Mobile/PDA About Us Advertise here


		User name	Password

		Not registered yet? Register here. Lost your password? Click here.

Browse by topic

News

StreamCast sued Skype, Kazaa and others under RICO Act

29 March 2006 5:41 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 11 comments

StreamCast Networks, the developer of the Morpheus P2P network, has named Internet VoIP provider giant Skype, Sharman Networks and others in a suit that claims they have broken the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (RICO). Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, creators of Skype and original Kazaa creators have also been named in the suit. Skype is now owned by eBay after the auction site bought the company for $2.6 billion last September.

Here are some comments made by Charles Baker, lead attorney of StreamCast...

"As has been reported, StreamCast Networks, the developer and distributor of Morpheus P2P file search and sharing software, has filed a lawsuit against Skype and the other named defendants alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and other claims. I am unable to expand upon that at this time other than to say that the Complaint speaks for itself. We will not be providing copies of the Complaint to the media. StreamCast looks forward to litigating this lawsuit. I am a partner at Houston based Porter & Hedges, and I am StreamCast's lead counsel on this case and the MGM case. I'm sorry but at this time we have no additional comments."

Violations of the RICO act are normally reserved for criminal organisations and for organised crime, not P2P-based services. One could guess that this action taken by StreamCast is over "events" that took place in 2002 when the Morpheus client was blocked from the FastTrack network, forcing it to be used with the Gnutella network instead. This is believed to have killed Morpheus, which was gaining popularity rapidly while using the FastTrack network.

Hopefully more details will follow shortly so we can fully see StreamCast's complaint.

Sources:
The Register
Slyck

Permalink to this article

Joost named as defendant in StreamCast lawsuit (22 May 2007)

Skype launches Skype Pro in UK (20 February 2007)

Judge throws out StreamCast antitrust claims (24 January 2007)

Kazaa pays 100 million and goes legit (27 July 2006)

Streamcast will take on RIAA and MPAA (15 April 2006)

Morpheus to use Gnutella? (28 February 2002)

Update: Morpheus temporarily closed (26 February 2002)

Morpheus shut down? (26 February 2002)

« Previous news article
Panasonic reaffirms support for Blu-ray format

Next news article »
Torrentspy moves to dismiss MPAA suit

Post your comment

Discuss this article!
BlinkN (Member) 29 March 2006 7:09
Is it me or has their been alot of suing going on lately with companies? [ + quote]
dude845 (Senior Member) 29 March 2006 10:57
Morpheus allways sucked:D [ + quote]
OzMick (Senior Member) 29 March 2006 14:05
Watch out man, you might be their next target with comments like that. :P [ + quote]
necronite (Junior Member) 30 March 2006 9:22
i liked morpheus and thought kazaa sucked. Although I thought they were from the same company because they were nearly identical - fast track software, right? now I know the truth, kazaa ripped off morpheus. although kazaa got to be bad I guess at first it was good and k-lite was a nice mod. [ + quote]
duke8888 (Junior Member) 30 March 2006 10:45
They are being charged with a Federal crime which carrys a 10 year imprisonment in a federal pen, and there is no early outs or parole! [ + quote]
dude845 (Senior Member) 30 March 2006 11:34
Quote: Watch out man, you might be their next target with comments like that. :P lmao then they'll be considered money gready ... lol [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 30 March 2006 11:34
Morpheus never worked right, Kazzaa now dosent work so whats the point of all this? L [ + quote]
anwarsh (Newbie) 30 March 2006 11:35
i have a AVI type movie. please tell me in which player i run this movie. i tried already many player but fail. plz help me or tell me converter that convert it in wmp or others. [ + quote]
Rikoshay (Member) 30 March 2006 12:03
1st of all, that's not even Remotely related to the topic. 2nd, go with Media Player Classic with FFDShow for best results, if that doesn't work, use AVIcodec to find out which format its encoded with :P Never used Kazaa, Morpheus was good for some rare items, K-Lite K++ was a lot better, but barely had users by the time I used it. / - \ From the Brilliant mind of Phantom69: \/ Need help fast? Lookie here (Don't ask for movies!): http://adbuddies.ccsau.com/chat/index.html �Torrent - My client of choice: http://www.utorrent.com/ Guide to good security solutions by rav009: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/292257 Find the tweak you need here: http://www.mdgx.com/ [ + quote]
cdd1234 (Inactive) 2 April 2006 5:17
Or try VideoLAN Player (VLC media player) ... Search on google for it. [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 2 April 2006 17:24
Video Lan palyer is good and will paly nearly anythign even if the codecs are not installed correclty,but I hates it interface I would rather have soemthing more like Media Player Classic interface wise ;_; [ + quote]