by George Ziemann

It's the old propaganda end-around. "You're all thieves!" didn't work. Neither did "We'll sue everyone."

Now it's "You get what you pay for."

From the New York Times" (I'd recommend reading the entire article, just for laughs) --

"You often get what you pay for," said Mitch Bainwol. "In the case of what is so-called free, it comes along with challenges."

Hey, that's pretty strong language, Mitch.

Yes, the RIAA Spin Machine seems to have thrown a cog or slipped a gear or something like that. What follows is a three-page story trying to worry everyone into thinking that spyware and advertising are the bane of P2P and that severe urgent threat is going to move everyone away from P2P to "legitimate" music sites.

Yeah. Right.

At this point we're supposed to have forgotten that, at the very least, the RIAA was the one who began flooding the P2Ps with "spoof" files. Reports at the beginning of 2003 indicated the organization was working on viruses and trojan horses. Whether they were ever deployed or not is anyone's guess.

"People who turn to free services for songs, movies or software may get something else they haven't bargained for: viruses. Bruce Hughes, the director of malicious-code research at TruSecure, a computer security company, says that as much as 45 percent of the free software available on Kazaa may be infected with computer viruses. A Sharman spokesman said the company provides virus protection for downloads."

Isn't that a twisted paragraph? The free software on Kazaa is known to have viruses, so you might get one if you listen to the music.

Why?

"You're paying with your privacy. You're paying with your productivity loss. You're paying with your computer speed."

Seems to me the greatest threats to our privacy are the DMCA and the Patriot Act. As long as we're connected to the Internet, we can all expect that someone may be watching what we do. I don't think that's paranoid, just realistic in this day and time.

Productivity loss... You can always quit your file sharing program if it's bogging you down from doing other things. Or use a throw-away computer as your file-sharing node.

You wanna talk productivity loss? One word - Quake.

And "paying with computer speed"...

Somewhere between that 8 MHz Mac Plus I bought in 1986 and the outdated 366 MHz model I'm using today, I lost the ability to type faster than my computer could process it.

If I'm doing anything really RAM or CPU intensive (like ProTools), everything else gets shut down anyway.

So all of these "threats" seem pretty lame and ineffectual to me. Mostly because I have a Mac. I'm not saying this to start a Mac/Windows war, but I've watched a friend use Kazaa on a Windows machine.

Pop-ups every second or two; odd things going on, real system damage. Hundreds of files that were injected from afar.

I don't think the security risk is inherently P2P -- it's the flawed Windows OS that the majority of the population uses.

That's what P2P users should really be worried about.

If they did write virus's to distribute on Kazaa and Grokster and were caught, wouldn't they be in trouble with the law?? If so that's an area they better be careful about because I know there's hundreds and maybe thousands of computer geeks out there monitoring and tracking the industry just to catch them is such an act

kazaa lite

lmao!!!!

I'm sorry "Mitch", but I worry that perhaps the RIAA hasn't been investigated enough, and neither have you and your personal affairs.

Audit their computers Miscro$oft.
Audit their tax returns IRS...

3words for windows users...

Kazaa + +

actually (sorry) 4 words...

Kazaa Lite + +

Q.E.D.

Oh crap! My family's been using Kazaa ++! What should I do?

kazaa lite and ares, no pop ups, and have yet to encounter an effective file, I virus scan all just to make sure.

Funny that most Pop Ups and spyware come from the major companies and not p2p. But if we want to talk real security risks, let's talk about Paladium. Maybe the next RIAA tactic to help steer people from p2p will be something like "we really care!"

Since Macrosloth is offering rewards for turning people who create viruses I want to turn in the riaa. where can I pick up my check?

maybe that should have read " turning in people..." damn fat fingers

you know, this is really close to being a smart move. only needs a small adjustment:

"you get what you pay for: copies of the audio that are drastically poorer in quality, frequently full of skips and glitches, and without the album art."

if the labels started reminding people that CDs just sound better... they may be on to something.

Captdunsel what was that for? No need to insult people here.

Crap Nevermind, im an ediot LOL

Claims of deadly viruses, vampire software stealing resources and millions of pedophiles waiting to pounce are very old techniques from the RIAA. They still arn't very good at it. There are no media-file carried viruses, through one would be possible in theory with the WMA format. Software carries viruses, yes. Ive had many of those (includeing one in an antivirus program!).

There are always a few people who will fall for it through.

this doesn't make sense. first Hilary Rosen says years ago that MP3's are not close to the high quality of CD's. then Carey Sue says they are almost exact copies and sue everyone, now Mitch Bainwol says they are drasticlly poor in quality. what gives?

If you stick to MP3's you can't get a virus because they are not programs... Someone correct me if i'm wrong.. but yeah, watch out for the free programs because i noticed about 25 percent contain a virus.. I use mcaffee virus scan, problem solved.. now please feed me some more bullshit mitch, i'm hungry..

PS, and if you're concerned about spyware you can get free spyware and adware removal tools on www.download.com ... Problems solved..

? This crap has been going on since BBS days. "so and so has a virus on his warez" "OMG... what can we do?"... "He's being watched by the super secret ops for his warez" "OMG... what can we do?"

Same crap tactics... different day.

yeah, you cant hide a virus in an mp3, .wav or so. Stick to music you are fine.

get a good anti virus for virus scanning, I like Norton 2003, use SPYBOT SEEK AND DESTROY to get rid of all the ad ware and stuff, and before going online, remember to turn on ZONE ALARM, and PEER GUARDIAN.

oh yeah, remember to scan ALL downloaded programs for a virus, BEFORE you open it!

Let them burn themselves out a bit. We are watching, waiting for the right moment.....

Let them burn themselves out a bit. We are watching, waiting for the right moment.....

You don't need p2p to get viruses or spyware or pop ups. That's stupid.

I thought viruses and spying are illegal oh yeah that's right only if you are using them against the government or using it from the government or own a big corporation!

Hmm... well a while back (maybe a month or more), I got a call from my ISP's security. Apparently someone had been using our internet connection to send Porn Spam everywhere, which of course is against our TOS. The woman told us to delete Kazaa and all our [two thousand] songs. Well that didn't work, because the spam continued streaming forth from our connection, so they killed our internet and it took alot of explaining and a firewall to fix it all (apparently a trojan or proxy had been planted on our computer). But I probably still have ALOT of viruses on my computer, as it's often slow or does weird things, like resizing the desktop by itself.

So, if they didn't come from files I got off Kazaa, where did the viruses come from, and where can I get a free virus scanner?

hobbestgr sounds like your ISP doesn't know anything. blaming you for porn spam when they should know full well that porn companies do it all the time through other accounts. also to tell you to remove Kazaa and all of your music shows their ignorance. If I were you I'd look for another ISP. go to

housecall.trendmicro.com

they will do a free virus scan and fix or delete any files infected. Also download spybot. it's a free softwhere that removes all the unwanted spyware on your computer. good luck

lmao yes, you may infact be giving up your privavcy. Rememeber the riaa counts on spyware and invasion of privavcy to be able to sue ppl.

songfiles you download from p2p may or may not be of acceptable quality... but so what... it's free. If you want some sort of "standard of quality" assurance with a download, just go pay for it from a source you can trust. Unfortunately, with DRM, there is no trust, thus few places to get "quality assured" downloads that are not corrupted by DRM. Thus, I would avoid napster, i-tunes, etc. and opt for sites like D-music, iuma.com, garageband, etc.

Suck on that Mitch Bainwol.

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy
Support Local and Independent Music!

Hobbes- get SPYBOT SEARCH AND DESTROY
it will find that program, and any others and let you delete what you want to, always check the list carefully before you delete stuff though, so you don't get rid of something you want to keep, but if you do, it has a feature to let you undo your deleting and start over.

Oh yeah, SPYBOT is FREE too!

Thanks everyone, I'm glad I finally registered an account here.

Oh, and does Spoybot get rid of viruses as well?

hobbesTgr no it doesn't. but the link I provided above does

get norton antivirus , get blanket protection from virus and dont have to worry about a thing

Go to www.grisoft.com for the free version of AVG AntiVirus 6. I've been using it for months and just recently got it running on my brother's machine.

KaZaA, ha, KaZaA Lite (getting better but FastTrack sucks), Overnet (Good), Emule (Good), Gnucleus (Good), Shareaza (really good), BitTorrent (The best file transferring app ever, and best of all no viruses)

Argh, that "HouseCall" scan found 23 viruses, but when I attempted to delte themit said the files may be in use and so they cannot be deleted. Anyone have any idea what to do?

when i get stubborn files i use nero to delete them works most of the time

23 viruses? then you ought to revise the way you use that computer and the software on it - i've been running p2p for 6 years and every virus i've picked up through it has been knocked on the head... apart from one and that lay dormant until i routine update and sweep picked it up - and it was in a linux file too

how many viruses have i had? a handful, tops.