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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.
I mean what the heck you can't sue someone simply for providing software which "might hurt your business". Lets wait for Microsoft to start suing download managers for having the possibility of being used to download Microsoft :P
Loser pays just changes the strategies slightly. They still have the advantage.
Lets say I'm on the right side of the case. Lets further say that I have a 90% chance to win. However, their legal fees total to 1 million dollars. That would bankrupt me. I won't fight the case, because even though the law and probability are on my side, I can't afford to lose that money. My upside is I win $0, my downside is -$1m, my average is -$100K.
Loser pays alone is not enough. You have to cap losses, or you have the situation where a little guy can never afford to pursue justice.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The legal system is a lottery anywhere in the world.
Incidentally, John Walker pretty much foresaw this whole business in his 2003 document the digital imprimatur.
It makes interesting reading to say the least and if his future view of the headwind for 'p2p' is correct this is really only just beginning.
MP3 Search Engine
Spanish RIAA-like associations (SGAE and subsidiaries like Promusicae, etc.), are being investigated right now because of lack of transparency, illegal politic finantiation, blackmail ("chantaje").
The prosecution is nonsense and will result in a null case, but their intention is to stop actions not by legal reason, but by legal intimidation (in Spain there is *fear* about speaking against the SGAE in public media, because of you can be sued easily). Many people do google bombing refering "http://www.sgae.es/?ladrones" as a measure to protest against these "kind and polite organizations", so when you look for "ladrones", they appear in the first place.
The police officer who flipped from the force to Warner has allegedly flopped back and is again in uniform.
Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan on the matter:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsydsvenskan.se%2Fnojen%2Farticle331913.ece&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=sv&tl=en
Don't be crazy anymore!