Kazaa

Kazaa (previously called "KaZaA") was a peer-to-peer file sharing application that uses the FastTrack protocol. Kazaa was commonly used to exchange music (mainly in mp3 format) and movies (in DivX format). Its popularity declined as Sharman Networks and its partners were the subject of copyright-related lawsuits. Later Atrinsic, Inc bought the Kazaa brand to relaunch it as a legal subscription service, eliminating the Kazaa Software managing everything via the web. Since August 2012, the Kazaa website has been permanently disabled.

History

Kazaa and the FastTrack protocol were created by Niklas Zennstrom of Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark, and were introduced in March 2001 by the Dutch company Consumer Empowerment. In order to monetize due to the explosive growth of the program, Sharman offered the banner ads and gold icons displayed by Kazaa to any company looking to advertise their products to people using Kazaa. Even Microsoft itself used Kazaa as advertising. In 2003 a contract entered into with Altnet and Streamwaves in order to legalize the program made the golden icons show the first 30 seconds of a song and then open the Streamwaves website. in July 2006 he entered into another contract with Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI, Warner Music and several others agreeing to pay $100 million in copyright losses and make Kazaa a legal service by Atrinsic. The program was always exclusive to the Windows operating system. Although it can be run on Linux, Mac OS X and other operating systems with Win32 environment emulation software such as WINE or Virtual PC. It was the only FastTrack customer but MLDonkey had experimental support for this network.

Due to the increasing use of advertising programs (adware) by Kazaa, derivatives of it appeared, which allow the use of the Kazaa network, without the need to install spyware and adware, such as Kazaa Lite Resurrection or Kazaa Lite K++. Despite everything, Kazaa and its derivative programs are dying, and many of its users have switched to more modern P2P programs, such as Ares Galaxy, Lphant, eMule or BitTorrent.

Gold Icons

The golden icons appeared above the search list for certain terms, these icons linked to sponsored content (music, videos, software) outside the Sharman Network, some of this content was paid.

Variants

This section introduces those programs that are based on the official Kazaa client. For other compatible FastTrack clients, see FastTrack.

Kazaa Media Desktop: An extension for cataloging music and videos on the local hard drive.

Kazaa Lite is an unauthorized variant of the original Kazaa that excludes adware and spyware and provides more functionality. It has been available since April 2002. It can be downloaded for free and by mid-2005 its use is even more widespread than the Kazaa client. It connects to the same FastTrack network and allows you to exchange files with Kazaa users. It was created by a third party, a group of programmers who modified the original Kazaa application binaries. Later versions of Kazaa Lite include K++, a memory patch that removes certain restrictions on search limits, multisource limits, and sets a "participation level" to the maximum of 1000. Kazaa Lite is considered by Sharman Networks to be a copyright infringement.

After Kazaa Lite development stopped, K-Lite v2.6 and Kazaa Lite Tools appeared. Although it may seem that K-Lite is related to Kazaa Lite due to the similarity in name, they are actually different projects. K-Lite is not an update to Kazaa Lite, but was written separately with many fundamental changes. As Kazaa Lite is a modification of an old version of Kazaa, K-Lite v2.6 requires the original KMD 2.6 executable to run. K-Lite does not include any Sharman source code, but requires the user to replace the original unpatched Kazaa Media Desktop and thus runs in its environment, removing malware and adding some features. The authors believe that this version could be legal. In the same way they hope that since the client uses a newer version of the Kazaa program, they will not be affected by attempts to block Kazaa Lite from the network.

In November 2004, the K-Lite developers released K-Lite v2.7, which similarly also requires the KMD 2.7 executable. Currently, other variants use an older kernel (2.02), so K-Lite has some features that others will never have. K-Lite includes multiple search tabs, a custom toolbar, and autostart. It also has an automatic search, a download accelerator, an optional welcome screen, a preview option (to view files while they are downloading), an IP blocker, support links, and an ad blocker.

Kazaa Lite Tools on the other hand, is an update of the original Kazaa Lite. It is a copy of Kazaa Lite with modifications and the inclusion of third-party programs. It has the latest and greatest third-party programs.

Kazaa Lite Resurrection is a duplicate of Kazaa Lite 2.4.3. It was initially well received by users, however discussions about adware on KLS, accusations of spyware, and the premise that KLR markers were getting people to donate falsely caused a split among the user public. That's when Kazaa Lite Tolls K++ came along. Not long after Kazaa Lite Revolutions appeared as an almost exact copy of Kazaa Lite Resurrection. It could be said that it was a copy with a different name. All versions of Kazaa Lite were clean of adware and spyware, except for Kazaa Lite Revolutions and Resurrection.

In August 2003, Kazaa Plus was introduced by Sharman Networks. It is a non-free premium version, presumably without spyware or adware. In an attempt to continue making money with the Kazaa name, another version called Kazaa Gold was released. This version is not a Sharman Networks product. However, in 2004, Sharman Networks began buying domains from these companies, thus causing the sites to redirect to the actual Kazaa site.

About malware

Since its inception, Kazaa has been accused of installing malware on users' computers. Sharman, the company that owns Kazaa, claims that its products are not adware and do not collect personal information from users. For a time, the part of the Kazaa code that could be considered adware was an optional part of the Kazaa program; however, through a step that is difficult for average users to skip during installation. When the allegations surfaced, the code was merged into the main Kazaa software, making it impossible to uninstall. Spyware detection and software removal programs often fail to remove the code without any special action taken by the user.

Some malware installed by Kazaa include:

• Cydoor - Collect information from the user's browsing habits and pass them to the creation company of Cydoor.
• B3D - An add-on that causes popups to appear with ads when the computer accesses an internet site found in the B3D code.
• Altnet - A "gold" file distribution network.
• GAIN - Identify the interests of the user and some of the web browsing habits. Kazaaa versions released after 16 August 2005 do not contain it.
• InstaFinder - Redirects the wrongly written URLs to the InstaFinder site instead of the default Internet Explorer page.
• RX Toolbar - A bar that monitors all internet sites that are visited from Microsoft Internet Explorer and provides links from competing sites.
• New.net - An added to IE that places promotional links with intent to sell domains such as www.record.shop

As a result of these additional components, CNET's website Download.com stopped distributing KaZaA in April 2004.