Kazaa slows down PCs

That's the message in an internal document written by the chief technology officer of Sharman Networks, makers of Kazaa file-sharing software. Sharman "employees ... 'hate' installing the ... software because it has ill effects on their computers," CNET cites the document as saying. That's good for young file-sharers and their parents to know too, besides the other questionable, in some cases illegal, results of installing peer-to-peer (P2P) software. The adware and spyware that gets inadvertently downloaded along with the tunes file-sharers are looking for on the P2P networks, in the process of file-sharing, "slow down users' machines" and Web browsing, Sharman itself confirms. Then there's the pornography and viruses that, reportedly, are ubiquitous on the networks. And all of that is in addition to the thousands of lawsuits that media companies have filed against the big-time file-sharers (especially university students). [For details, see "File-sharing realities for families", and to find out what software's installed on your family PC, see last week's "Anti-P2P tool for parents").] If you have digital music fans at your house, at the very least a family discussion about file-sharing would be good to have - or maybe a session in which the kid educates the parent about how it works and how it affects both the PC and "our family's values." If you have digital music fans at your house, at the very least a family discussion about file-sharing would be good to have - or maybe a session in which the kid educates the parent about how it works and how it affects both the PC and "our family's values" (there's fuel for discussion in "A tech-literate dad on file-sharing").

At the macro level, we're arriving at a showdown, the New York Times reports, as a milestone decision by the US Supreme Court nears. Next month the Court is to hear arguments in a case that pits the US's film industry against two file-sharing networks, Grokster and Streamcast Networks. The Times does a good job of showing how muddy the debate is, that it's about restricting innovation and what people can do with technology as well as copyright theft. Here's good background to the case written for the layman at ZDNET (with a consumer-rights angle).