The Hijacking Of An Open Source P2P App
from the scammy dept
TorrentFreak has been following the ongoing alleged hijacking of an open source file sharing system called Shareaza. Late in December, somehow a New York-based company (Discordia Ltd.) gained control of the domain name Shareaza.com and put up a new site, though using much of the artwork from the original Shareaza site. Rather than offering up the open source Shareaza software, the new site started offering a subscription service that included adware. To add insult to injury, Discordia has also threatened the real Shareaza developers due to comments in a forum about what to do about the hijackers. The latest news is that Discorida (which TorrentFreak claims has connections to the recording industry) is trying to trademark the Shareaza name, which you would think shouldn't be possible, given that the open source developers were working on the project for a few years before Discordia got access to the domain name. The whole thing sounds like quite a mess in a way that's designed to likely trick users and/or discredit the open source Shareaza project.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: hijacking, open source, shareaza
Companies: discordia, shareaza
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.... Wow...
Well, I predict DOS, Malicious hacking, and all sorts of bad-crap happening to Discordia, followed by bankruptcy. I mean, that's almost inevitable. And no, I'm not threatening them: I don't even know enough to script kitty.
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Re: .... Wow...
Amen bro. I wonder how long they have to live? Even if they don't get hacked down to their neurons, they'll be listed in malware guides everywhere in just days.
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What fool named that company ?
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Why the delay in posting?
Also, the trademark link points to the wrong link it should be http://torrentfreak.com/scammers-move-to-seize-shareaza-trademark-080302/
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What's really stupid ...
Chris.
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There is more
Oh and that talk on the forums was not posted by a developer (at least official developer) and while the effect is akin to something illegal (DDOS) it really isn't.
The suggestion was to make the app "call home" and use the original setting for updates (eg the domain Discordia owns now). In effect it would be a DDOS attack but the funny thing is many programs do this already!
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Re: linuxamp
The conspiracy theorists claim Discordia is a shell company of some anti-piracy group or at least receiving funding and pointers from them. On the other hand maybe they're just trying to cash in on the filesharing networks. But as Shareaza is normally used for music sharing, how would a company registered in the US manage to make money off it and keep off the RIAAs radar at the same time?
Its all a bit fishy.
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F**k it...
It seems to be working for dataportability.org, who just got a c&d from, of all people, Red Hat re: their logo vs. fedora's. It's all quite a mess (the only thing they have in common is the symbol for infinity), but the dataportability group decided it would be more advantageous to turn this into a positive rather than waste resources pissing in the wind.
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Shareaza
http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php?topic=20984.msg102048
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exospection
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