In a strange twist to the now infamous Morpheus hack story, Kazaa BV founder and FastTrack creator Niklas Zennstrom issued a statement saying "MusicCity (also known as StreamCast Networks) has failed to pay any amounts due to Kazaa BV under the parties' license agreement. As a result of MusicCity's breach, Kazaa BV did not provide version 1.5 to MusicCity. Kazaa has also terminated MusicCity's license." What this means is that the failure to connect experienced by Morpheus users, was probably due to Kazaa not supplying the new software to MusicCity. Why would Kazaa deny access to millions of users? Doesn't any filesharing network wholly depend on the number of its users? How much does MusicCity owe Kazaa? and here's another question, if Kazaa get advertising revenue and rent money from Morpheus for the use of the network, why should we feel sorry for them and accept spyware?
Kazaa also admited to Newsbytes that "advertising traffic generated by users of the competing Morpheus software was redirected to its own servers last week." But both these statements from Kazaa do not explain what Morpheus called dual attacks. Kazaa issued yet another statement claiming that We understand from public accounts that (Morpheus) also speaks of an attack in the same timeframe. Sharman Networks did not initiate, or have any connection to this attack As far as the possibility of Kazaa being involved in any modification of a users PC without the users knowledge the statement reads None of this was of our doing.... We have no ability to affect the operations of other licensees.
So in one statement Kazaa deny any involvement to Morpheus' network troubles and in another they claim that they had something to do with it. For the time being then we have to believe the unlikely story that someone attacked the Morpheus web site while almost simultaneously Kazaa were denying Morpheus users access to the FastTrack network and receiving redirected advertisements from Morpheus...
To add insult to injury Kazaa are also offering a little migration application which offers Morpheus users the opportunity to import their settings and partial downloads to Kazaa.
The Numbers As the first news concerning this story broke it became evident that the p2p landscape was up for big changes. The RIAA is bound to pounce on FastTrack suggesting that this fuss proves it is a centralized network and can therefore follow Napster's path into oblivion. Unless, of course, claims that Kazaa acted under RIAA orders when it kicked Morpheus out prove to be true.
Since Morpheus bailed out of FastTrack the new Morpheus Preview Edition has been downloaded 8 million times. In the same time period Kazaa 1.5 has received 4 million downloads, proving that it has enticed some Morpheus users. This user leak from Morpheus to Kazaa is bound to continue as long as the software remains primitive and if the Gnutella network buckles under the immense influx of new users.
In an ironic twist Kazaa now claims to be the no1 FREE p2p application. Morpheus is dead. Long live ex-Morpheus users.
So have you made up your mind yet? For Morpheus preview edition go here and for Kazaa 1.5 go here
