StreamCast Networks, Inc., makers of the Morpheus peer-to-peer search and sharing software, and Grokster, Inc., makers of the Grokster file-sharing software, today filed briefs in the closely watched U.S. Supreme Court case that's expected to decide the future of peer-to-peer file sharing.

This battle between the content industry and the technology industry will determine whether companies can continue to offer tools that displease copyright holders.

"For the past century, copyright litigation in this country has been an endlessly repeating cycle. Time and again, the corporations that control both artistic content and the current method of distributing that content ask the courts to protect them against new and better technologies, by banning those technologies," Michael Page, of Keker & Van Nest, counsel for Grokster, Inc. said in a statement. "Time and again, the courts have refused to extend the copyright monopoly, and have allowed new technologies to develop and mature, to the benefit of artists, the public and the very corporations that sought to ban them. That basic principle--that copyrights, no matter how numerous, do not give the holders a veto over technological progress­is at the heart of the Supreme Court's 1984 Sony opinion. The Grokster/StreamCast case is just the latest assault on this principle, and we are asking that the Court reject that assault and reaffirm Sony."

The case will be argued before the court on March 29.