Morpheus

Cut off its own network overnight, and kept going anyway

Shut down
19902026

Morpheus was the file-sharing client that got locked out of its own network. In February 2002 the owners of FastTrack pushed an update that cut Morpheus off overnight, and StreamCast rebuilt it on Gnutella in days. It survived that, then lost in the Supreme Court alongside Grokster, and finally went bankrupt in 2008.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2001
  2. 2001 Launch
    Morpheus launches

    StreamCast licenses FastTrack and picks up the users Napster is losing.

  3. 2002
  4. 26 February 2002 Incident
    Cut off from FastTrack

    A protocol change locks every Morpheus user out of the network overnight.

  5. 1 March 2002 Version
    Rebuilt on Gnutella

    StreamCast ships a Gnutella version within days, keeping the product alive without its network.

  6. 2005
  7. 27 June 2005 Legal
    The Supreme Court rules against Grokster and StreamCast

    The inducement standard applies to Morpheus by name.

  8. 2008
  9. 22 April 2008 Shutdown announced
    StreamCast files for Chapter 7

    All employees are laid off and the download stops working.

  10. 29 October 2008 Shutdown
    morpheus.com goes dark

    Every StreamCast site is offline.

The site through time

Browse morpheus.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

StreamCast Networks 2001–2008 Founded Formerly MusicCity

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Downloads ▲ 173 million 2008 Reported Reported lifetime downloads of the Morpheus client

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: StreamCast Networks filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on 22 April 2008 after years of litigation. Employees were laid off, downloads stopped, and by 29 October 2008 morpheus.com and every other StreamCast site was offline.

Our analysis: Morpheus was named alongside Grokster in the Supreme Court case and lost the same way. What killed the company was not one ruling but the cost of seven years of defending itself.

History [edit]

Locked out overnight

StreamCast Networks launched Morpheus in 2001, running on FastTrack under licence, and it briefly became the most downloaded application on the internet as Napster refugees looked for somewhere to go. Then, at the end of February 2002, the owners of FastTrack pushed a protocol change and Morpheus users found themselves unable to connect. The client had been cut off from the network it was built on, in a commercial dispute, without notice.

StreamCast rebuilt Morpheus on the open Gnutella network within days and shipped it. Users lost their libraries and most of their peers, and a large share of them never came back, but the application survived an event that would have simply ended most products.

Named in the ruling

Morpheus was a defendant alongside Grokster in MGM Studios v. Grokster. When the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on 27 June 2005 that distributing software with the object of promoting infringement creates liability, StreamCast was covered by exactly the same reasoning, and the case went back down for the studios to prove it.

They did. StreamCast kept litigating and kept losing, and the legal costs did what the injunctions had not.

Chapter 7

On 22 April 2008 StreamCast Networks filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Every employee was laid off and the download at morpheus.com stopped working, though the site itself lingered for months. By 29 October 2008 morpheus.com was gone, along with MusicCity.com and streamcastnetworks.com.

The client outlived the company in the usual way: users kept copies, and a community forum kept the installer available for anyone who still wanted to browse an emptying network.

The domain today

morpheus.com now belongs to Morpheus Ventures, a Los Angeles venture capital firm with no connection to StreamCast or to file sharing. The link in the fact box goes to them, not to anything described here.

Similar projects

Megaupload The file locker the FBI took down 2005–2012 Napster Every song in the world, free, right now 1999–2001 Kazaa The post-Napster free-for-all 2001–2012 LimeWire Half your MP3s, half your malware 2000–2010 Oink's Pink Palace Raided by Interpol, and its founder walked free 2004–2007 BearShare Paid the RIAA $30 million, then became someone else 2000–2006

Sources [edit]

  1. Morpheus loses file-sharing case TV Technology 29 September 2006 [archived]
  2. MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005) U.S. Supreme Court via Justia 27 June 2005 [archived]

Last verified: 13 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).