Kazaa Plus -v- Kazaa NonPlus

"As Avalon Online's clever campaign promotes - it's the Kazaa you love Plus much more."

This comes from Nikki Hemming, ceo of Sharman Networks, whose attempts to shut down Kazaa Lite include firing legal threats at Google, to wit: "Please immediately remove or disable all access to the Infringing Material" - ie, Kazaa Lite.

The quote represents the sharp end of the effort behind Korporate Kazaa v 2.5.1, Sharman (and Nikki's : ) Networks' current bid to enter the Big Time. Kazaa is now being marketed, with all that implies, by Avalon Online Distribution SA.

The 'free' Kazaa NonPlus is still available, and still loaded with junk you definitely don't want and didn't ask for, such as pop-ups.

The unpolluted 'Plus' version will set you back $29.99 - the price you literally have to pay to get away from the odious ads.

But both versions include "a rewards program for sharing digitally rights managed files, and access to Channels, specialized licensed content areas within the application". It's called, Altnet Peer Points Manager. You have to manually uninstall it (opt out) if you don't want it. But a lot of users won't even realize it's there.

"The certified Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD) software is provided by Sharman Networks and made available on Kazaa.com or Download.com and it contains NO spyware. Sharman Networks does not condone the use of spyware nor support the distribution of spyware to others." - from the Kazaa home page.

Also, "Spyware is software that is installed deceptively to gather information about you without your knowledge. This can include centrally recording your personal internet usage, monitoring your keyboard strokes or capturing personal information."

OK. No Spyware. Cool. But Hey! What's this?

"We may retain your IP address and/or other machine-identifying information in order to help us diagnose problems with our servers, to administer the Software and the Service, to track downloading and uploading of files from your computer, to gather broad anonymous demographic information (such as the number of visitors from a geographic area), to enforce compliance with our End User’s License Agreement or otherwise in order to protect our services, sites, customers, or others." - From Altnet's 'Privacy' statement.

"Retain your IP address and/or other machine-identifying information" and "track downloading and uploading of files from your computer"?

And this?

"In an attempt to provide increased value to our visitors, we may choose various third party web sites to link to, and frame within, the Altnet Features. We also participate in co-branding and other relationships to offer e-commerce and other services and features to our users. However, even if the third party is affiliated with us, we have no control over these linked sites, each of which has separate privacy and data collection practices independent of us. Data collected by our co-brand partners or third party web sites (even if offered on or through our site) is not received by us. As such, we have no responsibility or liability for these independent policies or actions, and are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any such web sites. These linked sites are only for your convenience and you therefore access them at your own risk."