Petteri Pyyny
28 Feb 2002 1:14
In yet another update for Morpheus, an extremely popular P2P client software, News.com has an article where StreamCast Networks (company who owns Morpheus and MusicCity.com) explains the reasons for their downtime.
It seems that FastTrack, who has created the P2P network where Morpheus, Grokster and KaZaa operate, updated their network protocol and didn't inform it to StreamCast Networks at all. So, in Tuesday, Morpheus users saw an error message that asked users to upgrade their software even that there wasn't a new version of Morpheus available.
Now StreamCast is obviously slightly angry and is considering to drop the FastTrack technology altogether and start using Gnutella P2P network instead. This would definately cause huge waves in P2P world where Gnutella, despite its huge promises, has failed to show significant numbers of users connected to its network.
As a software licensee, StreamCast has never seen the source code of the FastTrack technology and StreamCast says that they don't even know if the Sharman Networks (company who bought KaZaa earlier this year) or the original Dutch company owns the FastTrack technology.
Copyright owners, like RIAA and MPAA, might also get a powerful weapon from this issue to their fight against FastTrack and FastTrack-based P2P clients. FastTrack and others has claimed so far that they can't control their network at all and therefor can't filter out illegal music, videos, etc. But the fact that by upgrading the software without letting StreamCast to know about it they could block an entire service out of the network says the opposite.
StreamCast Networks says that they will have a working client, whether its based on FastTrack or not, ready within few days.