Is Kazaa Over?

Failures

from the moving-on dept

As someone who has never used Kazaa, I have no idea how its use has changed over time, but apparently, more and more users are bailing out. They’re fed up with the adware, the lawsuits (which often target Kazaa users) and all the bogus files. Of course, while that might sound like wonderful news for the recording industry, it’s actually much worse. Users aren’t giving up on file sharing, they’re just switching to other offerings that include more useful features and less annoying crap (gee, what a surprise). The article points out that the various lawsuits against Kazaa owner Sharman appear to be taking their toll as the product has been unable to keep up. However, this whole thing points to a much more important fact: users are going to keep migrating to better products that are further underground. Each time the recording industry thinks they’re declaring victory, they’re just making their own job harder — and I don’t just mean the job of tracking down and suing file sharing individuals. They’re making it increasingly difficult to set up a system that actually embraces file sharing, while still giving them the ability to make money. They could still do it, but they’ve given no indication that they intend to go down that path. Instead, they seem to enjoy making things worse for themselves, because that lets them keep complaining.