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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.
It matters not whether you're in the right or not, but if you get sued it ruins your year.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
The wording of that seems to have nothing to do with the legality of sharing files. Promusicae just don't like competing. At least there's one such organisation that says what it means.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
I assume this is like oh no, it's unfair competition that they're giving away their music for free. Okay time to play judge. Here's what I've got to say: "Sir, this company's product is software, not music. Case dismissed" *bangs gavel*
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
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
What the hell is unfair competition and how can you sue for it?
Seems pretty messed up that you can sue someone for being better than you.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
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.
This particular lawsuit cannot hide behind the evil copyright infringers.
Reaganites in the us (im sure every nation has their version of them in one extreme or another) wail on endlessly about the freeloaders who think they are "entitled" to welfare, while conveniently ignoring the elephant in the room.
Today's corporate controllers feel their companies not only have the right to exist, and therefore receive massive tax-payer bailouts the magnitude of entire state budgets, but think they have the right to profit. This is particularly blatant with the music and film industries world wide, who count a person's refusal to buy as "stealing" and characterize emerging business models as murderous.
oh snap! that home depot across the street just stole the revenue lowes was entitled from everyone who turns left off the exit instead of coming down the oncoming lane from the opposite side of the bridge!
A more convenient location for northbound and westbound travelers is an unfair competitive advantage! where is my anti-trust council!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Now that WE are controlling music distribution, we should give some thought over what exactly we are going to do with the situation.
There appears to be a great struggle going on between the four global music/film corporations and the thousands of technically advanced internet applications programmers over the ability to control (or to be more precise, the ability to remove controls) over the distribution of recordings of music and films.
Incredibly, the internet applications programmers appear to be winning. Otherwise the big four companies wouldn't be going to such extreme legal measures to stop them.
Now would be a good time to ask ourselves whether we really want this. We should consider the long-term ramifications of destroying the music/film distribution industries. Remember that ancient Chinese curse: be careful about what you ask for, since you just might get it.
Basically what the technical elite want is to have free or nearly free access to all the media recorded products currently offered for sale by the big four. The real question here is whether they want this access for themselves only or for everyone. Or whether the technical elite want to be able to control who gets access to free media product and how much free media product the technical elite (those people who write the P2P programs) plan to distribute.
The big four media companies fear that the P2P programmers are going to attempt to make all commercial media product free to everyone, and put them out of business. But this is absurd. Because there are billions of people who depend on the big four for their continued access to new product, and the technical elite (those who write and to a limited extent, control the P2P environment) don't have the interest or the ability to supply all these people with a continuous stream of new media product. They are programmers, not media distribution executives.
If the big four CEOs were smart and seriously wanted to crush the P2P community, they would cut back on product development and releases and blame it on the P2P programmers. Instead they make exciting ads telling people that it is illegal to get free media product by using P2P programs. Which is the same thing as educating people who weren't aware that it was possible to get free music and films by using P2P. Which is really dumb on their part.
Because the big four won't consider cutting back on product release in order to crush the P2P community, then it must be that the revenue streams that they are getting from new product is far, far greater than the revenue that they are losing through the P2P programs enabling of free access to media product. So this anti-P2P vendetta is just a personal thing between the big four executives and the P2P developers; a 'my dick is bigger' contest between these two small groups.
The big four executives and the P2P developers would be wise just to sit down and work out a 'cap and trade' agreement that would give the P2P developers free access to media product in return for the P2P developers agreeing to limit the distribution of this product to only the people whom they consider to be 'cool'. Since this is what is going to happen eventually anyway, they should formalize the situation before someone (someone important) gets hurt by allowing the lawyers to run amok.
How come Slashdaughters don't think like this and talk like this whenever this topic comes up for discussion?
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?
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.
Check it out:
Assuming 1 aXXo movie = 700 MB, the average MP3 = 5 MB, and a $200 hard drive increases in capacity every 1.5 years (not unreasonable), then:
-5 years (2012) - Weâ(TM)ll have 7 Terabyte hard drives costing $200, capable of storing 9,643 Movies or 1.3 Million songs!!
-10 years (2017) - Weâ(TM)ll have 51 Terabyte hard drives costing $200, capable of storing 73,225 movies or 10.3 MILLION songs
-15 years (2022) - Weâ(TM)ll have a 389 Terabyte hard drive costing $200, that can store 556,000 Movies!!! or 77.8 Million songs (Is there even that many songs in the history of the world?!?!?)
-20 years (2027) - Weâ(TM)ll have a 2956 TERABYTE hard drive, costing $200, that can store 4.2 MILLION MOVIES or 590 MILLION MP3s!
==================
GAME *UCKING OVER!
===================
By 2030, we will have every movie and song in the world stored on our freaking wrist watches.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Not just the right to make a profit, but the right to ever-increasing profits. Used to be if a company's profit dropped, there would be soul-searching to see how they could change and adapt their methods and products to better suit the current economic situation, to more accurately meet consumers' needs, or to effectively compete against other companies. That has changed -- now, if the bottom line starts dropping, it's never the company's problem, it's all those outside forces that must be bullied, threatened, lobbied, bribed, or regulated into submission. "We've been doing it this way for X number of years, and we want to make sure that we can still do everything the same way, only keep making more and more money."
It's not just the record and film industries that see the Internet as a threat. Newspapers, magazines and other traditional media are running scared. Governments fear the notion of people actually forming and sharing their own opinions instead of being told what to believe, and corrupt governments and politicians fear their carefully obfuscated dirty laundry being hung out on the Net for all to see. As the Net grew in popularity, the initial corporate attitude was, "aw...how cute." Then it became, "hmmm.....how can we make a profit off this thing?" If they failed to do so, it then became "the Internet is evil and must be killed, or at least molded and shaped to serve OUR needs."
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer