classic which is nice and lightweight :) I also nabbed a copy of Real Alternative before Real nuked it - no more stupid Realplayer! Yay!
posted by Mossy at 4:46 AM on July 3, 2003

Hmmm...Direct Connect hub. Strokes beard thoughtfully
posted by Jimbob at 5:14 AM on July 3, 2003

How do you see someone's IP using Kazaa, all I see is a user name
posted by Outlawyr at 6:40 AM on July 3, 2003

Outlawyr: if you're downloading from a user, you can get his/her IP address by running 'netstat' from the command line in Windows.
posted by zsazsa at 6:52 AM on July 3, 2003

Or you could just LEECH!
posted by signal at 7:18 AM on July 3, 2003

downloading != uploading. They can still catch you downloading through the use of honeypots. They can also search for spesific files of intrest directly, I assume. I would not try to use this as a legal sheild.
posted by delmoi at 9:44 AM on July 3, 2003

The problem with Freenet is that rather then remove liability, it just spreads it around. The RIAA won't know who published their Britney spears MP3s, but what they will know is who's computer they were connected too when they downloaded it. Presumably, they could simply sue the person who dl'd it.



In the future, file sharing will be like speeding. It's very easy to tell if someone's speeding, just look at 'em. (and, btw cops aren't allowed to use a radar gun until they get a visual estimate). Yet, huge numbers of people speed every day.


The only way it will be cost effective to enforce this is if suing each filesharer generates enough revinue for the next round of litigation.


Btw, I wonder when I'll get my $13 check for their price fixing setlement...
posted by delmoi at 9:53 AM on July 3, 2003

Thanks Zsazsa.
posted by Outlawyr at 10:06 AM on July 3, 2003

Why not just use usenet? No one has been sued there and I don't think the media empires are even aware it exists.
posted by nyxxxx at 10:36 AM on July 3, 2003

Sorry, but this is a load of crap.

You can easily get someone's IP address once you start downloading files from them. Hell, even Windows 98 comes with netstat which shows all of your ports and their connections. If someone at the *IAA wanted to prosecute you, they'd have to do more than simply look at the file list on Kazaa, since you could just have a slew of misnamed files (as many have pointed out, a common occurance).
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:40 AM on July 3, 2003

I hope that they get rid of it so that we can at least still be able to hamper that other scourge to P2P trading, the leech.

So it's OK for you to leech off of the original artists, but not for someone to leech off of you?
posted by inpHilltr8r at 12:11 PM on July 3, 2003