Kazaa To Return As a Legal Subscription Service

suraj.sun sends in this excerpt from CNet: "One of the most recognizable brands in the history of illegal downloading is due to officially resurface, perhaps as early as next week, sources close to the company told CNET News. Only this time the name Kazaa will be part of a legal music service. Altnet and parent company Brilliant Digital Entertainment attached the Kazaa brand to a subscription service that will offer songs and ringtones from all four of the major recording companies. For the past few months, a beta version has been available. The company tried recently to ratchet up expectations with a series of vague, and what some considered misguided, press releases. The site will open with over 1 million tracks." The NYTimes has a related story about how the music industry is trying to convert casual pirates by offering more convenient new services.

Re:Why do they even bother?

[ammorais]

Why do they even bother?

Because they have plenty of money from the work of others to expend.

Re:Why do they even bother?

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Given the choice, yeah sure, I'm definitely going to use a service whose name is synonymous with poor quality, malware ridden files.
It's like resurrecting the name J. T. Ripper & Sons as a personal protection service for lone wimmin.

Re:Subject

[lorenlal]

Well, certainly the ad/spyware that it was a tunnel for sucked. It certainly worked well enough for a lot of sucker^H^H^H^H^H^H noob^H^H^H^H casual users out there well enough that they considered it essential software on campus. In fact, when looking for songs before the RIAA interference tracks, it did deliver on its core function... grabbing the song you want from other people.

Up until Napster, and then Audiogalaxy, and then Kazaa(lite), I had to depend on browsing the various PCs on campus to find songs. It was a pretty darn slow and manual process.

Wait... Prank post! Prank post! I can't believe that anyone would download from someone else directly! [NO CARRIER]

Re:The pay step

[TinBromide]

the zune subscription tied with the zune software is incredibly easy and perfectly legal. $15 bucks a month and you get unlimited access to music that lasts as long as your subscription, you do, however, get to keep 10 songs a month that are included with the cost of the subscription. I use it for my listening needs because i don't need to hoard music forever, being able to play an album for a month or two and then delete it is precisely what I need in a service. Yes its drm, Yes its not my music, but i'm perfectly aware of that and I'm ok with it. I "rent" books from the library and "rent" movies from Netflix, why not music?

P.S. Its amazing how fast it is too, I mean you have microsoft hosting 2 million songs and only 6 people are using it. Songs download LIKE THAT! *snaps fingers*

Imagine how slow bittorrent would be if only 6 people used it...

Legal subscription to what?? SPYWARE??

[Anonymous Coward]

Kazza was the biggest distributor of spyware and malware of its time. It should die a miserable death.

Re:Nostalgia

[Sheen]

Doesnt work, my penis would be huge if that was true.