The record companies said that Soto had designed his Blubster, Piolet and Manolito software with the intent of providing a platform for users to pirate music while he generated profit. This, the labels said, amounted to unfair competition in the market. Soto should pay them 13 million euros ($18m) in damages, the labels argued.

Following years of litigation, in 2011 a Madrid court handed defeat to the labels by declaring Soto’s technology neutral. While his users may have infringed copyright, Soto was not responsible for that, the court said. Furthermore, since Soto wasn’t in the record business and the labels weren’t in the file-sharing business, the unfair competition claim was also dismissed.

After investing so much time in the case, the labels weren’t prepared to concede defeat. The case went to the Madrid Court of Appeals which has just made its decision public. It’s a decisive win for Soto and a big loss for the labels.

“[Soto's] activity is not only neutral, and perfectly legal, moreover it is protected by article 38 of our Constitution,” the Court wrote in its ruling.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Soto says that the Court saw no problem with sharing technology and discovered no plan “to sink or unbalance the recording industry” or obstruct the development of its business.

“The court affirmed — yet again — that [the creation of sharing technologies] is not an act of looting, unfair competition or unfair benefit from others’ effort,” Soto informs TF.

The Spaniard, who has been developing software since he was 16 years old, adds that the win is not only good news for him, but also for others seeking to innovate.

“This clears the path for more opportunities to bring leading edge technologies to the marketplace and no longer be distracted by misguided legal tactics from the copyright conglomerates. We really appreciate and thank our loyal following, especially among the readers at TorrentFreak.”

Soto’s lawyer, David Bravo, who described the ruling as having a “very strong foundation”, said developers will now be able to go about their business free from “inventive legal interpretations that define the very creator of a file-sharing tool as the responsible of copyright infringement.”

In celebration of the victory, Soto has released a brand new version of his Blubster software, for the first time powered by BitTorrent.

“While we have continued innovating with Torrents.fm, we can now also focus once again on further creating and offering advanced P2P technology across our other networks with this new version of Blubster just launched today,” Soto told TF.

Traditionally Windows only, Blubster will soon debut on both Linux and Mac.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Soto had been in the computer business since he was 16 and had created several file-sharing applications including Blubster, the so-called “Spanish Napster”. The labels claimed that Soto’s creations were designed to profit from infringements of their copyrights, something which amounted to unfair competition. In trying to prove their case the labels went as far as spying on Soto with a hidden camera.

In 2011, Madrid Commercial Court No. 4 rejected the compensation demands of the labels and ruled in favor of the developer, declaring that his technology was “totally neutral.”

Things quickly improved for Soto. In December 2011 he received a 1.6 million euros grant from the Spanish Government to develop a new search engine called Foofind, a project described by the Government as having “enormous potential for the future of our country.”

Now Soto is back – and ready to cause the biggest file-sharing stir in recent memory by not only launching his own BitTorrent client, but by launching a Foofind-powered (and by default Spanish Government-funded) torrent site.

Add in the fact that Soto is releasing all the code as Free Software to “ensure the open Internet” along with a promise not to infringe on users’ privacy and we have a very potent mix indeed.

“Lately we’ve seen more and more proof that what just a few ‘conspiranoids’ like myself were alerting years ago is now unfortunately becoming true: the war to control the Internet is being won by corrupt governments and corporations,” Soto tells TorrentFreak.

“We believe that the most powerful weapon we have in this important battlefield is Free Software. Constructing search engines, P2P servants, robots and what not, and releasing them all under a free license that lets everybody read the code, modify it, and replicate it, is a way to give control back to the people.”

The end result is two products. The first, called Torrents Downloader, is a no-nonsense torrent client with built-in search and freely available source code. It has no adware, no third-party software ‘additions’, and at v0.1 is just beginning its life.

“We are trying to make the most streamlined Bittorrent client, one that everybody would feel comfortable with. We realized that too often, we engineers tend to build software that we love to use but our moms would hate, and we want to change that!” Soto explains.

The second product in the Spaniard’s offering is almost certainly going to cause chaos. Soto and friends have secured one of the most desirable domain names (torrents.com) to launch possibly the most important torrent site (torrents.fm) in recent memory. The team have not only created a great product, but unlike the vast majority of other torrent site operators they are not hiding away. They are proud of their product and ready to stand by it – no matter what.

“We’ve been fighting for what we believe is right for almost 15 years. I received my first multi-million lawsuit from the majors six years ago. We will keep defending ourselves, and so far we’ve won on every court decision,” Soto says.

“When dealing with those organizations, you can’t avoid being harassed, but you can avoid losing the legal fight. Moreover, we’re open to sustainable partnerships with content companies but not to being controlled by copyright conglomerates that are merely protecting dying, legacy business models.”

The indications are, however, that Soto will indeed find himself in a head-on collision with Hollywood and the major labels. His torrent site is not only beautifully presented (Soto says his team comprises the most talented designers and coders he’s ever met), but also indexes tens of millions of torrents linking to every kind of content imaginable.

“Our robots are crawling everything, they discover new torrent sites on a daily basis. Some have a small number of magnets, others have vast amounts of torrent files. Either way, we work to make everything easily findable. We just surpassed the 30 million files mark and we are rapidly growing,” Soto explains.

So how will Soto and his team make themselves less of a target? Most importantly the site will remove links to unauthorized content within the parameters of applicable law but Soto says that being tough is equally important.

“In the past we have found that by doing the right thing, and fighting every legal attack, not surrendering to injustice, are the only ways to endure. Sooner or later, every industry that believes they can make a living from litigation ends up eaten by their own business model,” he explains.

For the entertainment industries, learning from the lessons of the past would be a good place to start, the Spaniard says.

“History repeats itself. In the past, some of today’s biggest money makers for Hollywood were enemies but they put down their weapons and subsequently made money together, like the infamous fight between broadcasters and cable companies, who now make billions of dollars together. We’re open to talks but we will continue to defend the open internet for society’s sake,” he concludes.

Torrents.fm can be found here and test pilots for Torrents Downloader should head over here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The labels argued that they lost a substantial amount of revenue because of the software he created, and are demanding a massive 13 million euros ($17.5m) from the Spaniard. The case is still ongoing, but Pablo is undeterred and has launched a new file-sharing related project this week.

His latest invention is a media search engine that enables users to find millions of media files online. The site, named Foofind, scours the web for torrent, Ed2k, Gnutella, FTP and HTTP links pointing to all kinds of media. At the time of publication the site is already indexing more than 10 million files and this number is growing rapidly.

The idea behind the site is simple according to Pablo. “The internet is not just the hypertext available in the world wide web,” he told TorrentFreak. “Content has many other media formats and is available on many other networks. So why not index it all?”

Pablo discussed the project with his legal advisers and he is confident that it operates within the boundaries of the law. All users get to see when they go to the site is a big search box and none of the files (or links to files) are actually hosted on Foofind’s servers.

“We are being extremely respectful of our laws – even the president of the Spanish RIAA just said that there isn’t an infraction on Foofind. Still, they will probably file a lawsuit, just because they can. But we don’t expect real troubles, as we know that it is absolutely legal.”

Pablo and his team are currently focused on expanding the site in terms of content, hoping to make it the largest specialized media search engine on the Internet. “We are working hard to make it crawl and index more and more files from more and more networks, so we’ll see Foofind growing to huge proportions in terms of results available,” Pablo said.

Foofind might be an example of what many other torrent and file-sharing related search engines will look like in the future. IsoHunt has already made a step in the same direction with the release of isoHunt ‘lite’ and others are considering taking similar steps to avoid legal trouble.

Foofind is available in English and Spanish and the source code of the website has been released under a GPLv3 license.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Just under a year ago in June 2008, Warner Music, Universal Music, EMI and Sony under the umbrella of PROMUSICAE (Productores de Música de España) – Spain’s answer to the RIAA – filed a lawsuit against Pablo’s company, MP2P Technologies.

The group didn’t care how they got their ‘evidence’ against Pablo either. The record companies even hired a private detective who turned up at Pablo’s offices pretending to be a customer. Using a hidden camera, the detective took photographs, which can be seen in various pages in the complaint against Pablo’s company.

Demanding a massive 13 million euros ($17.8m) from the Spaniard, they claim that his software – which allows people to share files over the Internet – has caused them to lose a substantial amount of earnings. Pablo has never denied that he created the applications for commercial purposes and that he made some money from them. However, Pablo denies any destructive intentions against the music industry.

For their part, the record companies claim that Pablo designed the software with the express intent of providing a platform for Internet users to download and share music for free, a situation they describe as “unfair competition.” Pablo is also accused of creating these applications to profit from work to which the plaintiffs own the copyright.

But of course, since the case is taking place in Spain, there are some other interesting issues being thrown into the mix. Spanish courts have ruled again and again that no crime is committed if people download music for personal use and no profit is directly generated from any infringement. Additionally, Spaniards already pay special taxes on things like CDs, DVDs, memory cards and mobile phones to compensate the music industry for supposed losses.

But the almost undoubted legality of sharing files in Spain goes even further. In all cases presented so far, the courts have ruled that even BitTorrent and eDonkey-type sites are legal, if operated within the aforementioned parameters.

Furthermore, as pointed out by his legal team consisting of P2P and copyright experts Javier de la Cueva and David Bravo, Pablo merely created software and at no time has he ever had control over what users choose to do with it.

“This claim is illogical and goes against every principle of law. If every time someone builds something he has to ensure that any illegal use of it is impossible, we would all still be living in caves,” said Pablo. “You can not block a tool because of the use that someone might make of it. We designed a ‘tool’ for transferring files as efficiently as possible, full stop,” he added.

The case began in Madrid’s Superior Court on Tuesday and will continue today. So far Pablo says that although he is no lawyer, “Things are looking good,” despite a courtroom mishap. Unfortunately for Pablo, his iPhone received an unexpected incoming call. “My geek ultra edition R2D2 tone began to sound at full volume, and due to my nerves I dropped the mobile on the floor. This left the room clear that (a) I’m freaky and (b) I am clumsy,” he said.

Pablo also notes that he was touched when Marti Lafferty, chairman of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) flew all the way from Washington to testify in the case. He told the judge that “Spain should be proud of Pablo.”

A decision is expected within a month, but it is entirely possible that the case will end up in Spain’s Supreme Court and could take many years to reach a final conclusion.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.