It's plain wrong but that's the way it is in the U.S. and most other parts of the world.

This is not the U.S. legal system works. The RIAA and friends has spent to the tune of $50 million on lawyers on the case, and no single lawyer could handle even a tenth of the effort needed to not loose by default. Streamcast has spent more then $4 million, and the EFF has contributed huge amounts of time as well (contribute to them!).

You mean with just the right amount of money, one could even win the most hopeless cases?

I don't think the judgement will based on the software or protocols per se because that would be completely hopeless. The question is probably whether they encourage or support copyright infringement e.g., directly or indirectly by their advertising. Thus even if the sentence is going to be "guilty" this doesn't mean at all that any other P2P software vendor will be considered guilty too.

No, I mean without enough money, you loose a case no matter what. From what I hear, you loose any case if you don't have roughly $200k. If the other side wants to spend more, you have to probably spend at least %10 of what they are spending to not loose by default. This probably tops out only after you are spending $10 million or so, and then them spending $100 million or more probably won't help them that much.

Thats how much money you need to not loose for some procedural reason, meaning if you don't spend that much, it doesn't even matter what the case is (within reason, of course). Above that, you need to spend more to actually build a case that will be pitted against the other side. If you have enough for procedural stuff, but don't actually spend enough to make an argument, then you'll probably loose.

If Streamcast loses, a legal precedent is set, and the RIAA and friends will probably file cases against every other P2P developer within a few weeks, including individuals that contribute to open source projects.

I am not a lawyer

This would be very interesting. I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah, I agree. Hopefully the RIAA win (although that is very unlikely). Seeing what happens next would totally thrill me out.