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Record Labels Sue Spanish P2P Pioneer For $20M
elguillelmo writes "Promusicae, the Spanish record industry association, has sued MP2P Technologies and its founder, P2P pioneer Pablo Soto, for $20 million, citing unfair competition. Soto is behind the recently launched Omemo, an open source social media storage platform that allows users to share files anonymously, and the MP2P protocol, among other developments. Soto announced the organization's intention to defend itself in a statement published on his blog (in Spanish, Google translation)."
TomTheGeek notes related news that Warner Brothers has admitted it employed one of the investigators in the case against the Pirate Bay founders. We discussed initial reports of this controversy last month.
The funny about this is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Community_competition_law
The unfair competition from the Competition Law of the EU only applies to big companies and/or monopolistic companies. MP2P is neither. They don't even play in the market PROMUSICAE does.
In Spain, SGAE, Promusicae and others (spanish RIAAs) are paid a percentage ('canon') of the price of storage devices: CDs, DVDs, printers, hard drives, cameras... in compensation for their hypothetical losses because of P2P. But now they are showing that they also want to adopt the US way to 'defend' their copyrighted media, so we'll end up being f*cked twice. And our ruling party, the PSOE, calls itself leftish. Contradictory, isn't it?
Well, the thing is, in spain is legal download music. We're being extorted with a private tax (the 'canon') for the concept of 'private copy'.
When you buy recordable CDs you pay that 'canon' (which is more expensive than the CD). That way, you are free to have private copies of records.
The record industry associations have tested the legality of download music, and have lost. So they are testing new ways of being an asshole.