Music biz loses court case against P2P developer
Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner had sued Soto in 2008 in an attempt to shut down file-sharing applications powered by his Manolito P2P protocol, also requesting 13 million in damages. They were joined in their efforts by the local music rights group Promusicae, which now announced that it will appeal the ruling. Soto, on the other hand, has said that he wants to go after the labels and sue them for damages for wrongful prosecution.
The plaintiffs had tried to blame Soto for copyright infringement committed by his users, pointing out that his apps didnt provide a proper mechanism to filter out copyrighted works. The court rejected this argument, however, and found that P2P itself is neutral, according to a report from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
Pablo Soto may not be as famous as Shawn Fanning, but the Spanish P2P developer made some headlines when he briefly teamed up with the former Grokster CEO Wayne Rosso, who most recently was involved in an unsuccessful bid to buy The Pirate Bay. However, efforts to take Blubster worldwide and follow in the footsteps of KaZaA and LimeWire failed; the file sharing application never gained a lot of traction in the U.S.
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