Why shouldn't I get Kazaa?

Cafe Society
#1

Okay, I don’t want Kazaa, because I have moral issues with that whole “theft” thing. But at the same time, I really don’t like paying for music, and I really don’t like having to go to the music store, and I find that now that I have a cable modem I’m really thinking about caving. There are plenty of moral loopholes out there, and I’m sure I can find one I like. But there’s part of me that would rather not.

Please, somebody, save my soul! Are there any compelling software/hardware/evil spying reasons not to get Kazaa? Anecdotal evidence is fine. I’m really protective of my darling laptop, and if I hear one story of a computer that exploded/ceased to function/became rather ornery because of Kazaa’s influence, that’ll be enough.

I don’t know if this is the proper forum for this question.

#2

I’m paranoid. I understand they put spyware on your computer.

#3

Spyware…hidden viruses…not to mention the legal issues.

#4

Annoying pop-up ads when you least expect them. Plus the whole, you know, theft issue.

#5

theft… file sharing… intellectual property… societal domain (my own term) all so arbitrary …

Oh, but that is not what you wanted to hear is it?

Would I be a smartass if I said “don’t get Kazaa because there are better P2P’s out there?”:dubious:

IMHO, It’s only theft or immoral if you make money from it. If I like a couple of songs by an artist, I might add, I really try to support that artist (and their record company) by buying their music…

but I am off track,
I haven’t ever actually heard of a computer ceasing to function normally because of Kazaa. On the other hand, if you want ‘evil’ reasons, there are probably plenty of fundamentalists and zealots that would tell you that all of the music you like is already evil. So I guess stay away from it for that reason…

In hopes of being more helpful, however, internet radio might be a good guilt-free alternative. You have less control but services like launchplayer at yahoo “learn” what kind of music you like the more you rate the songs played. It suggests things for you to listen to that you might not have heard of also, like ‘you are listening to such-and-such. this was recommended by fans of so-and-so’ (you rated so-and-so highly, etc.). It takes some time for it to narrow down what you like, but you can rate each song, album, and artist anywhere from ‘never play this’ to a 1-10 scale of how often you want to hear it. All it requires is that you sign up for a yahoo email account that you can check once in a… well, almost never… and every 45 min. or so they subject you to a minute or two of ads.

Just a thought…

#6

Because you want to get Kazaa Lite, which doesn’t have all the spyware and/or foistware. Since file-sharing is “immoral,” I won’t tell you where to get it, but Google will.

#7

Kazaa is not terribly well-behaved; it tends to have conflicts with other apps.

#8

My only problem with Kazaa is it gives you all sorts of obnoxious pop-up ads, and the banner ads often have sound with them. Kazaa also crashes a lot, unfortunately, so does Kazaa Lite.

#9

Using Kazaa has not slowed down my CD purchasing a whole lot. Since downloading songs encourages me to buy as much as I burn entire albums, I don’t see it as immoral.
I really have much more respect for artists who encourage music sharing. I do understand that they must make a living off music, and I wonder how my $12 cd compares to the $35 concert ticket.

#10

kazaa isn’t very much use if you’re looking for obscure stuff. All the biggest hits are available without fail but i mostly use it to get stuff i can’t find the cd of and compared to audiogalaxy, napster et al its a bit of a let down. There probably are better p2ps out there but i don’t know which.

#11

What Azael said–get KazAa Lite.

This thread will be locked soon.

#12

Ah, I miss Napster. I found (eventually) every single song I ever looked for. Including the wonderful “Goodbye yer Honor” Bob Wier’s band, Kingfish. Including “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road” by . . . I can’t remember. Including “The Rodeo Song” by, I don’t think I ever knew.

I tried Morpheus, but it sucked, and messed up my computer, so I tried hard to kill it. It took a long while, but I think I finally managed to get the last remenants. I’m wary about going through that again.

#13

I would never recommend superior P2P’s, that would be immoral…:rolleyes: … Not here anyway. I ahem know this …ah, guy though, who has a favorite. He tried 'em all and he too missed Napster for a while… if only you had his e-mail address…you could find out what fit the bill for him…always finding obscure stuff by dudes like They Might Be Giants, Ani Difranco, you name it…

#14

I haven’t had any problems with Kazaa crashing.

If you’re looking for something popular, or something that was popular at one time, you’ll have no trouble finding it. There’s a lot of obscure stuff on Kazaa too, but there’s also a lot of material that’s much easier to buy than to download.

My friend was trying to find a particular part of a Brahms opus a couple weeks ago, and while we were able to find many copies of his other opuses (opi?) and other parts of the same opus, this one was impossible to locate on Kazaa. But we were able to find it on CD at Amazon for $4.

#15

Well, before this thread is locked, I can suggest a way to ease your moral dilemma, and just download songs that are free or put online by amateur artists who don’t mind giving their work out for free. Just a little searching will help you find some of these folks.

#16

Stay the hell away from iMesh.

Despite it’s bogus reassurances, it’s absolutely loaded with spyware that’s a four-star bitch to clean off your PC. Ad-aware wouldn’t even touch the stuff I got and it ran through McAfee like water through a window screen.

I can’t begin to tell you how much time I wasted trying to salvage my OS. I finally had to reload it fresh, just to preserve my sanity.

#17

I used to use Kazaa on my work computer (T1 and all) occasionally. That is until our network admin came to my cube all wide eyed asking if I had IRC’d with someone in the Netherlands!

Apparently, a nasty trojan of some kind came in through the Kazaa door and was trying to connect with its master. I don’t use it anymore, of course, but there were a lot of suspicious files floating around on it. Most were obvious, but that damn trojan got in somehow, and I was always very careful about opening anything I did get from Kazaa.

Course, that’s probably true of any P2P program.

#18

Ahem… cough cough… Sure… :smiley:
j/k… um jk

#19

And after Napster, there was Audiogalaxy, which has been greatly decimated since last I checked.

Sigh.

#20

Personally, I like the K app. But I would never use it at work. At home it’s fine, but then I am savvy enuf to watch out for it doing dumb stuff, like installing stuff (spyware) that I don’t want. If you get it, watch your registry’s Run keys for anything new popping up! If you don’t know what that means, either don’t get it or be very, very careful.

As for the moral issue, two wrongs may not make a right, but I am personally sick of the way various media industries screw over their performers and consumers as much as they can get away with. They’re still charging $10-15 or more for CD’s that anybody with a burner can tell you don’t cost near that much. Yes, I know there has to be a markup. I also know that they use a higher quality CD, but if we can get the cheap ones for less than a dollar in 2 digit quantities, I can only imagine that the high quality ones are even cheaper in the 7 digit and higher quantities that they buy them at.

DVD’s may not be as cheap, but I’m personally betting that in the kind of quantity the producers get them at their cost isn’t too far off from a CD, but we’re still paying sometimes as much as $30 for a single DVD. Compare the cost of a movie that comes on a single DVD to one that comes with 2 DVDs and you’ll find the cost is not doubled (or halved, depending on the direction you take it) as it should be. The production cost is still likely to be at most $1-2 per DVD (educated guess) even after taking into account distribution. They’re making an obscene profit…

Having said that, I personally don’t dl a lot of movies as I like the features you get with a DVD and I prefer to watch movies on my big screen TV anyway. But I certainly don’t feel any sympathy for the RIAA or MPAA.

As a final note, it’s been demonstrated that if the media industries would simply adopt the new technologies, they could make plenty of dough still. The porn industry adopted the internet pretty much from the beginning, and they rake in huge amounts of money. The “evil” Kazaa even has a feature to get paid-for content that sees the money go back to the content’s distributor, and people are using it.

The media industries need to stop bitching and moaning every time some new technology pops up that might damage their profits a little. Rather than trying to make it illegal or difficult, they need to find a way to adopt and profit it from it. Napter’s kin is not going away anytime soon. Even if they shut down Kazaa (unlikely at best), there’ll be something to take its place. Always.