Version 4 of peer-to-peer network software Morpheus was released Feb. 3 by StreamCast Networks. The big catch: it now lets P2Pers connect even if they're not on the Morpheus network.
That means Morpheus users can hook up with users of KaZaA, iMESH, eDonkey, Overnet, Grokster, Gnutella, LimeWire, G2, and other peer-to-peer networks. Morpheus also has other new features, like free VoIP voice chat letting users talk to others around the world for free.
StreamCast chief executive officer Michael Weiss is hugely proud of the new version. "Morpheus 4 is the best file-sharing program on the planet," he said emphatically, announcing the new release.
"Before now, file-sharing software only allowed the users of a particular peer-to-peer network to connect together," he continued in his announcement. "Now, Morpheus allows users to connect the networks together.
"We expect to see huge demand," Weiss went on, "as the creation of Morpheus 4 represents a new frontier for peer-to-peer technologies and brings us one step closer to providing users with the means for them to create and search a unified global exchange network for sharing everything from the user's own music, movies and software, to their other personal media such as cell phones pictures and amateur videos, all without the need for Web publishing and other intermediaries. And, of course, all to the extent that the user has the consent of the copyright holders to share files that the users has not authored or created."
The new Morpheus, StreamCast said, cans the spyware and conceals user Internet protocol addresses within Morpheus, as well as offering other privacy options to keep one user from snooping on another, and integrated antivirus protection with the user's own antivirus programs.
Morpheus won a big legal victory last year, when an appeals court held that Morpheus itself wasn't liable for copyright piracy just because its users used the program to swap copyrighted files. Calling itself "a legally sanctioned peer-to-peer file sharing application," Morpheus touts version 4 as a "logical... next step in expanding the application's reach to millions of users," as Weiss put it.
"By maintaining the features that have made Morpheus a P2P powerhouse... Morpheus is now truly The One among P2P software," he said. "Morpheus 4 is ideal for content providers who want to efficiently distribute their digital media to an online audience of millions."
CNET has estimated that there have been 119 million downloads of Morpheus since the program was first introduced.
