RIAA Wins Against Morpheus

Filed in archive Companies , Legal , RIAA, IFPI on September 29, 2006

A federal judge ruled against StreamCast, developer of morpheus, in a lawsuit by major recording companies for copyright infringement. The case didn't reach trial, as US District Judge Stephen Wilson granted the entertainment companies' motion for summary judgment.

Ironically StreamCast had originally won on summary judgement two years ago. That case was appealed and heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which created a cause for infringement under a theory of active inducement.

Judge Wilson ruled there was sufficient evidence of massive infringement on StreamCast's network and the company did nothing to prevent it, such as installing a filtering system. The company's argument that it didn't encourage computer users to violate copyright law was rejected. The judge also cited StreamCast CEO Michael Weiss's now famous Napster email - "When Napster pulls the plug on their free service (or if the court orders them to shut down prior to that), we will be able to capture the flood of their 32 million users that will be actively looking for an alternative."