The company behind Kazaa, the popular file-sharing service, is waging war on copycat software and has won the help of ISPs to remove sites offering the Kazaa Lite K++ application, a move that will seem hypocritical to Kazaa's music industry opponents.
Kazaa Lite K++ is software that was developed to provide access to the same FastTrack network used by Kazaa Media Desktop, the peer-to-peer program controlled by Sharman Networks.
But unlike the official free version, the Lite version does not require users to install any third-party software or view any banner ads - the main revenue source for Sharman Networks.
According to reports, Sharman Networks contacted the ISPs of all the web sites involved in hosting Kazaa Lite over the weekend. It demanded that the web sites be removed as they infringed on Sharman's copyright.
Many of the sites have now disappeared, and the remainder are expected to vanish soon.
According to Slyck.com, a file sharing news and information site, existing users of Kazaa Lite K++ will find file searches less and less successful, which may surprise those who thought of FastTrack as a pure, decentralised P2P network. The reason for this is that the network is not fully decentralised; instead, it uses what are called 'supernodes'.
Each computer connected to the file-sharing network is called a node. In theory, the network operates with one computer contacting a number of others with a search request. Each of these in turn will interrogate others, until this propagation of the original request returns a result and a connection is made between two computers to download a file.
However, to compensate for the slow processor speed and internet connections of many computers, which could buckle the network speed, the FastTrack network designates as supernodes some computers on the network. This can be done without the owners' knowledge. The supernodes, each enjoying a broadband connection and up-to-date processor, will handle the searches sent by other nodes.
When most users perform searches, they are accessing their nearest supernode, which contains a list of some of the files made available by other network users and where they are located and can forward a search that it cannot fulfil to another supernode.
For those in the music industry trying to shut down the Kazaa network - which the company says is technically impossible to shut down - targeting the supernodes could go a long way to slowing the traffic.
Recent upgrades to Kazaa clients, according to Slyck.com, make them reject shared files from non-official clients such as Kazaa Lite K++.
Slyck.com comments:
"This latest act from Sharman punctuates a long history of hypocrisy that involves the protection of their own intellectual property rights, yet blatantly ignoring the copyrights of others."