StreamCast, Music Firms Settle Suit

As they gear up to battle each other before the Supreme Court, the major record labels and file-sharing company StreamCast Networks Inc. have settled a separate copyright infringement lawsuit over a radio service that StreamCast never launched.

The lawsuit accused Woodland Hills-based StreamCast of putting unauthorized copies of thousands of songs on computer servers in 1999 and 2000.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but StreamCast Chief Executive Michael Weiss said his company accepted the labels’ “ridiculously low settlement offer” to end “a nuisance lawsuit.”

Stanley Pierre-Louis, a senior vice president for the Recording Industry Assn. of America, said, “We certainly were satisfied with where we ended up.”

The labels filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Nashville in May 2003, a month after a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that StreamCast and Grokster Ltd. did not violate the labels’ or Hollywood studios’ copyrights. StreamCast’s Morpheus software lets users download songs, movies and other files from one another’s computers.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments next week on the labels and studios’ appeal.