I still agree it's wrong to keep the songs if you didn't purchase them, but it gives many people a chance to look for songs that aren't so big on "names".

For those with no music experience, that's also a way for them to find their ground and go from there

Keeping it if you didn't buy it later is still wrong.

I'm sorry, but I don't think anybody downloads unkown songs from Kazaa.
From how I understand it work, you have to type in words to search for, either artist name, album name or song name. What do you search for if you're just fishing for unknown stuff?

No, Kazaa is Not a good way for unknown artists to distribute their work since nobody knows them, and therefore can't search for them... Sites such as MP3.com is a much better place for that.

maybe so, but if my friend tells me of a song I may like, I don't think I'm going to go buy that cd the song is in just to see if I like it.

There are so many different types of music right now, plowing through it on a 56k modem isn't going to cut it for me, especially when I have to buy the time to actually surf... that's 150 USD per month on dialup... for 4-5 hours a day.

mp3.com is nothing like Kazaa.... mp3.com lista artists who want to be listed there for free (artists must OPT-IN). Kazaa is not that way. Kazaa lets you search by genre (they call it category) however.

Here's a wha-if... I HATE mp3.com. but, I LOVE 303 Infinity (used to be mp3.com's poster-child and best grosser, maybe still?). I find out about them on mp3.com listen to a track or two. Noticed nearly all their tracks are free to download. can't get by the crappy speed on mp3.com so I kazaa-search for 303 infinity... tons of matches... check for 'freeness factor' against mp3.com and I can d/l away all the free, unknown artist I want.

I've also done the same with other free-mp3 promoters whose sites I don't really like much. hate the site, love the content... kazaa lets me get by just fine.

Ever hear the saying: "Don't kill the messenger"? It fits here... Kazaa is no more to blame for illegal stuff than VCRs are... both are a medium that is VERY widely misused... Anyone else remember the crap when VCRs first came out? It's the exact same thing that's happening now. Differnet media, same argument.

What do you type in if your searching for something/someone unknown?

You type in the type of music you are looking for, (e.g. 'Drum and Bass', 'Acid Jazz', 'EuroTrance' etc...) or list all the files a particular person has and therefore get a taste for what he likes (popular and unknown alike).

I have found many many new & unknown artists this way, and often have then gone on to buy their albums and recommend them to my friends as well.

I've done eurodance and come up with some nice results on Kazaa.... it's lead me to one of my favorite artists E-Type (a swedish group)

Other great artists Kazaa has lead me to: Red Flag, Blumchen, Chris Issak, Monaco, Warsaw, Drunk Injuns... Others too... those are the ones that come to my mind...

Looking at those, most were found by searching for: '

I agree with UHRBid, how many of us can say that we have never recorded a tv show or movie? I bet most of us have a whole bunch or recorded movies from tv about 10ft from us, and what about audio? music casettes, recorded from radio/cd... weve all done it, so who are we to say that downloading mp3's is wrong? just because we dont like it?

eg. [mp3](not owned by you)->copy using p2p->[Your hard drive]

same as

[movie on tv](not owned by you)->copy using VCR->[your blank tape]

same as

[song on radio](again not owned by you)->copy using casette recorder->[your walkman]

I fail to see the difference, should we all dissaprove of vcrs and casette recorders, bot designed for ripping, both, when used as intended break copyright laws...


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My crime is that of curiosity, blah blah blah...
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also p2p is a good way to find things you just cant get anywhere else, like remixes, say Ghostbusters Vs BillyJean for example.

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My crime is that of curiosity, blah blah blah...
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You know, you can download a lot more from Kazaa than just mp3's. Software, tv shows, movies, documents, and so on. I personally have Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Downloaded off Kazaa. If nobody stops me, then why should I not do it? Sure I'm going to buy it when it comes out on DVD. But I'm not going to delete it off of my computer after I do. It's "my backup file" What's the big deal?

I'm with elf on this one. I probably wouldn't have purchased 20% of the CDs I have now if I hadn't been able to listen to something first.

Kazaa is a Virus playground and a Hackers paradise. once your logged in BOOM they both go to work, Virus' don't affect anything till you've had the file a while

No that's not true at all. I've had Kazaa for over 2 years or so now, and never received one virus or it has never caused any problems on my computer. And if I were to get one Norton would get rid of it. <(^.^<)

Must have changed then, i myself and people i knew were getting them now and again. Mostly in video files.

I've used Kazaa 2 years... I also use Shareaza (for like 4 months...), mIRC before that and Napster for a little while...

total virus count: 0
total hacker problems: 0

finding stuff I'd have never found elsewhere: priceless.

p2p: With great power comes great responsibility.

one quick question... how the hell do you get a virus from a video file???? I've seen plenty coat-tailing on executables and plenty of hoaxes about viruses in mp3s... but I've yet to see viruses in things other than executables (like exes, scripts, etc...).

it is good for stuff you'll never find elsewhere

I've no idea how it works i just know its downloaded with the file, quite possible its in a file of its own.
if that makes sense

if that's the case, then it would seem that they had a virus before kazaa.

Viruses by most definitions have to be self-replicating. They can do that in anything that is executed by the system (I've seen perl, vbscript, c/c++, visual basic viruses with frequency). Data is not usually handled by the OS and with the exception of script-based viruses (like the Melissa virus), data can't actually be a virus, it's handled by a diffenent program (which may be infected).

MP3/AVI virus hoaxes are rampant across the web, but they are just that... hoaxes. Take a brief stroll through f-secure (http://www.f-secure.com) and see all the BS that people blame on p2p programs...

problems I have seen are people infecting the p2p program itself with viruses, then redistributing them again... a simple virus scanner is more than enough to remedy that though.

Norton took care of mine, was only pointing out that kazaa is an easy way of sending them out.

any exes you download could very well have a virus... it's a risk people will take for a free program....

I've never had a real problem with a virus... nothing McAfee couldn't take care of...

i've had no problem. but some people don't realise the damage they can do and take no precautions

UHRBid; data can have a virus written into it's header tags or readable areas, this happened recently with the MP3 virus scare with winamp (which has been acknowledged and fixed).

As long as the OS is reading a variable to memory it can be buffer-overflowed and cause the program to execute code that could compromise the system and then carry out whatever it wants (payload & replication etc...)

It's important to remember that although the file itself might not be executable, the software that reads it can be tricked into executing malicious corrupt code within the datafile (e.g. mp3, swf, mpg etc..)

It's a matter for the programmers of the software to fix the bug/exploit - but at the end of the day it's still classified as a virus all the same, and just as dangerous, sometimes even more so since the propagation method (in the case of MP3's) is the naive users themselves.

I'm sorry but I don't believe a word of it.
Kazaa is used to download illegal songs, and most of the times the songs will never be purchased.
Sure, maybe one percont of one percent of people using Kazaa may once in a while purchase a CD they downloaded from Kazaa.

Just about the same proportion of people who buy Playboy for the articles.

BTW: my CD store lets me listen to any CD I want before I decide to buy it. I don't know if your service sucks more in the US than here in Canada, but that's pretty much a standard here.

my CD Store doesn't let me listen.... Kazaa does... I refuse to give up Kazaa simple because some people use it illegally... I buy the CDs I like, I trash the MP3s I don't want enough to buy.

--BEGIN SARCASM--

But Paxx.... you're right, Kazaa is just evil... it lets people share stuff... lets ban mIRC too... wtf... lets also shut down Xerox... I've seen too many of my fellow students copying copyrighted info (and complete textbooks). They should all goto hell

--END SARCASM--

Hell Dragon: I hadn't personally run across any mp3s infected, but I do understand that programs can run malicious code (otherwise script-viruses wouldn't do anything).

I REALLY wanna find one of those infected MP3s now... I wanna see how it's done

But that's a flaw in winamp (if I understand you correctly), and people that don't run it wouldn't have problems? As a favor, does anyone have a link to the mp3-virus thingy? I had another friend mention he had heard of it too, but he doesn't have any links... I wanna know more about it.