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Spanish Court Rules In Favor of P2P Engineer
Sir Mal Fet writes "In line with previous rulings discussed here, a judge in Spain has ruled that P2P technologies are 'completely neutral' (original in Spanish ; Google translation ), thus dismissing a lawsuit originated in 2008 from the Spanish Association of Musical Producers (Promusicae), Warner, EMI, and Sony suing Pablo Soto, a Spanish man who created the Blubster, MP2P y Piolet programs to share files. The labels demanded 13 million euros in damages arguing that the mere existence and distribution of P2P technologies violated copyright, but the ruling stated the technology itself was neutral, so the creator could not be held responsible for how the software was used, and demanded that they pay for legal expenses. Promusicae said it was going to appeal the ruling."
because a deranged criminal killed a pedestrian with a stolen car. Wow the judge did his job no story here. Unless the story is about judges doing their jobs, in which case we have a winner.
Well, there's a thought! You mean it has the same neutrality as a car, a knife, a gun? Sorry, where have I been all this time - I've been lead to believe that technology is somehow evil because it "may" be used for illegal activities.
Spanish Court Judge In Favor of P2P Engineer
There, fixed
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
The Spanish press ( http://www.elpais.com/articulo/tecnologia/Pablo/Soto/industria/discografica/siempre/va/paso/detras/elpeputec/20111221elpeputec_3/Tes )also says this guy might be suing them back, because in the course of the lawsuit against him, these cartels applied some really dirty tactics against him (like hiring goons to follow him every day, etc.)
From TFA:
TRICIA FERNÁNDEZ DE LIS Madrid 19/12/2011 18:12 Actualizado: 20/12/2011
Why the delay? It's been all over the world twice over.
This is rare good news! Just like guns in these Unites States. You see, guns were created for the sole purpose of inflicting harm and to some extent, kill (take lives), which is illegal.
So if some thug did precisely that, we cannot ban the possession of guns, can we?
Back to /prog/ with you!
All music/movie execs need to be shot.
What files, exactly? Seriously..
I mean, what sort of files did he actually *intend* for people to share with it when he wrote the software? In particular, what files did he think people might legally share with the software that couldn't have been obtained elsewhere? I'm betting that he knew full well what his software was going to be used for, and those that would use it that way were even his target audience.
But I mean, seriously... how much of a difference is there between deliberately conspiring to help somebody else break the law and then actually directly helping them?
I only ever use P2P to download FOSS and, windows fixes. There are plenty of music streams if I want to listen to something. I suspect that Comcast is stepping on the streams though at the behest of XXAA or some other equally praiseworthy organization. These guys rip off artists and slander titles out of principle. So I hope someone is sticking it to them for a change.
"Technology", in the sense of basic principles, is certainly neutral. However, specific assemblages of technology - from a car, to a gun, to a spoon, or a computer program, certainly aren't neutral. they have good points and bad points, which are determined by their intended or designed use, their practical or common use, and their potential or possible use. How we allow for the use of given assemblies of technologies depends entirely on how we view the social cost-benefit equation of the assembled tool.
Many people want to ban certain tools based on their potential usage, which is either irrational or irresponsible (or displays a hidden agenda unrelated to the merits of the tool).
However, it is equally dishonest to judge a tool merely on its proclaimed intended usage.
As a society, we must look at the whole picture, and hopefully, error on the side of permissiveness. That does not mean that we should be shy about outlawing things whose negative potential and common usage significantly outweigh any benefit that is intended or common usage provides. Like everything else, it's a balancing act.
In this case, the judge did just that, much to the *IAA (or Spanish equivalent's) disappointment.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I am shocked, absolutely shocked to learn that is unauthorized copying going on with this filesharing mechanism
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
>Blubster, MP2P y Piolet
Ok, that's programs. y is and.
...then anyone who uses P2P in any of its forms is automatically violating copyright? We're talking anything from a crossover cable between two computers to a university compute cluster to the INTERNET here, folks - the labels, to put it bluntly, are fucking delusional.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Blubster, Piolet, and Manolito P2P are all programs that operate on a network (confusingly) called MP2P.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
That's kind of ironic considering how big an arrogant asshole you are yourself, Marcan.
World of Warcraft uses Bittorrent to distribute it's client and it's updates
NCSoft uses Bittorrent or a similar P2P protocol to distribute Lineage 2 files
Mandriva distribute it's Linux CD and DVD using Bittorrent, including the "powerpack" edition (which is commercial)
BitTorrent is increasingly used to transfer big LEGAL files by big companies...
Maybe we should have some big names like Blizzard and NCSoft (which are by no mean affiliated to that bunch of "OpenSource freaks") weight in in favor of the technology they are using themself...
Because, should RIAA/MPAA/... have their way, BitTorrent traffic would be banned at ISP level (using Layer7 firewalling) and it would affect them very badly.
Wasn't it designed specifically to be a way to share information even if one or more sources of communication have been disrupted? The "it" being the internet, of course.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
How about an electric chair. What non lethal use is there? Just a thought.
"Yes, technology itself isn't bad."
But as Langdon Winner points out, technological systems do have assumptions and implications...
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langdon_Winner
"In 1980 Winner proposed that technologies embody social relations i.e. power.[2] To the question he poses "Do Artifacts Have Politics?", Winner identifies two ways in which artifacts can have politics. The first, involving technical arrangements and social order, concerns how the invention, design, or arrangement of artifacts or the larger system becomes a mechanism for settling the affairs of a community. This way "transcends the simple categories of 'intended' and 'unintended' altogether, representing "instances in which the very process of technical development is so thoroughly biased in a particular direction that it regularly produces results heralded as wonderful breakthroughs by some social interests and crushing setbacks by others" (Winner, p. 25-6, 1999). It implies that the process of technological development is critical in determining the politics of an artifact; hence the importance of incorporating all stakeholders in it. (Determining who the stakeholders are and how to incorporate them are other questions entirely.)
The second way in which artifacts can have politics refers to artifacts that correlate with particular kinds of political relationships, which Winner refers to as inherently political artifacts (Winner, p. 22, 1999). He distinguishes between two types of inherently political artifacts: those that require a particular sociological system and those that are strongly compatible with a particular sociological system (Winner, p. 29, 1999). A further distinction is made between conditions internal to the workings of a given technical system and those that are external to it (Winner, p. 33, 1999). This second way in which artifacts can have politics can be visualized as a 2-by-2 matrix, consisting of four 'types' of artifacts: those requiring a particular internal sociological system, those compatible with a particular internal sociological system, those requiring a particular external sociological system, and those compatible with a particular external sociological system.
As are all typologies, this matrix is a simplification-by-boundary-work -- in this case, the two boundaries are drawn between requiring and compatible, and between internal and external. It is this boundary-work that makes the typology useful for avoiding extreme technological determinism, social constructivism, and noetic flatness in conceptualizing an artifact's political qualities, and for thinking about how these qualities change through time.
Applied to Wikipedia itself, Winner's first way in which artifacts can have politics asks about the process of a Wikipedia's development and whether it was/is somehow biased. The second way asks whether Wikipedia requires or is compatible with particular internal or external sociological systems."
That said, I applaud the judge's ruling.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Japan's Supreme court also ruled in favor of the creator of Winny.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Finally, some Common Sense. It's so rare, it's a goddamn super power.
Farnsworth : "Amy, technology isn't intrinsically good or evil. It's how it's used. Like the Death Ray."
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
We should sue Ford for every Ford car used in a heist.
because the mere existence and distribution of technologies violated copyright.
Copyright owners are still trying to put together a list of manufacturers of cassette recorders so that they can sue them for damages.
In each of their meetings, there is a lone voice in the background, growing in intensity "What about every Dad in a car signing along to the radio? He is publicly reproducing our songs to the other people stopped at the lights, at intersections all over the world!"