Spain Outlaws P2P File-Sharing

Section_Ei8ht writes "Spanish Congress has made it a civil offense to download anything via p2p networks, and a criminal offense for ISP's to allow users to file-share, even if the use is fair. There is also to be a tax on all forms of blank media, including flash memory drives. I guess the move towards distributing films legally via BitTorrent is a no go in Spain." Here is our coverage of the tax portion of this law.

Comments

WoW

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Isn't WoW patching done via P2P?

Also if you want to really push the boat out they've now made it illegal to play online games, since they work in a way you could argue is P2P in some cases.

Re:WoW

[Bo'Bob'O]

For that matter, what is a "peer" exactly? I'm not an expert on TCP/IP I suppose, but isn't every computer with an IP address a peer to another? Weather it's my grandmothers old mac or big iron web server, we're all peers, aren't we?

On the flip side, if I rent a server at a hosting company for $50 a month.. or for that matter, a virtual host for $15 a month, is it no longer "peer-to-peer" since I'm just a server?

If I set no outgoing connections on bit-torrent, then aren't I just downloading like any other?

it's not FUD..

[plasmacutter]

They have done something far worse than simply ban unauthorized p2p sharing.. they have made it a criminal offense for ISP's to merely allow it.

since every protocol on the internet can be used for unauthorized p2p sharing ISP owners must now either cease all service or go to prison.

This is a subtle but radical difference from what other nations have done, and it spells doom for all spanish ISP's

Re:What about Windows Update

[Alsee]

I believe the law only applies to copyrighted materials that you aren't entitled to copy;

Ummm, wasn't copyright infringment already a civil offence in Spain? So you're saying that they passed a law to make the civil offence of copyright infringment into a civil offence?

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Re:So let me get this straight

[phulshof]

I think you missed the part where ISP's are obligated to block P2P traffic. Since an ISP cannot differentiate between authorized and unauthorized P2P traffic, they have no choice but to block the entire technology (or make a best case effort at least).

Re:Inbound bandwidth proportional to outbound?

[/ASCII]

There are two types of sources in bittorrent:

* Peers are people who are both downloading and uploading.
* Seeders are people who have already downloaded the entire file and are uploading it out of the kindness of their hearts.

Peers will continually kill the connections with the worst download/upload ratio, meaning you will get virtually nothing from peers if you don't upload.

Seeders upload to anybody, though they _may_ be clever by avoiding uploading the same parts of the file more than once during a limited amount of time in order to maximize the amount of data that can be distributed between peers.

So in other words, if trhere are a lot of seeders you will get ok download speeds without uploading.

Re:How stupid.

[moranar]

Someone posting as anonymous coward should be less flippant asking for references. But I love shutting assholes up.

Re:So let me get this straight

[Don Negro]

Together with a random port there should be no way to detect and thus affect the traffic.

The traffic analysis necessary to detect BitTorrent traffic is trivial; nothing else opens a large number of connections and starts sending data the way that BitTorrent does. Encryption has worked with some ISPs because they've only made a half-hearted effort to traffic-shape. As it currently stands, many users have a choice of broadband providers and will switch if their carrier is too aggressive, and in most cases it's easier to simply cap all of an heavy user's bandwidth than to waste the cycles trying to find the BT traffic in particular.

But rest assured, the traffic analysis is child's play. If ISPs want to stop BT traffic, encryption won't present any impediments.