Skype is The Mob? (and vexed hex code)

Welcome to today's IT Blogwatch, in which Skype is accused of racketeering but eBay doesn't look bovvered. Not to mention the most convoluted hexadecimal conversion code ever ...

RICO: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act -- can it be true that Skype stands accused of being The Mob? Here's the scoop in two posts from Andy Abramson: "StreamCast Networks, best known for their Peer to Peer technology, called Morpheus, filed a RICO suit against Skype Technologies SA, Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Friis, BlueMoon OU (the company that reportedly did a lot of the development work on Skype) alleging RICO violations ... the plaintiffs appear to be charging the defendants with 11 causes of action and have asked for both a TRO (temporary restraining order) and relief by the courts largely surrounding who should own the FastTrack P2P technology and how allegedly it got to who ended up with it and other requests for relief ... Remember, in the USA the defendents are innocent until proven guilty and anyone can sue anyone over anything. But proving this case will be what matters, not the charges. This whole thing may also get settled out of court, which is what I suspect will happen and then no one in the outside world ever know the outcome, which may be why eBay, as a public entity was not named in suit as it provides the manuevering room to likely do just that."

» Eric Bangeman explains: "Let's set the way-back machine to early 2002. The original Napster had been dead for a couple years and arising to fill the P2P void were a pair of applications: Morpheus and Kazaa. Both of them were built on the same FastTrack technology. FastTrack was the brainchild of Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and a handful of others. Morpheus and Kazaa had coexisted peacefully in the P2P world until February 2002, when Morpheus users were suddenly barred from the FastTrack file-sharing network, reportedly due to its not paying licensing fees ... So what does all of this have to do with Skype? After washing their hands of Kazaa and starting Altnet, a 'legitimate' P2P business, Zennström and Friis started Skype ... Streamcast says that the technology used in Skype is the same FastTrack technology that was used in Morpheus and Kazaa. More importantly, the company claims that it had the right of first refusal to purchase the technology ... the case makes me wonder if [eBay] wishes it had done a little more thorough job with due-diligence before consumating the transaction."

» Techdirt fills in the blanks: "It's fairly well known that Skype's founders won't come to the US for fear of lawsuits arising out of their part in building Kazaa ... Zennstrom and his team sold the basic technology, creating quite the mess -- where no one quite knew who owned what or who owned what. This "mess" is part of what Streamcast is focusing on, saying that it was all an elaborate shell game, used for fraud."

» To which Moe comments: "Am I the only one that sees the contradiction in their lawsuit? They are suing Zennstrom & Friis for selling FastTrack to Sharman without giving Morpheus right of first refusal. But, as part of their case they are claiming control of FastTrack was never actually sold and still resides with Zennstrom & Friis."

» Om Malik adds, "Earlier today, when I asked a smart attorney about the Skype-Streamcast fracas, aka the RICO suit, he said that most civil (RICO) suits are about three things - money, money, and money ... It is too complicated to explain, so why not just read the entire complaint for yourself. ... The quality is mediocre at its best, but you can still read it. We will wait for the final word, after the discovery process. It sure be nice to hear what folks from eBay/Skype have to say about all this."

» Cynthia Brumfield: "Will this development knock eBay back on its heels? Probably not. For one thing, it isn’t clear that the technology in question is actually used in Skype's VoIP service, although several reports suggest that it is. For another, from the sounds of its, Streamcast may be just looking for a way to make a buck from the new, well-heeled owner of Skype — the company has previously and unsuccessfully pressed claims against Skype. Finally, the market doesn't seem to care much about the long-term prospects of this litigation, and investors are typically overly sensitive about this kind of legal threat."

» Dear reader, as you can probably tell, there's little additional detail to be had, so the blogosphere is mostly just feeding on its own young as per usual. However, GMSV can always be relied on for a good headline: "Niklas and Janus? Whatever happened to the good old racketeering names like Jimmy The Fish?"

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And finally... How not to convert a value to hexadecimal

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.