StreamCast sued Skype, Kazaa and others under RICO Act

James Delahunty
29 Mar 2006 5:41

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