Kazaa, anyone?

Kazaa exists for one reason - to make LOTS of money for Sharman Networks who owns it, for Altnet, Sharman's partner. And it'll use just about any means to achieve that - including the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act).

It's the American Way - although Sharman is based in Sydney, Australia, and incorporated in the Pacific island of Vanuatu.

Given that for the moment, Kazaa is used for what one might delicately describe as questionable purposes, are the people who either use the ad- and pop-up polluted 'free' version or who pay $29.99 for a junk-free Kazaa safe?

Well, says Kazaa, there's "Improved Privacy Protection". Is it any good? Ask some of the Kazaa users who've been nailed during the RIAA's on-going sue 'em all DMCA subpoena war.

In the meanwhile, despite privacy issues with Altnet, Kazaa is already a long way down the road to joining the 'legitimate' international corporate community and, "actually can be configured to monetize the service and diminish piracy - if the price is right, of course," as executive director Alan Morris says here.

His price? About 25 cents per song.

Now Sharman/Kazaa has come up with another idea with which to milk online music lovers.

"Technical measures designed to turn free online file-sharing services into a major source of revenue for the record industry have been proposed by an industry group representing the most popular trading service, Kazaa," says no less than The New Scientist here.

"The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), which represents Kazaa's parent companies Sharman Networks and Altnet, suggests that music files traded through such networks could be encrypted so that only users who pay a fee will be supplied with the software needed to unlock them."

But, says the report, "the record industry has not welcomed the new proposal. RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy told The Washington Post: 'It is hard to take seriously proposals to turn [peer-to-peer] systems into legitimate businesses when they continue to induce users to violate the law and willfully refuse to use available technologies to stop the rampant infringement'."

The DCIA reckons the scheme could generate around $900 million a year for the music industry but it acknowledges that it would only work if competing file-sharing networks agree to cooperate, adds The New Scientist.

"The DCIA also suggests that internet service providers might need to track the numbers of files being downloaded by users, something that would prove both costly and controversial."

You could say that.

Filetopia, anyone?