Is Kazaa Really Centralized?
While many have been following the story about the music police raiding Sharman/Kazaa’s office, one competitor thinks it’s a good thing. Streamline, the makers of the Morpheus file sharing application, has a long history with Kazaa – as they used to license the same technology until they were accused of not paying their bills and were shut off. So, clearly, they are a bit biased against Kazaa, but they’re bringing up a very important point. The whole point of having a truly distributed file sharing network is that it can’t be shut down, even if you shut down the folks who released the software. Yet, Morpheus was shut down two years ago which made many people question how this was possible. Over time, these questions have faded, but the folks behind Morpheus are raising the question again and saying that Kazaa is really centralized – and have been hiding behind their odd corporate structure to hide this fact for the last couple years. That would be quite a revelation, and would seriousl
