Lawyers For ‘Imposter’ P2P Software Threaten Open-Source Team
Written by enigmax on February 25, 2008A company trying to pass itself off as vendors of the open-source file-sharing software Shareaza, has set the legal dogs on the real Shareaza forum. Discordia Ltd, who earlier turned Bearshare and iMesh into pay services, demanded action after a member of the real Shareaza forum suggested a DOS attack on the site.
When the news started to break in December last year, it looked bleak for the real Shareaza project. A company had somehow gained control of Shareaza.com, the domain name used previously for the real, open-source Shareaza P2P client, and was now passing its own pay service client off as the real thing. Something was seriously wrong, with many putting the pieces together into what could only be described as a conspiracy.
Now, lawyers for the “fake” or “imposter” Shareaza are threatening the real Shareaza team for a comment made by a user on their forum - things are getting out of hand. So how did this begin?
Last year a company associated with the French RIAA somehow obtained the Shareaza.com domain name from its owner, Mr Jonathan Nilson, who was given the domain in the belief he would keep it safe. Nilson would neither confirm nor deny that he had sold the domain, but speculation suggests that he may have sold it to avoid legal action. Others suggest the domain expired. Either way, the original owners of the domain (the Shareaza creators) don’t have it anymore.
Now the owners of the ‘fake’ Shareaza had control of the domain name previously associated with the real product (shareaza.com), it became easy to pretend to be them. There are two screenshots below - one is the ‘fake’ domain and one is the real thing. Can you spot the imposter?
The real, open source client is represented by the bottom graphic. The ‘fake‘ is at the top and according to Neglacio ;
ShareazaV4, is totally fake. It violates the open-source license, GPL (Version 2) in many ways. Also, it isn’t free nor open source. It requires a subscription and installs a suspicious toolbar. You can read what happened from this reference list: http://tinyurl.com/2cx7ff
Please, update your Shareaza version to Shareaza 2.3.1.0, and change the site from Shareaza.com to the new official site at Sourceforge: http://shareaza.sourceforge.net .
Understandably, the real Shareaza team and users are really upset that this outfit has effectively stolen their brand name from under their noses in a hostile takeover, and is actively ruining their reputation. It’s no surprise that emotions run high when people are ripped off so when a new signup to the real Shareaza forums suggested a small way to get back at the people doing this to them, it wasn’t anything so special. A user called Red Squirrel posted (quote courtesy of Google.com) :
Make it so the real shareaza program queries their site [shareaza.com] every couple of seconds. As an individual user this won’t take much personal bandwidth. But all shareaza users worldwide put together should be enough to kill their server and they won’t really be able to do much since it will be coming from so many different IPs.
Even though a moderator outlined that this behavior might be considered illegal, that wasn’t enough for Meister Seelig & Fein, lawyers representing the company that took over Shareaza.com. Despite now passing themselves off as the real Shareaza, the ‘imposter’ outfit clearly thinks they have the law on their side too. In correspondence sent to the ‘real’ Shareaza team:
This law firm represents Discordia, Ltd., the operator of the website Shareaza.com and owner of the rights in the Shareaza branded software distributed from that domain. Please be advised, that your forum contains a string of posts under the title: “suggestion to kill Shareaza.com.” Under the string, the poster, RedSquirrel offers directions for users of Shareaza software to implement a DoS that would have the effect of destroying or seriously impairing our client’s application and network. The poster OldDeath also offers a manner to illegally attack our client’s business.
Despite whatever complaints your forum’s users may have with our client’s proper and legal business activities, the type of activity promoted on your forum is illegal. Therefore, we request that you immediately remove this string of posts and any future strings of this nature. My client respects your users’ rights to express their points of view. However, the line is crossed when users begin to promote the destruction of a legitimate business (evidently based on out some misguided belief that artists and others who create music should not be fairly compensated for their efforts) via illegal or other predatory means.
If the above cited illegal activity on your site does not immediately cease and desist, our client will take all necessary action to vigorously and relentlessly protect its rights. To be clear, if this action is not immediately taken and, as result, our client’s business is harmed, we will not only pursue, locate and hold fully responsible each and every one of those who have implemented this, or any similar DoS, but also those responsible for maintaining your site and the forums.
Please confirm that the requested action is being taken immediately.
Jeffrey A. Kimmel
Meister Seelig & Fein, LLP
140 E. 45th St., 19th Fl.
New York, NY 10017
(212) 655-3578
Meister Seelig & Fein is the same law firm that struck the distribution deal between iMesh and SonyBMG, so their involvement in this issue is no surprise.
Shareaza.com is offering a pay client that no file sharer wants, for many reasons, including keeping all hashes, downloaded files and chat logs in a database. We certainly don’t recommend it.
Those who prefer the real, free, open-source Shareaza experience should get along to Sourceforge or to this thread where all the genuine domains point.
On the one hand, The Pirate Bay lose a domain they bought legitimately because the IFPI doesn’t like it, but when a music industry outfit attempts the destruction of a completely legal piece of open source software by passing itself off as the real thing, no-one blinks. Sign of the times?
Update: It appears that Shareaza.com has been marked as a web forgery, illustrated in the screenshot below.
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149 Responses
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[quote comment="297829"][quote comment="297817"]I’d bloody DOS them if I had the time and resources. The stuff these guys are doing is pretty much as illegal as filesharing.[/quote]
No, it is more illegal. They are making money of pirated files. This is the kind of thing that costs society money.
Why can’t the RIAA/MPAA go after these bastards?[/quote]
That makes the situation worse then. And the MPAA are like the school bully. They’ll go after the defencless people but let the guys with lawyers do whatever the fuck they want, because they know they can’t win. It’s disgusting.
Shareaza? really who gives a shit? does any one use it? does any one pay for it? just a few fools.
IIRC, there are NPOs that will sue for GPL violations on behalf of groups like the Shareaza official team. Perhaps they could be contacted.
Cant believe they could do that..
Blow the **** out of that site tbh!
The fake site is working.
If you guys attack it, I’m with you.
This affects bittorrent how???????????
[quote comment="297943"]This affects bittorrent how???????????[/quote]
Shareaza has a built in torrent client.
@30
Among other things, the Shareaza program implements the bittorrent protocol, so this definitely has to do with bittorrent
Shareaza.com has been included in the Spybot - Search&Destroy HOST rules.
Meaning, everyone who regularly updates Spybot, will not be able to contact Shareaza.com or any derivatives.
Thanks Spybot!
[quote comment="297817"]The stuff these guys are doing is pretty much as illegal as filesharing.[/quote]
Hello?
Filesharing is 100% legal. It’s WHAT files some people choose to share that’s the point of contention.
The crooks that now own the shareaza domain name, however, are violating the GPL. So, no. What they’re doing isn’t “pretty much the same as filesharing”.
Also, by threatening the REAL Shareaza team, the imposters have revealed that their little hijacking scheme has been so ineffective at reducing the Shareaza community, that the whole operation can be DoS’ed into oblivion just by making the real client query it every couple of seconds.
The only thing these retards have accomplished is embarassing themselves.
Murder should be legal…i’d start with those lawyers.
These people really suck dick and if they arent careful, will be taken down by a group of hackers that dont approve of there actions.
Learn from media defender.
[quote comment="297877"]It’s illegal to make a suggestion??[/quote]
Conspiracy is what they call it.
Hi, all there. This is for me the good value itself that other ppl are supporting discriminated Shareaza users. This “Fakeaza” and Discordia scandal affects also on other P2P as Shareaza is eDonkey2000(emule)+torrents+G1+Gnutella2 client. So in fact they probably want to takeover one by one all P2P nets and servers then turn them into centralised pay service. How it is done you can see on your own eyes. Orwell story and BigBrother are angels of freedom and mercy comparing to “Fakeaza” stealing domain, black mailing users and devs, stealing brand artworks, violating licences and our rights, etc. The most funny situation is when a thief want to put to court his victim for victim is trying/thinking how to defend against aggression and being stolen. Take this under consideration very carefully as today our Shareaza but tomorrow your program/net will be attacked. Second funny fact is that is going on in the States and Shareaza licence, whole society work and individual’s intelectual rights has got completely none protection, but many authorities from there are saying loudly about violating licences and rights in other countries. Meanwhile a freedom of free culture, free music (free are CommonRights (CC) and open sources) freedom of speaking is less then nothing important. If you would like to support Shareaza you can run it in your machine (oryginal one, from http://www.shareaza.sourceforge.net currently 2.3.1.0) it works also as emule and has got some extra features. Making net bigger prevents all of us from Fakeaza and perhaps discordia conspiracy against internet users. Or maybe rather their future victims and net slaves?
http://digg.com/software/Lawyers_For_Imposter_P2P_Software_Threaten_OpenSource_Team
I’m with Gissa on this one,
Show me where to download a client that DDOS’s em into oblivion, I’ll leave me computer running as long as need be.
I hope that the wives and girlfriends of those scumbags grow cocks in place of their pussys too.
Yo!
Dont know why… but just going there and constantly hitting CTRL+refresh makes me feel so much better…
Am thinking maybe make a html page with 20 frames that keep refreshing themselves via a meta tag…
anybody else think its worth it?
oops for those not into html, the above html page would basically be the same as you visiting the site 20 times every few seconds… and if enough people do the same.. it would equal a DDoS so not sure if its a good idea..
Hi ugioid, thanks for posting that - anything to hurt the bastards.
http://www.w3schools.com/
People could do it from internet cafe’s too - completely anonymous.
We’re really proud of what we’re doing at Grooveshark to take radical steps towards creating a legal p2p network that matches the value of the illegal networks, adding in a social layer, and making an overall service that’s better than free — think bottled water industry.
And unlike other networks, Grooveshark believes in compensating everyone in the value chain, so we pay the copyright holder for their work, and we even split our profits 50/50 with the users. We’re building our Beta now, and we’d love your input — Grooveshark.com
Shareaza, this software still exist . I though that they extinct long ago
“Dont know why… but just going there and constantly hitting CTRL+refresh makes me feel so much better…”
That’s either extremely cute or horribly pathetic. I can’t decide.
“Shareaza has a built in torrent client.”
Yeah, likely the worst implementation you can find. There are dozens of better alternatives for every operating system and every demands (with GUI for dummies, with GUI for experts, console interface, completely headless). Shareaza does neither implement DHTs nor encryption. Same goes for its Gnutella and edonkey support. The only thing it might be good at is its own little G2 network. Unless you’re a die-hard Shareaza fan, just move on, nothing to see here.
“confirmed, shareaza.com is down or no more!”
Either they banned your IP address automatically - good firewalls detect such silly DOS attacks and just drop the packets. Or maybe you shouldn’t use PG2 with BlueTack’s list because a lot of websites will be “magically” offline if you do.
“Discordia, Ltd” however must be destroyed. They can be destroyed. They will be destroyed. It’s that simple.
http://www.bandoo.com/ is this the same group of idiots?
I frankly can’t believe this crap! They are clearly in for a rude surprise.
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