AfterDawn: News

StreamCast sued Skype, Kazaa and others under RICO Act

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

Written by: James Delahunty @ 29 Mar 2006 5:41

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• 11 comments

• BlinkN

  Is it me or has their been alot of suing going on lately with companies?

  29.3.2006 07:09 #1

• dude845

  Morpheus allways sucked:D

  29.3.2006 10:57 #2

• OzMick

  Watch out man, you might be their next target with comments like that. :P

  29.3.2006 14:05 #3

• necronite

  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.

  30.3.2006 09:22 #4

• duke8888

  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!

  30.3.2006 10:45 #5

• dude845

  Quote:Watch out man, you might be their next target with comments like that. :Plmao then they'll be considered money gready ... lol

  30.3.2006 11:34 #6

• ZippyDSM

  Morpheus never worked right, Kazzaa now dosent work so whats the point of all this? *L*

  30.3.2006 11:34 #7

• anwarsh

  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.

  30.3.2006 11:35 #8

• Rikoshay

  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:
  
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  Need help fast? Lookie here (Don't ask for movies!):
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  µTorrent - My client of choice:
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  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/

  30.3.2006 12:03 #9

• cdd1234

  Or try VideoLAN Player (VLC media player) ... Search on google for it.

  2.4.2006 05:17 #10

• ZippyDSM

  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 ;_;

  2.4.2006 17:24 #11