Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.)
"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.
P2P helps people break the law in the very same way as FTP ad HTTP do. If you want to find real-world examples of P2P usage for legal purposes, just try to download some popular operating system image or a MMORPG installer, you'll probably find that they are also offered as P2P downloads because it results in less strain for the content owner's servers and potentially faster downloads for the content consumer.