Between 2002 and 2004, KaZaa Media Desktop (just ‘KaZaa’ for friends) became ‘the sensation’ in the world of the Internet, and essential software on many home computers. Its functionality? Exchange files, especially music and video, but everything circulated there. After that brief moment of fame, he was forgotten in favor of other alternatives, and trace of him was lost for many users. But, what happened to KaZaa?
And above all, why are you crying with nostalgia while reading this? Actually, it may be that the past tense is painting your memory of this little program pink. Let’s give the word to the always ironic Uncyclopedia:
“Disguised as a pioneering and efficient online music service, KaZaa spread like wildfire across the Internet, and with comparable destructive effects. The software’s hallmark was the constant barrage of ads.”
But we’ll get to that, let’s go to the background first.
The Napster King is dead, long live the king
1999: at the gates of the third millennium, when households were already beginning to change their 56Ks modems for ISDN and ADSL connections, the first version of Napster was releasedthe beginning of a revolution in the habits of consumption and distribution of music and the beginning of an era of hyperactivity among expert copyright lawyers (which is not over yet).
A hyperactivity that quickly took this pioneering application ahead… while its gap was filled by a whole new generation of file downloaders.
In fact, a few months before Napster bit the dust in front of record companies, it had already come out the first version of what was called to be its great successor: KaZaa (or, to be more precise, KaZaa Media Desktop). Its creators were the Swedish Niklas Zennström and the Danish Janus Friis, whose names may be familiar to you because, a couple of years later, they would launch another even more popular softwarea certain Skype (whose communication protocol was partly based on what was achieved with FastTrack).
But back to KaZaa, Zennström and Friis learned from Napster’s mistakes and they devised ways to make it harder for music industry lawyers to bring them down just as easilyso they created first the P2P Internet protocol on which KaZaa exchanges were based (called FastTrack) and secondly the program that allowed it to be used (KaZaa itself)… and put each technology in the hands of a different company.
SharmanInteractive, the company that owns the software, was headquartered in a tax haven in the Pacific and the servers were located in Denmark. Another tax haven, in this case a small British-owned island, hosted blastoise (operator of FastTrack) and a third company, LEF Interactiveregistered KaZaa.com in Australia.
To further complicate things, Blastoise licensed the use of KaZaa to third parties, such as the owners of the software Morpheus, an alternative that became popular before KaZaa himself (thanks to the fact that it did not artificially limit the download speed)… until a non-payment of license fees caused that, from one day to the next (specifically, on February 26, 2002), Blastoise will disconnect Morpheus from FastTrack without warning.forcing this software to take refuge in the Gnutella network (less objectionable, but also with less content and worse performance).
Of course, none of that prevented copyright infringement lawsuits from falling on them. But unlike what happened with Napster, record labels weren’t the only reason for KaZaa’s downfall.
Why did we use KaZaa? And why do we stop doing it?
our protagonist stood out against contemporary rivals such as eDonkey and Soulseek for its ease of use for the average user. KaZaa’s sequence was simple: open the program > go to the search engine > enter the search term > choose the preferred result and hit ‘download’. no mess
Although the record industry ended launching sabotage campaigns based on filling the network with damaged or incomplete files, seeking user frustration. It ended up being easy to find results… but not that those results ended up being useful.
But, in addition, all the hassles that KaZaa saved us when using it, it made up for by generating them when installing it. And not because the installation was difficult, but because once it began to gain fame, those responsible they had no better idea than to monetize it by filling the spyware and adware installation package which, among many other things, altered the home page and 404 error page of the browser, inserted a ‘tool’ bar (advertising) in it, and captured user browsing data.
This caused a reaction of deep anger in the user community, and they soon came to light. unofficial versions whose main claim was to maintain the functionality of KaZaa by deleting all the attached malware. Although we do not have usage data, what I remember from that time is that KaZaa Lite (the main of these alternatives) ended up being as or more popular than the official client.
The reaction of those responsible for KaZaa was profoundly hypocritical: sued the creators of KaZaa Lite for “infringing its copyright”. You get the irony of it, right? Its creator, of course, responded to him as P2P advocates responded to record companies and film distributors at that time: that its existence not only did it not harm KaZaa, but it increased its market thanks to users who would otherwise have simply abandoned the ‘official option’.
Deceased KaZaa Lite, his place would end up being occupied by Diet KaZaa, KaZaa Lite Tools or K-Lite: all of them required having the original software installed, to avoid incurring the same legal error as KaZaa Lite. But users were starting to get tired of so much change and trouble. KaZaa was no longer an option to search for files ‘no hassle’.
an ignominious death
Finally, the competition of a new and effective P2P software (Ares) and being buried in lawsuits, caused that the owners of KaZaa ended up giving up in 2006 and agreed to pay 79 million euros in compensation and ‘legalize’ his declining business. At the same time, they were also sued by those responsible for Morpheus, resorting to a law designed against mafia tactics, for what happened four years earlier.
Then, the ‘KaZaa’ brand entered the typical cycle of all failed brands, which are successively resold at increasingly lower prices to companies that try to make them profitable, dedicating them to new tasks. Thus, five years later, in 2011, we learned of a mobile app from KaZaa that sought to change P2P for music streaming to compete with a rising star, a certain Spotify. Before that, KaZaa’s own parents, Zennström and Friis, had tried to do the same with Rdio.
Long live the king Spotify. But that is a story for another time.