Kazaa is back from the dead
THE KAZAA peer-to-peer file sharing service is working again, three years after it was shut down by the music industry in a $150 million lawsuit.
However, like Pirate Bay and Napster, the service is in name only with users being forced to pay for their music instead of trading tracks illegally.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the service has been launched by Kevin Bermeister, who was behind much of the technology in the original Kazaa.
His outfit is called Brilliant Digital Entertainment. Bermeister is based in Rose Bay in Sydney but the company has its offices in Los Angeles and New York.
He has a strange business partner in Michael Speck, who ran the music industry's case against Kazaa as the head of its Aussie anti-piracy arm, Music Industry Piracy Investigations.
To debut on Tuesday, the new Kazaa will at first be available only in the United States. Its US customers will pay $20 per month and can download as many songs as they like.
There is a huge amount of competition out there for music downloads and Kazaa admits that really all it has is a name to make it a bit different. That and you can have your monthly fee paid through your phone bill.
The format being used is Microsoft's WMA, which is unsupported by Ipods but can be converted to the more common MP3 format using software.
Tracks sold by Kazaa's new service will be subject to the Vole's crippled WMA digital restrictions management (DRM) so they can only be transferred to five other devices. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
"The format being used is Microsoft's WMA, which is unsupported by Ipods but can be converted to the more common MP3 format using software."
So to start with the music will be crap quality and then it can be re-compressed into MP3 to make it even worse quality.
What a waste of time. Don't these companies realise that just because it has the name of a popular file sharing app that many people simply won't go for it.
Now if it was not DRM infected and was in a lossless format (and no I don't mean the Microsoft Lossless WMA format!) then I'd be interested.
Don't see that happening though, I dare say it'll fall on it's arse like Napster did (and the Pirate Bay will).
Rob
Honestly, Microsoft DRM? Who'd be stupid enough to pay for that? Expect to see them shutting their doors and going bust in about 12 months time (and all the music downloaded from there will probably stop working then too).
If this is what The Pirate Bay has planned then they're due for extinction too.
Companies do not design products around peoples needs anymore - they rather generate some product and try to adopt the peoples needs afterwards.
History showed DRM is a failure and it is re-implemented again and again until the user accepts it.
Product Managers are freaking perverts - If I get my balls caught in a machine, I make sure they do not end up in there again.
Wasn't Kazaa the name synonymous with early spyware/malware?
I remember my support response at the time was:
Find Kazaa = backup/format c:/re-install/kick users ass.
This is a joke. Twice the price of other services and the music can only be played on pc's. Give me a break. Anyone paying for this service is an idiot.
Isn't 3 years a bit late to try to ride on the back of a known name?
And it wasn't a good name either... The application was a flaky "My first program" kind of affair, and IIRC wasn't there a load of spyware included in the install wrapper?
Can anyone provide me with a FLAC or unified on-demand pervasive music stream service - regardless where I am?
Including car radio, PC, ...
Yep, easier said than done :S
pirate bay making users pay for tracks? no last time i checked
What is with all these lame companies, which got their start in illegal file trading, thinking they're going to make it big trying to entice freeloaders to pay up for inferior services. The freeloaders will move on, and the legitimate buyers won't trust them. It's over. Let it die.
Whatever tries to impose DRM and inferior quality will die, simply because there will always be someone out there with a better quality copy for free.
Until the music majors "get it" and start providing top-quality products for a reasonable amount without DRM.
When that service exists I will gladly partake in it to find all the old titles I still have on my LPs. I will also use it to discover new music that I do not know yet.
But while I am being taken for a thief and a fool instead of a customer, I will continue to totally ignore music that I do not have already.