StreamCast Up Streaming Creek

A federal judge in California ruled against StreamCast Networks, developer of the Morpheus P2P application, saying that evidence of the company's "objective of promoting infringement is overwhelming."Previous high-profile rulings have been handed down against Grokster and Kazaa, both of which have stopped distributing file-sharing software. Morpheus was the remaining hurdle in the recording industry's legal attack on services that facilitate widespread copyright infringement. Saying the past few years have been "challenging...for the music community," the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said the ruling against StreamCast "means that the rules of the road for online music are better today than they were yesterday." Officials at StreamCast remained defiant, however. A spokesperson for the company said StreamCast "did not encourage users to infringe on copyrighted works" and would continue to distribute the Morpheus software.