Slashdot Mirror
RICO Suit Filed Against Skype Founders
Stitch_Surfs writes "Defendant Skype Technologies S A, Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Friis, Kazaa, Bluemoon Ou and a slew of others have been named in a Rico Suit Filed by StreamCast Networks, of Houston, Texas. StreamCast is the company credited with the development of the Peer to Peer Technology called Morpheus. From the little information the courts have released, StreamCast is claiming that the group engaged in corrupt business practices."
Is it possible that SteamCast is a surrogate for a larger organization or consortium?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Exactly right, it was originally intended to recover $$$ salted away in mob compounds on Long Island.
Now they'll use it against kids opening a lemonade stand if they feel like it.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I stopped reading it after the old man died and it turned into a mouthpiece for Steve's celebration of unearned wealth.
If it's been turned around again into a real magazine, that would be wonderful. It would have been a shame to see a great magazine run into the ground by a giant douchebag like Steve Forbes.
To add to this, RICO is designed to go after organizations that have IRS filings, be they corporate or NPO. So the users of Slashdot would not constitute a RICO act, because we are merely a loose affiliation of (possible) confederates. And since Slashdot site owners are pretty much hands-off on any sort of endorsements of activity on the site, they will never be charged with RICO for encouraging piracy or civil disobedience or what have you.
If the PETA officially sanctioned or condoned civil disobedience (or outright wanton criminal activity), they would be charged under the RICO. But the official front of PETA is very much just "don't you feel sorry for the animals?", and rarely extends into the "do something about it" beyond "stop buying the following companies' products." They never suggest that illegal activities which result in increased animal freedom or animal rights are a good thing. They never applaud ALF (officially and publicly), because to do so would constitute a RICO violation.
Whereas Operation Rescue actively promotes civil disobedience and the illegal protests of abortion clinics (and uses funds to do so, in the form of printing literature and maintaining websites), so they are a RICO violator. End of discussion.
Skype would have to do the same thing under an official front. There would have to be evidence that the corporate officers - acting as such (and not as rogue agents) - encouraged some illegal activity and that Skype, directly or indirectly, provided the money to do so through corporate channels, and that this activity directly hurts StreamCast's business ventures.
My guess here is that Skype will be able to demonstate enough plausible deniability to avoid a RICO conviction. With most criminal RICO stuff, the money trails and the linking evidence (phone calls, emails, meetings) are all recorded and filed under valid search warrants, and the cases are usually very clear-cut before they go to trial. With civil RICO, you are essentially accusing first based on gut instinct (and perhaps you "know" that they did it, but you don't know the gory details), and then attempting through legal discovery to prove it. Which, needless to say, is hard to do.