Escalating concerns mobilize community of 300,000

The community of the heavily trafficked and highly popular Jimworld.com network of sites, including the well liked "Gazette" have responded to mounting concerns over the unethical practices of a popular software program known as KaZaa Media Desktop installed with the Top Text plug-in to educate and protect the internet community

Toronto, ON. (PRWEB) August 22, 2001 -- The community of Jimworld.com a highly popular web site has united together to combat the spread of a highly undesirable software program known as KaZaa Media Desktop (with Top Text plug-in) to address ever-increasing concerns over unethical advertising, copyright infringement and tracking policies.

KaZaa Media Desktop, is a free software program that can be easily downloaded and installed on your home PC. KaZaa Media Desktop has been downloaded over 6.5 million times from the C/Net website alone and many more times from countless other websites.

However, unbeknownst to the user the KaZaa Media Desktop installed with the Top Text plug-in uses highly unethical practices for advertising and tracking the surfing habits of their patrons (sometimes known as spyware). As an example, KaZaa with the Top Text plug-in, has been found to alter copyrighted site design with links to paying advertisers created by yellow highlighting and underlines which may not be appropriate for the intended audience - without owner authorization thereby infringing upon international copyright laws. Not only does this deprive the site owner of advertising revenues and potential sales, it has also been documented that some of these alterations may result in links to adult sites not suitable for young children who may be using a computer with the program installed. Small websites arent alone in this matter, even highly popular sites such as MSN.com, CNN.com and amazon.com have been subjected to unauthorized advertising and traffic hijacking on their sites with yellow links and any site is a target. It is foreseeable that the end result of widespread use of Top Text and similar applications will be a mass movement from free content to paid content by website owners, since they will be deprived of advertising revenue and site sales.

Even worse, KaZaa Media Desktop provides vague opt-out language within the installation dialog and an inaccurate Top Text application description, causing average users to believe that Top Text is necessary for KaZaa to function. The program is also exceedingly difficult to remove and leaves Trojan-like components and files behind after an uninstall which would allow the Top Text parent company Ezula, Inc. to reinstall the program remotely without the users authority.

Amid growing awareness stimulated by the Jimworld community, many advertisers have ceased to continue affiliation with the "Top Text" program. Most recently the well-known Truste.com company has requested that the company cease use of the Truste logo on their software.

In addition, several sites have been launched responding to these concerns including scumware.com from the Jimworld.com network of sites to provide information and services to web surfers, website owners and advertisers about the potential problems associated with these programs.

To learn more about the issue:

Part 1: http://gethighforums.com/Forum10/HTML/001386.html
Part 2: http://gethighforums.com/Forum10/HTML/001409.html