Instead, the VoIP service from Kazaa is more likely something the telephone and carrier industry will want to emulate with their own P2P-based calling, Yankee Group analyst Boyd Peterson told TechNewsWorld. “Despite narrow-minded attempts by others to stymie P2P technology through litigation, boycotts and legislation, Sharman Networks remains committed to delivering on the promise of peer-to-peer,” Hemming said.Īlthough it has faced legal resistance to its music and movie downloads, Kazaa is less likely to come under fire for its Internet telephony, which does not involve copyrighted material. “The inclusion of Skype is a natural extension of the Kazaa product and of peer-to-peer,” Hemming said in a statement.Ĭlaiming more than 300 million downloads of its software, Kazaa also said that the VoIP service demonstrated the potential for legitimate communications over P2P. Sharman Networks CEO Nikki Hemming said the P2P-based voice service represented a “new frontier” in P2P communication. There is also synergy among the two companies, as both Kazaa and Skype were founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. The two technologies complement each other, analysts said, because VoIP is basically a form of P2P. The telephony will be limited to computer-to-computer calls using the Kazaa P2P application, Skype and the Internet, Sharman spokesperson Richard Chernela told TechNewsWorld. Perhaps the highest-profile P2P purveyor and a favorite target of intellectual property owners such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Kazaa parent company Sharman Networks announced the new telephony service with its Kazaa version 3.0 this week.Ĭalling it “a future vision of P2P,” Sharman said Kazaa version 3.0 also features advanced search capabilities and a free Web log trial, but the biggest new offering was the free telephone service, which Kazaa claims will allow Internet calls around the globe. Moving beyond media downloads, leading peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing company Kazaa, is now offering free, Internet-based telephone service via the Skype voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) application.

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