What happened to the stories of David vs Goliath?

If we give up like they want us to, they will win. If we all work together, we can be stronger than the government.

Governments should be afraid of their people, not the other way around.

Open Source items and programs are really great alternatives to paying for a program. I like OOffice, Audacity, and a mess of other good stuff. I was even planning on trying to help out on the programs! If these fools take over Shareaza, it’s like opening the door to Open Source Stuff to other idiots with a sign saying “HERE! TAKE MY STUFF TOO!!!!!”

This has to stop. This isn’t just a take over for an OS program, it means Bottomless pockets can take over our rights!

This has nothing to do with what Discordia is doing but if you feel the need to bring this up, you better your facts straight.[/quote]

Let’s discuss your “facts”. What you complain about is not leeching of any other client/server code. Shareaza simply can “speak” those protocols, which, btw, are ALL open, hence all of these other great clients.

1. Something similar is happening to utorrent. Check out http://www.youtorent.com/ (a mispelled version of youtorrent)

It also offers “legal p2p” …for a price.

2. Advice for software designers: if you want to keep the record labels for stealing your trademark, name your program something offensive like “FuckRIAA 2.0″

Anyways, I can’t believe the labels are going this far to stop p2p. They are thugs! Fuck em![/quote]

It has started.

After the fall of iMesh and Bearshare, they’ve set their sights on Limewire (gnutella/bittorrent)), Shareaza (gnutella/bittorrent) and uTorrent (bittorrent).

This is seriously fucked up.

Their takeover of an already esablished trademark (and their “aquiration” of that) together with their misuse of the logo artwork are clearly illegal. (I suspect even by U.S. law.)

Now, IANAL but this seems to me a very easy case to win. All that needs to be done is for the Shareaza developers to file an injunction against Discordia’s trademark filing. Have their unregistered trademark legally recognized (easy: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.shareaza.com) or register it themselves. Once they have ownership of the trademark legally recognized, they can then sue to get the domain back thanks to cybersquatting laws.

The problem is not so much whether Shareaza is worth protecting. What’s important is to prevent a precedent to be set. You do not want corporations to be able to usurp brands. Hopefully, the EFF would be willing to take the case.[/quote]

There you have it, this is the fight we need to fight. This behavior is simply illegal, and should be fought on those merits. Well written.

#80 That’s not quite right, “Talmon Marco” IS the iMesh president (google), and that’s not his Facebook page. A quick search found the right one.

So, where are the anti-RIAA trolls?

Did my research. Looks like that iMesh a$$hat has a lot of “friends,” wonder what they think?

Shawn Fanning AND Bram Cohen sold out to the RIAA too (Napster and BitTorrent). They’re in there, along with “music connections” and “hot chicks.”[/quote]

Good job, good point. Voluntary surveillance can be used for social control of the weak links in the fight against the “music connections”.

The official home. The domain has gone, the application, the spirit and the source are all still free and available :)[/quote]

It is good to remain optimistic. However, if there is no domain there will be no newbies to download the source, build the application and join the spirit. They will use a fake domain, fall for a fake application and they will feel good about it. They will feel modern and supportive of independent open source development. They will never know that they have been deceived and they lived happily ever after.

This is just one aspect of corporate strategy to subdue progress that they cannot control. This is why the GPL has been created. To protect innovation from beeing owned by someone. While it is essential to be flexible in the innovation process it is equally essential to be hard-nosed about the principle.

The official home. The domain has gone, the application, the spirit and the source are all still free and available :)

It’s not about Shareaza, it’s about the bigger picture – that this kind of thing can happen to other software that is legally protected by the GPL. What is happening here is threatening hundreds of other projects that use the same legal protection against just anyone stealing intellectual property, most of them completely disconnected from illegal activity, but yet still threaten closed-source projects by the powers that be (Apache vs IIS, MySQL vs SQL Server, etc.)

The this type of thing is allowed to happen, it’s a foot in the door to bringing open-source to it’s knees, forcing us to live with whatever products the people with the most money give us. Do we really want that? Of course not.

At the game of “who is the strongest?” Basically all the parasites at Vivendi/universal will be pulverized.

At the game of no justice nobody is safe.

MusicLab is not a legitimate business but a pakc of parasites and Gangster. They should be eliminated.

The point of the matter is that a corporation was able to wrest control of an open source GPL licensed app , close the source and then are threatening the creators with lawsuits and attempting to legally own the app.

This is a huuuuuge dealio. If they (Music Labs, Discordia or whatever shell the RIAA is wearing today) are granted the trademark rights to this, then watch the dominoes fall.

Next you’ll see stuff like MS snag up Linux, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org.
IPswitch will go after Filezilla, Apple will snake VLC.
Any for profit company with deep enough pockets will simply do a backdoor takeover of their free competition.
We’ll see a return to the days where you either had Adobe, or you simply didn’t open a pdf.
Except now it will be, you either have IE or you don’t browse the web.
You either have Vista, or you don’t have an OS.

The Open Source movement will be murdered, and innovation too.[/quote]

I agree. That’s why we don’t want to watch the dominoes fall. Not even the first one.[/quote]

Bingo Shareaza got fukin pirated by a bigger ship. so you need to get a bigger gun and shoot back….or give the fuck up..its simple

Did my research. Looks like that iMesh a$$hat has a lot of “friends,” wonder what they think?

Shawn Fanning AND Bram Cohen sold out to the RIAA too (Napster and BitTorrent). They’re in there, along with “music connections” and “hot chicks.”

The point of the matter is that a corporation was able to wrest control of an open source GPL licensed app , close the source and then are threatening the creators with lawsuits and attempting to legally own the app.

This is a huuuuuge dealio. If they (Music Labs, Discordia or whatever shell the RIAA is wearing today) are granted the trademark rights to this, then watch the dominoes fall.

Next you’ll see stuff like MS snag up Linux, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org.
IPswitch will go after Filezilla, Apple will snake VLC.
Any for profit company with deep enough pockets will simply do a backdoor takeover of their free competition.
We’ll see a return to the days where you either had Adobe, or you simply didn’t open a pdf.
Except now it will be, you either have IE or you don’t browse the web.
You either have Vista, or you don’t have an OS.

The Open Source movement will be murdered, and innovation too.[/quote]

I agree. That’s why we don’t want to watch the dominoes fall. Not even the first one.

The point of the matter is that a corporation was able to wrest control of an open source GPL licensed app , close the source and then are threatening the creators with lawsuits and attempting to legally own the app.

This is a huuuuuge dealio. If they (Music Labs, Discordia or whatever shell the RIAA is wearing today) are granted the trademark rights to this, then watch the dominoes fall.

Next you’ll see stuff like MS snag up Linux, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org.
IPswitch will go after Filezilla, Apple will snake VLC.
Any for profit company with deep enough pockets will simply do a backdoor takeover of their free competition.
We’ll see a return to the days where you either had Adobe, or you simply didn’t open a pdf.
Except now it will be, you either have IE or you don’t browse the web.
You either have Vista, or you don’t have an OS.

The Open Source movement will be murdered, and innovation too.

Discordia = iMesh money/people
iMesh = RIAA money/people
RIAA = Fucking money/people, again

There’s your damn public conspiracy.

The one who posted this article there may not know better or doesn’t care. It seems that he’s collecting texts that have the “conspiracy” keyword in common, nothing else.

Very likely, this move is a piece of a puzzle in the tactics of those who want to destroy Shareaza. Put a story into the wrong context and there you are: people start to doubt it.

If you want to spread this story, without giving it a twist, link to it from unbiased sites with lots of readers.[/quote]

Definition of Conspiracy: a group of conspirators banded together to achieve some harmful or illegal purpose.

Discordia, MusicLab, RIAA, et al. The band of Conspirators; Imesh, Bearshare, Shareaza, the rights of the true owners of the aforementioned…. The victims of the harmful purpose.

Please sir, explain, how is this a misuse of this word’s definition, in fact this is the proper use.

9/11 foil hattery and other nut job ideals is simply fringe foolery, but do not for one second assume that the attack against legitimate open source projects is in fact NOT a conspiracy.

Conspiracies don’t have the requisite of being unbeknownst as fact. It is not necessary, as is the case with the 9/11 junk , that it be unprovable with all the facts being shrouded in apparent mistruth and subversion.

This is a pretty damn straight forward case of conspiracy, so please. learn before you post.[/quote]

Oops, my answer, post 55, didn’t include a proper reference to your post 53.

Do not change the name of the damn program and do not get a new URL. Stick to common sense and legal standards. If you allow to be bullied around, the bully only gets more confident.

There are of course zombies like yourself, that can live off the rotten remains of the living. However, that’s certainly not a world that I intend to inhabit. I will not go home to wait for it.

I love p2p, but shit, you play the game and sometimes you’re gonna get burned. Do I feel sorry for Shareaza? Not really. They intentionally made a tool used to infringe on copyrights, now their shit got stolen.

Too bad, so sad…[/quote]
Shareaza’s efforts have always been to endorse people to download and upload free material!
There is this add-on for Shareaza (http://tinyurl.com/22dkku) which provides legal information about copyrighted files, for which are plans to integrate more deeply.

Anyway, what do you do on this blog if you dislike copyright infringement, which is seen legal by many people in here.[/quote]

I never said I have anything against copyright infringment. What I am saying is, that file-sharing is a risky business. Hell, even I might get sued for sharing. But I accept that as a risk, and TBH, I wouldn’t bitch about it if I did get caught.

It’s a game we all play. Some of us win, some of us lose. Shareaza lost.[/quote]

Your statement is inherently misleading and incorrect. Facilitation of the means to do file sharing is no more risky than a car manufacturers risk of making a car that someone will use as a getaway vehicle in a robbery, or kill a kid at a bus stop while driving drunk, the resolve relies on the driver not violating the working rules of the road, not the other way around. There is no wrong doing nor dangerous play on behalf of the Shareaza team, the wrong doing and dangerous play (dangerous the freedom no less) is all in the hands of discordia, you shouldn’t feel sympathetic towards Shareaza you should feel anger, rage, and discontent with the legal system being unsupportive of the true owners of the rights to name. Try and better understand the problems before you post and become a helper to the problem at hand.[/quote]

stop kidding yourself. the makers of shareaza, emule etc. and the runners of torrent sites know *exactly* what they are doing, they know they are facilitating copyright theft and they always give the same kind of defence you just have.

let’s put it this way, do you only download legal free material from torrent sites/shareaza? no of course you don’t, none of us do. we’re all pirates, just face it.[/quote]

Get back to work. We have pirates to catch.

> 9/11 foil hattery and other nut job ideals …

as you put it.

I would like to stress that make something taste bad is a successful way to keep somebody from trying it. You know perfectly well how the majority of the public thinks about 9/11. If “The Shareaza Conspiracy In a Nutshell” is served together with a 9/11 _conspiracy theory_ the majority will just ignore it or believe it

> … is simply fringe foolery …

I love p2p, but shit, you play the game and sometimes you’re gonna get burned. Do I feel sorry for Shareaza? Not really. They intentionally made a tool used to infringe on copyrights, now their shit got stolen.

Too bad, so sad…[/quote]
Shareaza’s efforts have always been to endorse people to download and upload free material!
There is this add-on for Shareaza (http://tinyurl.com/22dkku) which provides legal information about copyrighted files, for which are plans to integrate more deeply.

Anyway, what do you do on this blog if you dislike copyright infringement, which is seen legal by many people in here.[/quote]

I never said I have anything against copyright infringment. What I am saying is, that file-sharing is a risky business. Hell, even I might get sued for sharing. But I accept that as a risk, and TBH, I wouldn’t bitch about it if I did get caught.

It’s a game we all play. Some of us win, some of us lose. Shareaza lost.[/quote]

Your statement is inherently misleading and incorrect. Facilitation of the means to do file sharing is no more risky than a car manufacturers risk of making a car that someone will use as a getaway vehicle in a robbery, or kill a kid at a bus stop while driving drunk, the resolve relies on the driver not violating the working rules of the road, not the other way around. There is no wrong doing nor dangerous play on behalf of the Shareaza team, the wrong doing and dangerous play (dangerous the freedom no less) is all in the hands of discordia, you shouldn’t feel sympathetic towards Shareaza you should feel anger, rage, and discontent with the legal system being unsupportive of the true owners of the rights to name. Try and better understand the problems before you post and become a helper to the problem at hand.[/quote]

stop kidding yourself. the makers of shareaza, emule etc. and the runners of torrent sites know *exactly* what they are doing, they know they are facilitating copyright theft and they always give the same kind of defence you just have.

let’s put it this way, do you only download legal free material from torrent sites/shareaza? no of course you don’t, none of us do. we’re all pirates, just face it.

a) Shareaza, like all P2P software, is not automatically an instrument of crime, no more that a gun is. It’s simply the tool. What constitutes a crime is a decision made collectively by a society. File sharing of copyrighted material can be made legal or illegal through legislation. Personally I think the real crime is buying votes of legislators to extend copyright beyond what is necessary to obtain a return on the initial investment. The other crime is to try to create artificial scarcity (e.g., DeBeers diamond cartel) of a practically infinite resource (i.e., digital copies) in order to monetize that resource. Both of these crimes goes against the greater societal good. I’m not saying individual content producers should not be compensated for their work. I am saying that trying to get compensation through the direct sale of digital copies is not sustainable long term without getting the cooperation of the consumer which is getting harder and harder to do. The consumer is only willing to buy something tangible (e.g., a hard copy), something unique (e.g, live performance, autographed/collectible version), or for an easy-to-use distribution service (e.g. Rhapsody, iTunes, Amazon).

b) No code was stolen. Shareaza is GPL’d open source software. By definition, it can’t be stolen. (The software can be forked, and the fork can be in violation of the GPL, but that’s as close to “stealing” as you can get, at which point there is legal recourse to deal with that event.) The software being distributed via the shareaza.com site is a Shareaza-branded iMesh client. It is not Shareaza.

c) The shareaza.com domain was legally but unethically obtained. The previous domain holder, Jim Nilson, was forced to relinquish (sell?) the domain under duress.

d) The current owners of the shareaza.com domain, Discordia, as part of their coup, have now filed for a US trademark. Right now the Shareaza tradmark only has common law status having been in use for 7 years by the creators of Shareaza. There is a good possibility given the poor background checks the USPTO conducts, that the trademark will be awarded to Discordia simply because they obtained the domain. The USPTO may not discover or even recognize that the brand has been used and is still in use by the Shareaza developers.

Now there were many places where this problem could have been prevented, but that’s 20/20 hindsight. Another party, perhaps a developer, could have been given the domain instead of Jon Nilson. Jon Nilson could have surrendered the domain to a developer rather than to Discordia. The developers could have registered for a trademark instead of depending on common law status and the moment when the domain changed hands, they could have sued to have it returned to them.

Now, IANAL but this seems to me a very easy case to win. All that needs to be done is for the Shareaza developers to file an injunction against Discordia’s trademark filing. Have their unregistered trademark legally recognized (easy: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.shareaza.com) or register it themselves. Once they have ownership of the trademark legally recognized, they can then sue to get the domain back thanks to cybersquatting laws.

The problem is not so much whether Shareaza is worth protecting. What’s important is to prevent a precedent to be set. You do not want corporations to be able to usurp brands. Hopefully, the EFF would be willing to take the case.