Not so Brilliant

Two days ago it was revealed popular P2P file sharing application Kazaa came with what can only be described as a trojan horse. When activated, this trojan program connects your PC to a second P2P network – one owned and controlled by a company

Two days ago it was revealed popular P2P file sharing application Kazaa came with what can only be described as a trojan horse. When activated, this trojan program connects your PC to a second P2P network – one owned and controlled by a company called Brilliant Digital Entertainment (BDE).

Brilliant Digital plans to use the new network to host and distribute content generated by other companies – i.e. advertising, among other things. There is also talk of the network using spare CPU cycles to work on complicated processing problems – at Brilliant Digital's profit, one would assume.

Regardless of the moral and legal ambiguities surrounding the issue, Kazaa users who disagree with the way Brilliant Digital has acted can do something to protect themselves. This story on ZDNet is one of many that give instructions on the removal of BDE's Trojan. Keep in mind that BDE plans to switch on its network sometime in the next few weeks, so if you're planning on ridding yourself of the BDE trojan, you'd best do it soon.