Kaaza Question
 

Not that I ever download songs from Kazaa, but I have heard that it is hard to find good versions of newer songs on Kazaa. After the song is downloaded, it plays for about 30 seconds or so, then it turns into a high pitched squeal for the rest of the song. Are the CD's now encoded by the music industry to prevent peer to peer sharing? If so, how do people get good versions of those same songs on Kazaa? For example, a friend downloaded the new No Doubt song 4 times and got bad versions. The 5th download was fine.

No, the record industry releases copies of the songs onto the file sharing networks that are messed up, like you describe. The theory is that if they can make it hard enough to find a good copy, people will not take the trouble to find a good one, thus decreasing the amount of filesharing. It doesnt work very well--as soon as you get off of the large networks, most of the files are fine.

sailor420 was dead-on; its the RIAA releasing these bad versions of songs onto the network. It sucks listening to one of these songs on headphones and then all of the sudden hearing a LOUD screech/noise. They are getting desperate and are losing hope of killing KaZaA and file-sharing.

Yea I agree. They don't stand a chance of stopping file-sharing, especially as most countries can not agree what kind of laws to make to stop the networks.

correct me if im wrong but no american corporation or government agency can spy on irc and use what it sees there in any legal action

jam161: I don't know why they wouldn't be able to. The Kazaa network was based off some Pacific Island but the RIAA was still able to sue people who were using it. Almost every IRC network has at least one server in the states.

The thing is that Kazaa was based outside the U.S. so Kazaa itself could not be shut down; unlike Napster, whose music is stored in a serve INSIDE the U.S.
But the RIAA was going after the people who were sharing, ie. acting as a server. If you were not sharing, they were not going after you (I guess the RIAA uses the theory of the drug dealer getting more time then the drug user).

If you can't beat 'em, make it hell for them to beat you. That is what they are doing now...bastards

If it is any consolation to them, I just bought the Audioslave CD because I liekd it so much after downloading the songs off Kazaa.