Lawyers for the music and movie industries have gathered ahead of a hearing today in a copyright infringement case against popular file-sharing services Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus MusicCity, now named Streamcast.
US District Court Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles will hear arguments in the case brought by the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Music Publishers' Association against the music services. The legal action was first filed in October 2001.
The hearing comes about a week after another proceeding was called to determine whether foreign-based Sharman Networks, the parent company of Kazaa, should also be named in the suit. The judge has yet to decide on that matter.
In court documents, the film and music groups have argued that the defendants' conduct is no different than Napster, the granddaddy of file-sharing services, except they have made more money.
Lawyers for Kazaa and Morpheus have maintained that they are different from Napster namely because of their inability to monitor user activity.
On Friday, a bankruptcy court approved the sale of the assets of Napster to CD-burning software maker Roxio. Napster was shut down in July 2001 as a result of a similar lawsuit.