It's been months since a peep has been heard from Mashboxx, the legal file-sharing network that got a slew of press last summer and promised to launch last fall.

Now it appears the long, hard slog of getting the music industry's approval of its legal peer-to-peer system has proven to be longer and harder. In an e-mail sent out to people who signed up to beta-test Mashboxx, the company acknowledged the delay and updated its prospective users on its plans.

"Due to the process of obtaining the proper authorization from the music industry and building a fun and easy-to-use peer-to-peer service, we have been unavoidably delayed in launching our public beta," the note said.

"The good news is that our software is currently in a closed private beta, and we will soon have the music-industry authorization finally solidified so that we can release Mashboxx to the public," the email continued.

Mashboxx has worked closely with Snocap, the company founded by original Napster creator Shawn Fanning, to design a system that tracks copyrighted material and makes sure all rightsholders get paid. Snocap identifies songs by their digital fingerprint and sets up an infrastructure to keep everybody happy--a cash clearinghouse of sorts.

Mashboxx is headed by Chairman Wayne Rosso, the former chief executive of Grokster, which was found liable in a US Supreme Court decision last June that irrevocably altered the P2P landscape. In the wake of the decision, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) quickly sent out cease-and-desist letters to several of the top peer-to-peer services like iMesh, WinMX, eDonkey, and LimeWire.

WinMX and i2Hub have since folded, while eDonkey has vowed to either shut down or come up with a legal alternative to its current service. LimeWire, BearShare, and others also put on notice have yet to make their decisions public.

iMesh, meanwhile, has been the only one to complete the transition from being sued by the recording industry to relaunching as a new service with the music labels' seal of approval. iMesh launched a beta version of its legal alternative last November.

Grokster, one of the two companies sued and defeated by the recording and movie industries last June, hopes to make a legal return as well, with a service called Grokster 3G. The company settled the lawsuit in November by agreeing to shut down its service and go legit.

The Wall Street Journal reported last November that Mashboxx agreed to buy Grokster for $1 plus a small share of future revenue, a move that made sense to many industry insiders, because Rosso founded Grokster and is now chairman at Mashboxx.

Grokster also took an extra enforcement step by warning visitors to its Web site after the settlement that its IP address had been logged, going so far as to display the visitor's IP address on the page.

"Don't think you can't get caught," the site says. "You are not anonymous."

The e-mail Mashboxx sent to prospective beta testers last weekend concluded: "As a user you'll be able to search across the existing peer-to-peer networks and download music safely and securely. No adware. No spyware. No problem."