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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
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!!
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?
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!
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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