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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.
Read the fucking article before you post it, guys. You really screwed this one up.
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
Slashdot editors haven't changed at all in the past eight years... haven't you caught on by now? There have always been dupes, inaccurate summaries, ad-whoring story links. The only thing that seems to have gone are the pump-and-dump storylines for stock manipulation. (aaah, Corel and the .) Sensationalistic... well, sure, maybe.
BUT, the sensationalism is what makes it worthwhile to actually read comments. Browsing at 4+ might still make the actual article 20% the size of the slashdot commentary, but you just might get something interesting out of the comments.
As for the story, while the (arguably) sensationalism component regarding completely banning P2P might be there, the real news in my book was that they actually pulled off a tax on blank media at the same time! (Sure, that info was a dupe, but it has interesting meaning when you look at it now.)
Compare reading slashdot to reading an article on news.google: Do you ever find the actual article completely missing out on key elements that you want to understand? Do you ever find yourself clicking on multiple stories that are grouped together in order to try and find out the real story? Slashdot gives people (with time) a chance to get more information and be involved in a discussion about a topic that few other forums actually are able to rival.
I'm all for competition, and do try and read other sites for different kinds of information, but for many of the things that interest me, slashdot can't be beat.
Watch out. Grammar nazis have been known to get the HIV Virus.
the layman's guide to computer science
The Spanish Elite/Rich/White Collar Crooks make their P2P laws laughable. Let me explain. I was holidaying in Spain a couple of years. I was staying in a tiny town of Torremolenos in the South of Spain. Permanent population is about 30,000 people. When I arrived at the hotel that my idiot travel agents had packaged for "me" - I found that the this hotel had 2 other hotels being built beside it - both within 20 ft. - complete with jack hammers, constant concrete trucks, bulldozers etc.
But as I walked around this tiny town I began to notice the gigantic construction cranes. At first I noticed them because unlike Canada - the operators stay on the ground and operate the crane with a remote control (in Canada the operator sits several hundred feet above ground at the top of the crane. Yes ever now and then - the crane collpaes and kills the operator.)
Then I started to notice the number of cranes. After a couple of days there - I roughly figured out that there were at least 300 cranes (coming from a construction family I notice things like this :) - for building 300 condo complexes. Some of these condos were/are humungus. In one case - it was three times the length of a football field and about two football fields wide by 20 stories high - big - very big! NAturally all this construction had to run into a couple of hundred billion. The amount of construction in Torremolenos had to be five to six times the amount of Big Box construction compared to Toronto.
While I was having lunch at a neat restaurant on the ocean - with a view of both the town and the ocean (naturally owned by the mayor of the town - the only restaurant for a mile of beach). One could see a panorama of the entire town as it stretched up the moutain side - all 300 projects. I asked the waiter why 300 condos were being built in the middle of nowhere. He laughed and replied "Matress Money"! He went on to explain that with the Euro coming into force - all of the old Spanish currency (multi billions) that the rich Spanish elite had stashed away - being hid from the tax man - had to be converted to Euros. And one could not walk into a bank and deposit 2 or 3 million Spanish "dollars" - and escape being noticed. Generally a deposit of $10,000 or more in any bank in the world triggers an investigation by police.
Solution? - use a series of hundreds of construction companies and their thousands of subcontractors and suppliers to bank the "Matress Money" - to then build condos! The waiter told me to wait for the weekend - when all the Spanish Elite come to Torremolenos and Marabella come to see how their matress money is doing. Sure enough the following weekend the came by the thousands. In one club about 30 came in a once - I would guess that the average women had about 4 or 5 thousand dollars of clothing and jewellery on. The next town over Marbella (with another 300 condos going up)- had THE bar there for the rich of the rich elite - the drinks started a 30 dollars to keep the riff -raff out.
So much for "getting those nasty people" for using P2P - it's all smoke and mirrors to keep the masses focused on P2P - rather than on the real crooks! Good news though - recently the mayor and other puppets of the elite were charged for taking hundreds of millions in Matress Money Bribes - breaking laws. Will the Elite get charged?
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://www .euroresidentes.com/Blogs/2006/03/mayor-arrested-i n-anti-corruption-raid.html&e=14905&ei=7NajRI34Fou cigGv-N2ACw