Web entrepreneur defies big players' war on internet file-sharing

Young CEOs seem to be taking over the digital world as bright computer programmers like Mark Zuckerburg, Facebook co-founder, build multi-billion dollar companies that sometimes stir legal trouble.

Like Zuckerburg, Pablo Soto is a 32-year-old internet entrepreneur, and according to his Facebook, only a high-school graduate of Nuestra Señora de Las Maravillas. He's the creator of MP2P Technologies, a person-to-person music sharing database, that in 2008 caught the attention of big name entertainment companies like Warner, Universal, Promusicae and Sony BMG. Together they wrote a hundred page accusation calling Soto's software "parasitic," and having "the evident intention of profit."

The United States government has a particularly harsh copyright law that previously incriminated other P2P companies such as Napster and Grokster under its "fair use" doctrine. Now it seems US law is attacking foreign infringers.

In a 2003 New York Times article, Soto fearlessly defended internet file sharing saying, "With the R.I.A.A. (Recording Industry Association of America) trying to scare users around the world, the developer community is pumping up to create networks which are safer and more anonymous."

Soto is a big supporter of the CopyLeft and Creative Commons movements and posts statements against legislation in Spain that threatens to close down websites accused of piracy. "Nothing is worse for a growing market than the feeling of insecurity, to not know if the next day a business will be shut down by some arbitrary application of a norm in the name of government duty."

Soto won the case brought against him by entertainment juggernauts who sought 13 million euros in reparations; but the lawsuit also charged eight of his engineers and he is looking to recover his investors. He tweeted on Monday, "After such a hard couple of years, I don't know how to handle such good news [...] I am going to cry myself into dehydration from happiness."

Soto struggles with muscular dystrophy but it has not slowed down productivity and profits throughout the years. Tuesday, after his trial, Soto announced that he received 1.6 million euros from the company Industria to develop a P2P search engine named Foofind. "You will be able to search P2P networks like Google searches the web," he told EL PAÍS.