Petteri Pyyny
5 Mar 2002 4:41
Yesterday we heard first arguments in a case that will most likely take forever, when U.S. federal judge decided that software vendors offering FastTrack-powered P2P clients will face a trial and denied companies' request for summary judgment.
StreamCast Networks, which operates Morpheus P2P client, argued that its software can be used for various other tasks other than distributing illegal copies of movies, music and software and asked judge to dismiss the case. Judge didn't agree.
Other plaintiffs in the case are Grokster and KaZaA who both operate similiar P2P client as StreamCast does -- even that now StreamCast's client is based on Gnutella, but the suit filed by American movie industry (MPAA & co.) was filed before last week's changes to the service.
All three companies have claimed that they don't have power over their networks because they don't run centralized indexing services like Napster did and therefor they don't know what their users use their P2P clients for.
Judge set the trial to begin at 30th September, 2002.