Skype racketeering or racketeering Skype?
-
-
eBay may have acquired a retarding bomb. Skype Technologies has been created by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, so was KaZaA. But now, the softphone company is sued, as KaZaA, Zennstrom and Friis, for “racketeer influenced and corrupt organization act” (RICO) violations by another file-sharing software company, StreamCast Networks. The suit was filed in the US District Court in Los Angeles ― thanks to Andy Abramson, who brought out the scoop.
So far, no words have been written on this on the Skype PR blog. No much have been said on the reasons of the trial. But now that Skype is funded by eBay, one possible scenario could be: StreamCast Networks, the company behind the Morpheus file-sharing client, is the last of the Mohicans remaining the US territory. As part of their “shoot’em all”, RIAA lawyers are working to kill its activities, by put it on long and expensive trials and somewhat starving it financially. Some fresh cash would help it maintain its peer-to-peer business. If this is the Streamcast motivation, they won’t much from Skype and others even if they win.
Explained in a Wikipedia article: “Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000 and/or sentenced to 20 years in prison. In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains and interest in any business gained through a pattern of ‘racketeering activity.’” Some details should come out the next days.
Mar 26, 2006 | By Nuno
1 comment
-
-
-
- Stay in sync'
- Full content
- Content tagged VoIP
-
-
-
[…] When StreamCast Networks sued Kazaa/Skype for “racketeer influenced and corrupt organization act”, it was a kind of feud between two spyware-enable P2P file-sharing brothers (StreamCast develops Morpheus, a Kazaa-like platform). When StreamCast extended its list of racketeers to include eBay, that was a kind of bad acquisition case for eBay. […]