Kazaa? Kapow! The bill comes due

Free music doesn't come cheap. Just ask Kazaa.

To be specific, it costs just over $100 million. That's how much Kazaa and its backers will be paying in an out-of-court settlement with the recording industry announced Thursday. Kazaa also plans to reinvent itself as a legitimate source for music on the Web.

Just a few years ago, the file-sharing service was the place to get music downloads at no cost--and a major source of agita for music industry executives. Then along came the lawsuits, to say nothing of a little thing called iTunes, and downloaders--who also had many gripes about Kazaa as a source of spyware--begain to head elsewhere.

Blog community response:

"Hearing about this reminds me of the good 'ol days when Kazaa was the leader in P2P file swapping. All your favourite (and illegal) popular songs from ACDC, Britanny Spears and Def Leopard were just a couple clicks away. Does anyone actually still use Kazaa?"
--Groove Here

"I'm wondering if we're actually gonna see any of these changes anytime soon. iMesh took over a year to roll out their licensed service, meanwhile continuing to let users swap files with the unspoken approval of the entertainment industry. Metamachine is supposedly still working on a transition that started last fall. Will it be business as usual for Kazaa users for ome time to come?"
--P2P Blog

"Now lets see how much they'll pay to all the people whose PCs have been crippled by all the malware kazaa dumps on their computers."
--Slashdot user MECC

"I think this actually opens up new opportunities for folks to get *more* into BitTorrent, more into joining "dark" file-sharing communities, and maybe even more into file-sharing on MySpace, completely subverting the industry. It could be exciting!"
--Ars Technica user Pham