Urgent Alert - Shareaza.com Now Controlled By Scammers

[GhostShip]

The open src multiple network client Shareaza seems to have suffered the loss of its home page, for reasons so far unknown 

http://torrentfreak.com/shareazacom-hijacked-and-turned-into-a-scam-site-071224/

Shareaza.com, the home of the hugely popular Shareaza multi-network sharing application, has been hijacked by scammers. Unsuspected visitors to the site will be completely unaware that they will be tricked into downloading something that isn’t Shareaza at all, but subscription-based malware infected software instead.

The announcement on the SourceForge page of the Shareaza client was ominous:
“As of December 20th, “Shareaza.com” is mirroring “Shareazaweb.com” - A known scam site. While we are working to resolve the matter, any help to contain this would be appreciated.”

The site looks convincing enough, labelled as it is “The Official Home of Shareaza” with the new operators of the site having seen fit to steal some of the original Shareaza artwork (originally created by ‘RocketX and Kid’) to complete the look.

Anyone wishing to find the real Shareaza client should head over to the project’s SourceForge page.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/shareaza/

Its always a shame to have something like this occur, but whats worse is no one can contact the domain owner to confirm whats happened to the site, all in all a worrying event for p2p users.
This does after all though demonstrate the lengths the scammers will go to hijack users machines with malware or other pay for junk ripping off the good name of an open src project, whats more worrying is the alleged Imesh link, this company is a front for the Cartel, are they behind this hijack ?

Lets hope more information clears up this matter and for now folks do not visit the shareaza dot com site and pass this info about to save others from being scammed.

EDIT: I just noticed the posted link above is near invisible so here it is again http://sourceforge.net/projects/shareaza/

[p2p rules]

Conspiracy Against Shareaza and Open Letter to the Recording Industry

[GhostShip]

Lets hear  some more of this story P2P.

Recently, we reported that the Shareaza.com domain had been ‘hijacked’, in that it is no longer controlled by Mr Nilson but is now in the hands of MusicLab - who just happen to be associates of SPPF. Mr Nilson would neither confirm nor deny that he had sold the domain, but speculation from sources close to the case suggest that he may well have sold the domain to MusicLab - after striking a deal with the prosecutor to drop the case against him.

Speculation maybe, but it can’t be denied that MusicLab like getting control of P2P related domains, with assistance from their friends in the RIAA. Neither can it be denied that they took control of iMesh as part of its settlement with the RIAA and that iMesh is run by Robert Summer, ex-Sony boss and ex-president of the RIAA.

MusicLab also took control of BearShare as part of its settlement with the RIAA and also now hosts those services on their server located at 207.232.22.55. MusicLabs, it seems, is taking each P2P client one by one - and assimilating them into a Borg-like collective.

And now, in 2008, it’s also impossible for MusicLabs to deny that somehow, the Shareaza.com domain name owned by Mr Nilson now points to the very same server detailed above, where they have created a fake Shareaza site, complete with graphics taken from the official site, in order to pass off their software - most likely an iMesh clone - as Shareaza. It’s not, it’s a complete scam designed to ruin the good name of Shareaza, by trading on its success to draw traffic to a counterfeit site.

Also on the same server was shareazaweb.com, another Shareaza scam site but they’ve taken that down now.

Anyone noticing a pattern here ?

Hmm I notice this pattern some time ago, at least we can now be sure who the scamming company is, musiclab hiding under the name Imesh.

It seems folks this company is the main vehicle for the Cartels efforts to assimilate as many p2p networks under their control as possible usually by back door legal threats as seen in this and other cases, these ppl are the lowest of the low in terms of underhand business practices, lets ensure wherever we travel on the net we let others know who and what musiclab are and expose them for firstly stealing the Shareaza name and then trying to pass off their own crappy malware as Shareaza and for their dirty tricks methods to obtain domains they have no right to, these extortionist tricks are the same ones practised by the RIAA, lets shame them with publicity whenever we can.