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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.
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.
I like muppets.
How can a country be so progressive (at least on paper) on some things, and so idiotic on this?
You won't be able to download updates for World Of Warcraft, you wont be able to send anyone else a video you made yourself, or even a word document to your friends, or even share your music if you are an independant music maker giving your music away?
This seems really dumb.
Also how can they possibly enforce it? Block at the ISP level? Using what? ports? They can change. Checking individual packets for p2p signatures? Might be possible if you want your bandwidth to be non-existant.
I really hope the rest of world does not follow this example, it's like saying roads should be banned because criminals use them.
What is this world coming to? Because i'm not sure if i wish to live in it.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
After they make P2P illegal they then tax one of its possible end-products? Isn't this like simultaneously outlawing heroin and taxing syringes?
Let's see them try to enforce this, I mean look how well the RIAA is doing here and all the file sharing they've managed to stop... oh wait.
- Aetheral Research -
This just in -- Spain is being a tool.
This seems like not only a bypassable law (encrypted ssh tunnels, etc...), an uninforceable law (what're they gonna do? punish the MILLIONS of people who fileshare?), but also a VERY STUPID LAW (legal file sharing is now a "no no"? why the FUCK was that even proposed, let alone passed!). For shame, Spain, for shame.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
"unauthorized downloading" is possible via HTTP, so they ISPs might as well stop completely. I wonder how long this new law will hold up, I wonder if it's even allowed according to EU guidelines.
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957.
I wonder what the cost will be to set up the infrastructure required to enforce and prosecute these laws.
It's really naive of the spanish government, and all other, to believe they can banish everyday people's freedom to share data over the internet. No matter the means. They're really not acting in the best interest of the public.
Rember France's backing of P2P? Now Spain has gone and banned the entire thing wich is just backward if you want to fix the problem fine but you can't just stab the hydra....
I have an equally intelligent proposal for spain. Ban http and ftp!
It is a well known goodfact that copyrighted material which is not transfered via p2p is mostly transfered via http and/or ftp, so why not just ban those protocols and be done with it! After all, seperating babies and their bathwaters respectively is just to ardious a task for the simple minds of government officials.
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
Score one for maintaining the status quo.
I wish p2p would include some sort of payment system. If I could fire up Gnutella or Azureus and have a big debit button where I could pay with a click standardized as a common framework for anyone to plug into their app then the issue would mostly resolve itself. Basically a Gnu_iTunes. P2P isn't bad, missing payment systems is.
Shh.
Remember, this is from a country where torturing an animal to death in a public place is considered a good pass time and even an art form.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not only is this a dupe it's pure FUD.
From TFA "banned unauthorized peer-to-peer file-sharing in Spain" authorised sharing is still allowed.
These new laws are really no more restrictive than those from other countries.
These guys got it all! Now they just need to ban internet and computers, even if your use of it is fair, this way there will be no more piracy.
In other news, arresting 100 persons is still a good thing provided that one of them is guilty.
You just got troll'd!
Wow, this is Socialism? If I were a Spaniard who'd voted in the current regime, I'd be feeling pretty betrayed right now.
If you read TFA, then you will surely notice the little word "unauthorized".
So anti-virus update, patch-update systems, WoW-Updates and stuff like that is definitely NOT the matter.
So, what was the problem?
Second, what constitutes "unauthorized"?
As the proprietary media content holders are entering the legal p2p
scene now the spanish government strikes back. Is it too hot in Europe
now?
Spain has made it a....criminal offense for ISP's to allow users to file-share
Considering the fact that every app using every protocol on every port can be used for unauthorized p2p sharing, these ISP's are now in a lose lose situation. They either stop their lines up completely or go to jail.
I would close my doors and move my company out of the country if I were a spanish ISP. Too bad nobody else will want to buy up the infrastructure..
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
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
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Slashdot just took a severe dive with this lie. The headline is a lie. The brief is a lie. Read the article and discover the truth for yourself. If this site continues to head down this complely disreputable path, I'll go somewhere else. It's not like there aren't good and honest alternatives out there.
For crying out loud editors, put aside your greed (for that's the most likely motivation for this) and get some integrity.
The owners of this site might do well to consider just firing the editorial staff for FUD-mongering in the worst form.
And before you mod this out of existence, consider that I've probably been a Slashdot member for a hell of a lot longer than you, and I may just know what I'm talking about when I express my disgust at this slide into mediocrity and irrelavance.
So now they are paying the copyright owners, presumably to cover all of those copies that the Spanish people make. So if the copyright holder has been compensated, why in the workd outlaw P2P? Rather than outlawing P2P becasue some uses of it may infringe on copyright, even though it has many valid good uses, why not realize that the copyright holders have been compensated anyway? Sure, I expect that some politicians lined their own pockets in order to pass these laws, but still how can the justify taxing all media, that used for copying and that used for uses that in no way infringe on copyrigh, even flash drives, and then over agressively start outlawing things that might (but certainly don't always) let users copy copyrighted materials when they have already paid the tax?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The hell it is.
Peer-to-peer is more or less a workgroup, any old gathering of systems acting independent of one another; peers communicate directly, without intervention. My roommate and I are peer-to-peer (though hopefully this wouldn't be illegal out east.)
Client/server is the function of a domain (intra/Internet) in that you, the client, are requesting access to someone else's server.
I'm dumbfounded at the paranoia that drives people to question all too much.
Here's a pat on the shoulder and the lukewarm promise that angry Spaniards won't raid your pad (in Spain!) for downloading your Windows updates. Then again..
(but this was mainly just to tell you you're wrong)
Ayn Rand says something right for once. Given how much she'd written, it was bound to happen eventually!
Wish I could say the same for you, Chomsky. Somehow I doubt you'd know anything about Ayn Rand if not for Wikipedia.
But keep those typing monkeys in your brain tap, tap, tapping away... They have an infinite amount of time to try and come up with something worthwhile.
With quite a number of dissentors here about the validity of the article, I thought to mention that Canada has a similar levee applied to blank media, and that from what I've heard it's one of the biggest reasons as to why it's difficult to make illegal copying in Canada.
That said, introducing a tax to cover possibly illegal acts and then making the action criminal altogether doesn't make much sense. Basically another good point to disprove the article's claims.
And here up north we thought Lex Karpela was the ultimate evil...
Simply means that you can use the technology for whatever use you like, but if you are caught downloading unauthorized copyrighted material, by any means (client-server or p2p) you dont go to jail, but you pay money for the damage you have done to the people authorized to sell that material. Seems fair to me..
Well.. actually not so suppraised for that law, there were some arrests of ppl in EU, that were hosting large BitTorrent sites.. here in bulgaria we have such kind of law for very long time now, but nobody cares about it, cause the main p2p user is the goverment, not kidding, they found that the administration makes 60% of the overall internet traffic in bulgaria, talking about pirate movies and stuff.. mostly porn. So even there is a law nobody cares about it.
Client-Server is also Peer-to-Peer, just differently labelled.
No, that's wrong. p2p is the opposite of client-server. If one is the server, and the other the client, then they're definitely not "peers".
Congratulations Spain, you have now effectively put your economy back in the stone age. I think you should be happy about it, since you've made media companies happy - not that they'll be selling much in a few years time, since nobody can afford it anymore. But hey, at least they can say that you did something about copyright infringement.
when the greeks banned video games http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/mobile/0,39020360 ,2121692,00.htm
too much sun, me thinks
...where NO means NO.
Turing, send some brains from above, we need it direly!
They outlawed "unautorized P2P". And made ISPs accountable for it. Ok. Now may I ask something?
HOW???
It's like making a gunsmith accountable for it when a crime is commited with a gun. Like making a bank accountable for it when the money they transfered is used in terrorism. Like making a car manufacturer accountable for it when a car they make is used as a getaway car.
How is this supposed to work? ISPs are going to be responsible for something that's not under their control. Like in the three examples above, there will be cases when it's clear, and when they could actually enforce it. But what about the other 99%?
There are very valid and legal reasons to use P2P. Does it mean now that ISPs are required to outlaw running servers? Because technically this is the ONLY way to enforce this. That, in turn, would also mean that services like ICQ or Skype become illegal, because they use the very same way of communicating, i.e. one end has to be the Server.
It's a harebrained idea, and certainly not thought out completely. Well, how should they? So far, I've never seen anyone create a law concerning IT and even know what he's doing, let alone think through the whole consequences that entail it. More often than not, you get the idea that lawgivers don't have the slightest idea when it comes to IT, and still they want to govern it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is confused discussions going about that the BitTorrent system is different from P2P. Peer 2 Peer is a direct connection to each other, I believe only 1 on 1 wherein BitTorrent is a system where peers are connected via a tracker (somewhat of a server that organizes everything) and there can be many peers sending partial data at once. Depending on what Spain believes, this still may be a valid source for obtaining media and such.
www.c3studios.ca
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?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Yes, the headline is a sham (it's unauthorized dling only), but still those record/movie industry people are really really picky:
"Compared to some European countries, Spain has some way to go in enforcement, but the new intellectual property law is a definite step forward, placing obligations for instance on ISPs to provide information. Hopefully, it will help us to get some injunctions."
This pretty much hands them all they need to protect their copyright and they act like they are still hurting??
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
...is that you??
Damn newbies don't understand how to do anti-piracy properly!
If I were the Spanish king I would have mandated all ISPs shape the p2p traffic to 50 bps. Or even better, pass a net 'neutrality' law where the ISPs have to drop connections to non-whitelisted sites (microsoft, MTV, cnn, etc. so long as they pay).
Easy to check, verify, and punish non-compliars...Mission Accoumplished!
Instead they decided making the p2p 'illegal', which is hard to monitor, verify, and enforce.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
The Spanish Inquisition teaming up with RIAA , you get the best quality repression of both the new and old world in a match made in heaven!
Or maybe it will still end in utter embarrasment and ridicule for Spain as in a Monty Pythonesque fashion RIAA officers storm unsuspecting households shouting "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" and start probing them with stuffed cushions.
When P2P is outlawed, only outlaws will have P2P. -G
Which effectively outlaws the internet itself, since all IP protocol transations are "peer to peer."
Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
Yes - hence his qualification of "that you're not entitled to copy". As you say, the EULA gives you that entitlement.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Peer-to-peer is more or less a workgroup
And Workgroup is a Microsoft term for describing a group of upto 10 people who can share files and printing without buying their server product. Hardly usable in legal terminology.
peers communicate directly, without intervention.
What intervention is required when a client talks to a server? Authentication? That can also be implemented in a so-called peer-to-peer network.
Client/server is the function of a domain (intra/Internet) in that you, the client, are requesting access to someone else's server.
Again... domain is a Microsoft concoction, just like workgroup, workstation etc. No relation to the structure of the internet, which is technically, and in reality, a Web. There are horizontal (peer-to-peer) as well as vertical (what you call client-server) strands in a web. Unless Spain wants to outlaw the internet, P2P cannot be outlawed.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Welcome to following behind the curve of THE REST OF THE WORLD!
I for one welcome our new Spanish UnderLords. Now make sure your kids only get blue collar work. It's a perfect system we're working on here in America under the DCMA. You should also really dumb down education while you're at it. That's a sure-fire way to stay ahead of the pack.
Yee-Haaawww! Spanish and Cowboys to the back of the line!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I live at Barcelona (Spain, Europe), and I can tell you that who wrote the article has misinterpreted the whole thing. I'll try to clarify it a bit:
1) A "canon" will be fined over blank media (optical and flash), but hard disks and volatile RAMs are excluded.
2) Still exist the "private copy right", when there is no meaning of making further money selling/dealing with downloaded data (in spanish "sin ánimo de lucro").
As corollarius, can be said that the "canon" has been aproved due to the fact of admiting two points:
a) The citizen is right to get and give (aka share) data from a P2P network, or share a phisical book or disc without having to pay to the author.
b) The "canon" is intended to compensate in some way the point (a).
Well, after my try of claryfing that the P2P it is *not* illegal in Spain (neither for downloading a movie nor for a disc, while not intended for making money of it), I'm against that canon, as it is indiscriminate, thus not fair.
There are many organizations here fighting for civil rights to revert the "canon" law/instruction.
... and the article also mentions that it will be a criminal offense for ISPs not to block P2P. Now tell me how you're going to P2P your authorized material? Sometimes I wish people would read the entire article in stead of just the first sentence...
"Internet service provider" can also be extended to cover torrent sites and trackers because they provide an internet service. Then they can be liable for damages. Enjoy http://www.descargasweb.net/ while you still can!! Be carefull though to give a fake ID because the logs can be use against you..
Unless Spain wants to outlaw the internet, P2P cannot be outlawed.
A spanish guy here says: "Please, stop giving them ideas". The current goverment is on the SGAE's (spanish RIAA) payroll, so they will consider it at some point.
*SIGH*
I so wish to get find a job out of the country...
But flash drives are rewritable! Surely a tax on "blank" ones can be circumvented by filling them with pointless free content before sale?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Right, if you are, lets say, in Spain and you download Maddonna, Sony Spain Inc. can ask you for 20 euros for the album. If you upload to 10 people you own 10X20 plus your own=220 euros, etc.
And the solution is not new. Try to start your own radio station or use broadcast TV signal over your own cable network. You will probably need broadcasting license from this or that ministry/gov department. the same should be done for the Internet.
Google wants to serve public in Spain and Yahoo wants the same ? no problem. Currently Spain needs only one search engine and will let both companies to bid for the license.
What average Joe can do is using amplifiers, focused WiFi beams and satellite Internet access. This is not going to be broadly available, but some individuals will have unlimited Internet access this way or other.
btw does anybody think that the currently existing anarchy allows too much "privacy" shit and too much "anti social" noise. We (a community of civilized people) need some order here, don't we ? Some regulations are urgently required.
Im lawyer in Spain.
I know the IP law. I have studied the reform of the law, and theres nothing in the law that substancially change the P2P legality.
The head of the article is a FUD. Obviously, illegal contents like child porngrafy is not allowed, and ISP, if had notice of that illegal transit are responsible (see European Directive 200/31), but P2P filesharing of copyrighted material, for non profit, is not ilegal, as it was with previous law.
So nothing has change, in my opinion. And nobody, with the full legal text, can say what the article sais.
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.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
What worries me is the responsibility put on ISPs. This means ISPs will be forced to interpret what is legal and what is not. Since risking a criminal offense is probably not what most ISPs would want, you can bet that they will err on the side of caution. To me the part about ISPs seems to be targetting Usenet. It will definately mean the end of Usenet servers in spain. It'll probably also mean the end of all ports generally associated with P2P. Since that is a losing battle, I wouldnt be surprised if eventually it'll mean the end of most direct tcp/ip access for customers of Spain ISPs.
About the tax on media carriers. That is common in quite a few countries. It's usually meant to compensate copyright holders for personal home copies. It is not meant to legalize giving a copy to your neighbor.
The internet is slowly but surely turning into the wet dream of many governments. Total control and monitoring over your populace in terms of communication. With wiretapping and data retention laws already in full swing in Europe, and now the first steps to criminalize specific activities, all we need is a country turning to a 'bad' government to make full use of all these capabilities.
Cor
So are ^almost all geniuses.
barack to the future?
More people making laws about stuff they don't understand.
The people should revolt against it. If they don't revolt, they will lose more and more of their God given rights.
did you just make a copyright infringement? :)
When did Slashdot become a safe haven for people like you?
"he, who has quotes in his signature, is a douche" - unknown.
Let's get something straight: Downloading music without paying for it is stealing! (Common practice, but still stealing.) The new Spanish law requires a person to reimburse the owner for price and costs of recovery if they are caught. (If your kid steals from the grocery store, don't you make him go back and pay for the items?) The Spanish law is saying that any ISP that collaborates with the theft is committing a crime. This makes sense, right? The ISP should not be setting up a P2P server for sharing illegal content. (This may be hard to enforce, since there is so much legal content to be shared.)
It is true that the music and movie industries are overly grasping (IMHO) and unresponsive to consumers desires, but we mustn't forget that we don't have a RIGHT to steal just because they are ignorant, unethical, and we don't like the price. If you steal and get caught, there should be consequences.
The headline is overly sensational and inaccurate.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Hasta la vista, internet!
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
ummm...so windows file and printer sharing is illegal? sucks to be any small business without a central file server. Is FTP P2P? If I put an FTP server on my PC and you put an FTP server on your PC, isn't that P2P? sucks when idiots are making laws. - Jesse McNelis
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
"public comunicacion of copyrighted material, what makes ilegal sharing it through P2P." P2P it is not "public communication", as it means "peer to peer", not "many to one" nor "one to many".
You can not get brought to court without being demostrated that you make money of it. That argument is guaranted by law, called "derecho de copia privada" ("private copy right").
Your 4th and 5th paragraphs are false.
....like say anyone who uses South Africa's sole monopoly telecom provider, Telkom.
Why has this happened? Oh well you see Telkom likes to save bandwidth because they're cheap. So they force every international connection through a cache server. Slashdot has deemed the cache server an "abusive" IP, so it's banned from posting on the site. But you can't NOT submit from that IP, because it's forced by the only internet provider in the country. So basically 45 million people can't post thanks to lazy site administrators.
Have I submitted this to the appropriate channels? Of course, countless times, and never recieve any reply. I've even submitted it as news. I've asked about it as an ask slashdot.(both rejected of course). Nobody seems to care.
After all, I'm sure it's just so easy for everyone to VNC into a machine in the US like I'm doing so they can struggle with laggy shaped international connections just to submit text to a website. It's our fault for living in a third world country with a government that artificially maintains a monopoly now that it's no longer "official" since half of the government still has stock in it, right?
Go ahead, mod me offtopic or troll or whatever. I don't give a damn. If you people bothered to read your own damn mail and fix the site I wouldn't have had to spend a year trying to find a solution only to wind up bitching about it in posts!
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Great idea! Linux distributors should register as copyright holders so they can get their cut of the media taxes!
All this fuss...
All they did was outlaw unauthorised files, as in illigal, as in not approved by the author.
How hard is it to read the article? No, really?
Four digit user #. You just gave me /.-wood.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Great comment! Now that you so gracefully informed me of the facts I was not able to find in my head (I've lived, studied and worked in Spain by the way) would you really define 28 years ago as being recently?
Spanish programmers have announced a completely encrypted version of bit torrent based on TOR technology.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
And here's my analysis (in Spanish, of course)
Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/
In fact, all people around me whith whom I've talked about current government actions feels absolutely betrayed. And this is not the worst thing they've done until now.
They promised to lower the housing price... and guess what? It's raised nearly a 16% in the first three months of the current year.
And remember ETA? The basque-nationalist terrorist group? They have killed more than a thousand people, nearly a hundred kidnaps, and now they were nearly finished, since police was doing a great work. Now, they (ETA) has set up a "permanent ceasefire" (which you can believe or not, they are still sending extorsion letters to companies in the Pais Vasco), and the Government is talking with them, illegaly, and right against most population opinion. They are giving ETA new strength, because they're talking with them, negotiating, and we still don't know what is going to happen with this (is Zapatero's government going to surrender to ETA?).
Having p2p forbidden, something they won't be able to enforce, doesn't seem the worst thing which is happening now with the government.
Telephony is certainly P2P-connections and users do exchange audio files.
And all this craze in Europe due to corruption in EU:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janelly_Fourtou
In wider perspective, nutcase or not, genius or not, in this narrow perspective, this single quote comes from a genius.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Oh, can you please just shutdown the internet? We don't need another mind-controlling media device, we already have television.
Mind Booster Noori
The amount of crap that gets modded +5 insightful on /. is annoying enough in general, but when it comes to IP / P2P topics it really jumps through the roof. Here is a bit of information for those of us who have not yet been assimilated into the "information wants to be free" crowd.
1- The law explicitly bans "unauthorized P2P". Authorized P2P, despite the submitter's misleading assertions, is not concerned.
2- The blank levy is not a compensation for massive, indiscriminate filesharing on P2P networks. Rather, it is a compensation for the (perfectly legal) private, physical copying and sharing of copyrighted works, within the circle of family and close friends, and in low numbers, which I understand is definitely allowed in Spain. France and Canada have a similar scheme.
Basically you're allowed to make a few private copies, and in return you pay a bit more for your blank CDs. The money is they redistributed to registered copyright owners, proportionally to the royalties they earn from other, more easily quantifiable sources (sales, public performances, etc.). Not perfect, but that's the best way they could find. It certainly sucks for those of us who use CD for non-musical data, but I guess we're regarded as "collateral damage".
If I burn a CD of my own copyrighted works, will I get the tax refunded?
It's not a refund, it's a payment based on sales. The money levied from the tax is distributed to registered copyright owners, proportionally to their royalties. Note that anybody can register, including Joe Musician; in fact registering is a prerequisite to receiving any kind of royalties. So if you produce your own copyrighted works (and register to the appropriate body), AND some people buy your stuff or play it in public or use it for any other activity which involves payment of royalties, you'll definitely see some money from this tax.
If you burn a GNU/Linux cd, do you think the copyright holders are going to get paid by the Spanish government?
As I said, it's only for music, so basically no. However, I understand that the tax is only applicable to individuals, not corporations (a bit like VAT tax I suppose), so if $random_spanish_distro sends you a CD of their distribution, they won't have to pay the tax on the CD they burn.
The blank media tax is absurd, simple because you can't tell who gets copied how many times.
So, if every GNU/Linux contributor claims refund... Well, at least they'll make a good DDoS!
Imagine that, a crowd of people, all swinging copies fo their own copyrighted materials...
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
Broadband lines can be used for TV and voice communications too.
Mind Booster Noori
piddler countries like spain can be bought easily, and their population whipped into line. it is highly unlikely that the people will ever see freedom there. but this threatens us all. there needs to be morre strict pre-emptive legislation that makes it a CRIME to lobby government to preserve industry agianst the wishes of the people. this would stop the aa's from trying to sneak bad laws into act every day, and would eliminate the need to constantly watch them. the penalty? why stiff fines, and a tax on every such proposal, to be distributed among the CONSUMERS of copyrighted works. for those lobbyists? an extended stay in a federal Pound Me In The Ass prison.
internet is just another channel of targeted ads. can be useful if under tight control
This is a terrible thing. It's just plain stupid, restrictive, and not an act I'd expect from an advanced European nation, along with the blank CD tax.
No, I'm not going to start banning Spanish products, what's the point of that? Do you think they care about that kind of stuff? I wouldn't mind however organizing demonstrations (sans violence, of course) over this. Who in their right mind would even think about doing this sort of thing?!
Spain isn't one of the places that I'd like to live in right now, no thank you.
o hai
Spain part of the third world, and proud of it.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
Now I am not 100% sure on this, but I think copying for personal use without a profit (e.g. you copy a friend's CD) was and still is legal in Spain. AFAIK what this law does is clarify that unauthorised copying over P2P does _not_ fall within this exemption.
Back when the automobile was a new thing, laws were passed to protect among other entrenched industries, the makers and sellers of buggy whips. The protections became more and more hysterical as buggy whip maker after maker went out of business.
Leap ahead 80 or so years, and now it's the internet's turn to retire the current generation of buggy whip makers. And yes we'll see the buggy whip makers and sellers of today get more and more hysterical trying to protect their old ways instead of embracing an inevitable change. The government follows the money and the old men/women who make and enforce the laws are inclined to join the ranks protecting the buggy whip industry, but in the end the buggy whip will be retired.
Telecoms fighting VoIP and anyone agitating to suppress the open sharing/distribution of raw information are today's buggy whip industries, and this is yet more hysteria from a dying group of old men. The sooner their industry is killed off, the better.
Is a complete lack of understanding of technology. In particular the internet and underlying technologies. The Internet is a peer to peer filesharing network. If one outlaws the sending of files from one computer on a network to another you are effectively making the internet illegal.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
So it's not a question of whether you're afraid of getting sued by Blizzard: The patch simply won't come down the pipe.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Since as a business you want to minimise risk, the easy road is to simply block all identifiable P2P traffic. There is no way for the router/traffic-shaper to know if the bits are copyright by someone who might sue, so it's easier to block as much as possible. And since (unlike the user) the ISP can face criminal charges, there's one hell of an incentive to cut off as much 'suspect' traffic as possible.
So if I try use BT to download (cc) material from http://www.jamendo.com/en/ it would be blocked by the ISP...
In all other countries that I'm aware of (and that by no means is a definitive list!) the service provider has some kind of "safe harbour" provision.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
When I see laws like this put into place, I really wonder if the legal system in any country is capable of making educated decisions. What do they do, just spin a fucking bottle and throw darts to put these things into law? Does anyone making these laws realize the internet is more than bitorrent and the RIAA? This could, in effect, cover any kind of data transmission where two peers are involved. This is going to include messenging, irc, any kind of gaming, ftp, and what about email? That's basically a peer-to-peer data transfer. Nobody will be able to use the internet without breaking the law - except the crooks running the country.
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I think the parent meant that peer-to-peer is also client-server, which it is. If peerA requests something from peerB, then peerA=client, peerB=server. They can then swap roles later on, if peerB needs to request data from peerA.
the layman's guide to computer science
I have several copyrights! Where do I sign up?
From TFA:
"Spain's telco giant Telefonica reports 90% of usage on its broadband lines is Internet traffic, up from 15% five years ago. Of that 90%, a massive 71% is P2P traffic."
So this hilarious move has made the vast bulk of Spain's Internet traffic illegal.
If anyone ever needed proof that politicians are utter morons, this was it.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
They never had a reputation of being modern, up-to-date and ahead of their time anyway.
Read radical news here
Although I expect laws to be passed to ban this or that (P2P, etc), and it's easy to buy off the politicians with $$$ for re-election or in other countries just plain bribing I don't see much enforcement (except for selective large perpetrators). Why? It costs $$$ to enforce.
Governments pass laws all the time and then don't put for the effort to REALLY enforce them (immigration in the U.S. for example). I expect anything to do with file-sharing to be the same.
Take the RIAA and the MPAA. How many people are downloading movies and music vs how many people they are actually prosecuting? Percentage wise of the violators we are talking VERY little. It's all about LOOKING like you are doing something, not actually enforcing or getting rid of the problem. Software piracy is the same way.
We passed the point LONG ago in world where the government can break into your house rifle your things and find something to throw you in jail with.....copied tape? where is the master CD? Can't find it...Ooooo..that's 5 years and 20,000 dollars. That rifle in your basement, is it registered? No? Antique? Doesnt matter..off to jail you go. Speeding? What's that? It's stupid that the speed limit is 25 mph and everybody else is going 50? Tell that to the judge, I'm throwing you in jail for reckless driving.
No government official is going to enforce a law that hurts his/her voters or campaign contributors. If many of them are at home downloading MP3's they will turn a blind eye, But you can bet if it HELPS them in any way they will enforce.
Also seeds prefer peers who have a history of downloading faster....
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
What TCMnet states is just false.
The funny thing is it just states the same most spanish papers.
In Spain there is a legal term called "Private copy"
The private copy was created after law makers realize that make illegal a common act as copying a vinyl disc or tape from a friend to a tape for your listening pleasure was not possible. To compensate the industry, they created a kind of tax (called "canon for compensation of private copy") on blank media.
The definition of "Private copy" is "a copy made from a legal copy for personal use. This copy cannot be used on public, nor get profit from it."
Another funny thing is that the word says "legal copy". Not original. Not bought on a shop. So a private copy is a legal copy, so you can copy it as well.
So, a download of a song, movie, etc is legal.
In the other side, uploading is a bit more tricky... It's illegal to make a copy public to everyone. For example, having mp3 on a web site is illegal. But, for now, P2P is considered an "exchange among friends", and it's considered private copy (for now).
TCMnet says: "Now Spaniards caught grabbing content from, say, eMule, will have to reimburse rights holders for losses --- although such losses will be difficult for authorities to track."
Yes. It's true. We are paying the cannon since analogic tapes, and we still doing it with CD and DVD blank media. The funny thing is that we do it even if we use the media to burn a copy of Debian, a backup of the hard disk or whatever personal use. And there's no way to get the money back.
TCMnet also write: "Spanish police closed 17 illegal Web sites in a nationwide raid April 8."
In fact, the police acted because considered that the sites were getting profit from publicity on them. What the news doesn't say that most of the sites are running again.
As I said FUD, FUD and more FUD.
This is kinda offtopic, but here in Norway it is getting worse. We already a filter/firewall that blocks underage/children pornographic sites, which is a good thing in my opinion. But the problem is that they are now proposing to extend this filter to block simple sites like for example forums discussing illegal things like for example illegal drugs, sites showing regular porno, gambling sites because gambling is now to be made completly illegal here.
:(
Norway is not so free afterall..
since the link provided forces us to wait for a redirected page to load. Here is the complete text of the article:
[June 27, 2006]
Spain outlaws P2P filesharing
(Daily Variety Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
MADRID
A Spanish intellectual property law has finally banned unauthorized peer-to-peer file-sharing in Spain, making it a civil offense even to download content for personal use.
The legislation, approved by Congress on Thursday, toughens previous provisions. An early May circular from Spain's fiscal general del estado, or chief prosecutor, allowed downloads for purely personal use.
Now Spaniards caught grabbing content from, say, eMule, will have to reimburse rights holders for losses --- although such losses will be difficult for authorities to track.
But the government is going after Internet service providers; it's a criminal offense for ISPs to facilitate unauthorized downloading.
The law also introduces a small tax to be levied on all blank media --- from a blank CD to mobile phones and even a memory stick. Computer hard disks and ADSL lines have been left out of the legislation despite their widespread use for illegally copying music and films. The money collected will be paid back to the owner of the copyright.
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Spain's greater antipiracy clarity received a thumbs-up from the Motion Picture Assn.
"Compared to some European countries, Spain has some way to go in enforcement," said Duncan Hudson, the MPA's Brussels-based VP and director of operations for antipiracy, even though Spanish police closed 17 illegal Web sites in a nationwide raid April 8.
"But the new intellectual property law is a definite step forward, placing obligations for instance on ISPs to provide information. Hopefully, it will help us to get some injunctions," he added.
Spain's telco giant Telefonica reports 90% of usage on its broadband lines is Internet traffic, up from 15% five years ago. Of that 90%, a massive 71% is P2P traffic.
Could someone more knowledgable than I explain what ISP side P2P intereference would do to P2P based protocols like Skype?
If Telefonica, not the most efficient or technologically progressive company in the world, were to implement a blanket throttling of P2P traffic, would that destroy my Skype connection? I ask as someone who has had to rely upon Skype telefony for a year now because Telfonica are a bunch of useless gibbons who can't get it together to arrange for my landline to be installed.
A year.
Seriously.
Any insight?
Someone finally has more draconian IP laws than the US.
Sorry Spain, but maybe this will be repealed soon, and serve as an example of how insane things have gotten.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
France outlaws all animal fighting, except in places with an uninterrupted tradition. Indeed, there are a few places in Southern France close to Spain with corridas.
Steam, Gunz, and most MMOs use p2p networks to distribute their massive updates.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
And I'd just like to say, thank you. Sorry, wasted all of my mod points on tiered internet. Can someone else five this guy?
Either:
1.- This is FUD or
2.- my ISP (incumbent in Spain) is plainly breaking the law.
The following capture is from my personal MLDonkey software at 16:29 Local Time.
> bw_stats
Down: 8.5 KB/s ( 0 + 8711 ) | Up: 9.5 KB/s ( 0 + 9730 ) | Shared: 7/2.16G | Uploaded: 566.6M
Regards.
The /. article summary is inflammitory in it's description. It could have been worded so much better instead of using sensationalist language to attract our attention; "unauthorized" P2P traffic is banned. How is this law any different from other copyright laws which go after copyright infringers? Let's take a look:
/. sumary or the article.
1) it allows the government to go after ISPs for facilitating unauthorized P2P downloading by making this a criminal offence.
2) it makes personal "unauthorized" P2P use a civil offence.
3) the definition of "unauthorized" isn't explained in the
Since the devil is in the details, it would be interesting to know:
A) *who* gets to define "unauthorized"
B) *how* is the word "unauthorized" defined and
C) How much of the P2P traffic in Spain is infringing on copyright as that counrty defines it (let alone "unauthorized")
D) How will unauthorized traffic be distinguished from the "authorized" kind?
Copyright infringenmt has been a crime for centuries. With the advent for P2P networks, mass infringement has become easy and convenient. Although I have no statistics on it myself, the article reports "Spain's telco giant Telefonica reports 90% of usage on its broadband lines is Internet traffic, up from 15% five years ago. Of that 90%, a massive 71% is P2P traffic." How much of that P2P traffic is infringing in nature? I suspect it's a lot. Something needs to be done to curb the infringing traffic (and I know this speaks nothing to the ridiculous copyright laws out there now).
I worry this legislation will have a chilling effect on non-infringing P2P traffic and ISPs willingness to even allow it on their networks. What will spanish ISPs do about overseas P2P traffic that goes though their lines and may or may not be infringing in nature? If I was a spanish ISP owner I'd be looking at severly resticting P2P traffic of all types, if not banning it outright.
This of course would do nothing to stop infringing P2P traffic (though it may morph into another form or disguise itself) or illegal file sharing. I just hate to see another technology suffer in copyright battles.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
I really want to know, how in hell and in such silly politicians minds, who get free linux distros and open source packages through P2P protocol will be a pirate ?
using P2P is a crime?
In that case all protocols will be only used by pirates?
P2P is an open protocol, is it copyrighted ? i dont think..hell
HTTP,FTP,IRC,SMTP,POP,IMAP,...outch..thats a lot of rules to be created! LOL
Resuming..do we really can hope politicians to do a good job governing us!?
what a joke..to say the least!
and what a fucking country..and my country is very near! I only hope nobody else have the same stupid and without logic idea.. so we can still live our lives with a tiny freedom.
http://www.codingheaven.net/
Since the law isn't effective yet, it's (3), your ISP isn't ready to acomplish yet.
Mind Booster Noori
That's odd, according to the old SNL shows Generalisimo Francisco Franco died decades ago. I guess he is still alive and passing legislation.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Spain outlaws the internet. Pictures at 10...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
It is technically feasible to block P2P apps from functioning properly at people's homes while still allowing _most_ other internet apps to continue.
step 1. only allow tcp packets, or other state-based protocols (meaning, udp and icmp would become invalid protocols in Spain)
step 2. require the ISP to enforce stateful tcp: keep state of SYN/FIN packets and firewall block unauthorized data packets not sent inside an initialized tcp tunnel (after SYN, before FIN between SRC:DEST addresses on port X). This is a no-brainer, 95% of routers already do this, and 100% of firewalls and NAT'ing routers already do this.
step 3. restrict at most N simultaneous tcp tunnels per customer IP. Configure N so that it is a reasonable number of simultaneous socket_pairs for a home user. Perhaps 200 to accomodate roommates NAT'd behind a single IP.
This will prevent _direct_ access to P2P networks without seriously dropping connections, in both directions. If the customer cannot accept new connections after 200, most peer clients would either ban them or prioritize them low. (LowID in eMule). If the customer cannot create new connections, many p2p app would cause problems. Some smart clients (eMule or Azureus) allow you to specify Max#Connections, but when it is a paltry number like 200, compounded with the problem that usually only 1% of the connected peers even transmit any data (and when they do transmit data, it's at 1KB/s), the customer will get horrible bandwidth on their P2P, so little that it makes infinitely more sense to rent a DVD than wait two months for it to download (and that's bandwidth, not just latency).
There are, of course, ways to bypass such restrictions through tunnelling all IP traffic inside a single TCP sockpair. SOCKS5 would accomplish this - however, only outbound connections can be established. Peers will not be able to open connections with you. (If you did have a customized host that allowed such level of port forwarding, the 65535 ports will quickly run out if that socks5 host is NAT'ing 100 or more Spaniards -- and, if each Spaniard is fortunate enough to find his or her own dedicated socks5 server abroad, can we really still call them a "Spaniard"? At that point, with such resources abroad, they'd be much more of a 'global citizen' and hence any domestic law wouldn't properly constrain them). With socks5 and inability to port forward, the topology of the home-based IP will be radically different - no spaniard will be able to directly connect to a fellow spaniard unless within that 200 allocable connections.
An alternate, but similar, solution would be to internationally segregate customer IPs from corporate IPs and prevent any more than 200 connections forming between any given customer IP and other customer IPs. The evolution into corporate apartheid over customers is saddening, but that's the strong trajectory we're on. Even my use of the word "customer" is dating this writing to post-1990. Curiously, is China all that bad, are they not just politically five to ten years ahead of where we are?
More recently than the death of explicit fascist governments elsewhere in 1945, almost twice as long ago.
In Spain, with its 500 years of modern history, and over 2500 years of literal history, 28 years is very recent.
Considering Spains new corporate government moves that we're now discussing, it's not even the blink of an eye.
--
make install -not war
The old internet is almost dead. Because of the way the hardware is implemented control is centralized and concentrated at government agencies and big businesses. While the internet was designed to be decentralized this is not the way it was implemented in the current top-down form. The current internet is nearly dead, but that does not mater: Replacement is already on it's way.
The Next Internet will work without centralised control. It will be dynamic and configuration will be automated. No government will be able to control it, regulate it, not even tap it. Information will travel freely.
The future internet will be a global cloud of mesh networks. Who needs the current internet providers when we have a free mesh network of all the computers in the neighbourhood?
The only question: Which government will make mesh networks illegal first? And could they succeed? Or will this cause a spread spectrum revolution?
What I cannot create, I do not understand
wow i am always complaining about how new US laws are taking us backwards in certain areas.. but apparently this isnt the only country where that is so..
;)
this outlaws sooo much fair use, World of Warcraft, Steam, and the CD's thing is also completely absurd..
the perfect example is burning linux, or making copies of your own software/data, now your being penalized for these fair uses
thank YOU spain for reminding me that there are indeed other countries that have far more retarded and uneducated laws than the united states
I'm assuming they don't intend to outlaw an ftp transfer from one machine to another. So what defines "p2p"? Would it be a transfer between two machines where the discovery of the source machine was achieved via any search mechanism that does not employ dns or google/yahoo/$PORTAL? Any search mechanism that uses a distributed database? A transfer from multiple source machines to (one or more) destination machines?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Generaly, no, the nature of the internet is not P2P. The vast majority of the internet is client/server.
Every IRC network, FTP site, Web site, Mail server, Gopher hole, YUM/YAST repository, etc is all client/server.
Peer to Peer is based on a state of equality - peering. For the majority of protocols, you ask a main repository of the information for what you want and the repository provides it. Everything is routed through main servers which is an artifact of it's creation. As a DARPA and University construct, it was designed for redundency and to utalize the processing power of a limited number of mainframes. Even in '87, the serious programming & heavy lifting for scientific research at my school (SUNY Geneseo) was done on the mainframes. P2P is relatively new concept (even phone & finger routed through the mainframe from/to essentially dumb terminals). In fact beyond P2P file transfer, I can't think of anything that involves more than 2 terminals that doesn't rely on a central server to do the heavy lifting.
Like this one (Sorry, site is in Greek only), with thousands of nodes.
The audio blanks are needed for the stand-alone CD recorders, i.e. something you would hook into your stereo system like a cassette deck. The audio blanks have a special encoded track at the beginning, in a non-writable area, that these recorders look for. This is all part of some deal worked out years ago for the benefit of the recording industry. Even in the US, these blanks carry an extra surcharge that goes to "repay" the copyright holders. Apparently this deal was worked out before they realized the almost no one uses these devices.
Personally, I know of only one person that actually has one of these. And I still don't understand why he bought it. It seems like you lose a lot of control using one of these, don't have much of any editting capability, and the blanks cost more. So why?
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -- Winston Churchill
I wish p2p would include some sort of payment system.
P2P does have a built in payment option, you send money to the artist. No really, if you feel guilty about time and format shifting, just send the artist money. Write a check and put it in the mail if you can't make it to a show where you can fill the tip jar.
Basically a Gnu_iTunes.
The GPL'd iTunes is Amarok. It plays music. You don't need or want DRM and neither do the artists.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
We have one of those portable recorders at work. I work in a theatre, and the sound guy uses them to record the performance, if the band wants it. Its a very straight forward thing.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
I live near Barcelona. There's a strange behaviour usually found around here. People seem to think that if you can steal something because the owner doesn't protect it, you are acting correctly. This harms IP industry a lot here. So: If, for instance, I leave home and forget to close the door, people will find normal that someone comes and takes the tv in the living room. With this kind of behaviour, let's imagine someone invents the universal key that open every single door. That would mean the caos! Solution: Make the doors illegal! (I know, I'm a genius!) The fact that nobody can enter home from now on is a collateral damage that has to be paid, but, you know, it's not easy to please everybody. That is more or less what is happening here as I see it. Who is really beneffiting this law? Let's see, the chinese mafia are the ones who sell pirated cd's on the street. Are they going to be punished by this law? Probably no. The content: They will have millions of ways of downloading the content. (ftp from other countries for example). The media: I don't imagine them going to the nearest computer shop and saying: Hey I want to buy 20000 dvd-r. They probably buy them directly from a distributor. And probably not a spanish one. In fact there's a cd-r factory around here that had to close for that exact reason. So the ones really hurting the media industry are not going to be punished. After this law, people will not be able to use eMule at home, they will have to pay more just to save the pics of their holidays on a cd-r and they will continue being able to buy the pirated movies on the street. So, following the doors example from above. People won't be able to enter home but the thieves will manage to use the window. That's were I am living. So if, for instance, Jorge W Bush is reading this and is sick of the terrorist attacks to their soldiers in Irak, consider moving your troups to Spain and make this a better country. You will be rewarded with paella and nice beaches. Ah! and people thinks twice before making a suicide attack.
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No one mentioned Lorca, or Spain's fascist history, before I posted. Fascist TrollMods hate poetry.
--
make install -not war
How exactly, will they have enough jailspace for the millions of Spaniards filesharing? It'll be like the RIAA saying P2P music sharing in the States is totally eliminated. Which they did.
As I lay in bed at night, looking at the stars in the sky, I wonder where the hell my roof went.
...the attitude of the **AAs must be infectious.
She promotes a way of life that no civilized society would touch with a ten foot pole.
If she's such a genius then why wasn't she smart enough to harness people's inherent greed enough to make her dreams a reality?
The Libertarians - you know, the guys waving their mod points in anger when I posted this - don't even come close to her as far as enshrining selfishness is concerned.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!