Kazaa introduced a new version of its file sharing software today. It should be available at download.com. I don’t have any information yet about any spyware included in this version – Kazaa was packing spy programs in pretty seriously for a while.
There are some new ways for the Kazaa software to display paid advertising when you search, but the new version also has some nice enhancements that are going to enrage the recording industry. You can search by “playlist,” and download a group of songs as a single item. Users can create interesting, diverse playlists – but most of us will use it as a simple way to download albums all at once instead of song by song.
The recording industry has funded a bunch of companies that are saturating Kazaa and the other file-swapping networks with bogus versions of songs and videos. The new Kazaa software allows people to rate files so that corrupt or false files will quickly collect ratings poor enough to warn people away from downloading them. It also comes with a setting called “filter bogus music and video files” that is set by default as active.
