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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.
After they make P2P illegal they then tax one of its possible end-products? Isn't this like simultaneously outlawing heroin and taxing syringes?
"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.
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.
How do they resolve this against individuals that have a right to distribute their own material?
I would certainly recognize this kind of rule as a violation of my own copyright, by abridging my
right to disseminate my creative works.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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.
For some reason I think you'll have no trouble downloading WoW patches via P2P. It's amazing how many people are willing to jump to stupid conclusions without even reading the legislation.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Modded Insightful? Why?
The linked article says "unauthorized peer-to-peer file-sharing". So you will be able to download your prescious WoW-Patches, you will be able to send your own videos to your friends... because its not "unauthorized". Where's the problem?
In other words: the summary was BS and you did not get it straight...
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!!
Bypassable by you and me.
Not bypassable by Joe Average or as it is in Spain that should actually be Pedro Promedio.
Anyway, the only winners out of all these will be CacheLogic and Ellacoya which can do the enforcement and guess who has been the longest running trialist of their kit.
Guessing once, twice, thrice...
Yep, right guess. Telefonica.
This looks like the local equivalent of Baby Bell has bought itself a law that coincides with the way they see the network. By the way, compared to them even Ma Bell was a pinko commy hippy progressive.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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.
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..
just goes to show that governments should not be given power over the internet, can you imagine if they got control of the root servers too? that would be ridiculious, besides isn't sending an email a form of file sharing?
as i said it before, there is a growing need for networks such as anonet to free people from persecution in repressed countries, i'll just add spain to the list, i might not have anything to hide but then again if i want to share a file i created with a friend i will, if you build it i will find a way to get around it.
should we blame the governments or their advisors, or should we blame the people that build these type of things to restrict us?
if you are one of the following, please erase your mind: drone, sheeple, religious or government robot. if you are not one of them, please stand up and say somthing.
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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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I've already moderated here, but as I feel this really deserves a reply, sayonara mod points.
/. article text. Personally, I wouldn't put it past the MPAA or the RIAA to do whatever they can to ban p2p transfers across the board, simply for the fact that a portion of it is used for infringment.
While I can certainly understand where you come from in saying that slashdot editing has gotten worse, I don't feel that this story is necesarrily one of those. It's a bit overstated, yes, but I don't think that detracts from the fact that the article simply states 'unauthorized downloading, even for personal use'. To me, that implies heavily that the article states a bit more clearly that the ban on p2p transfers reaches much further than a simple ban on transfers that infringe on copyright, and reaches into the domain of banning any and all.
Ultimately, I think that without being able to read the text of the law, noone can really say based simply on the article. All you can really do is take it at face value, which to many is in agreement with the
Finally, on a more offtopic note, get off your horse man. Having a 4 digit UID doesn't mean shit; I'm sure there's plenty of people with 6 digit UIDs who read and enjoyed slashdot for ages before finally registering. I know for a fact that there are people who had accounts and forgot passwords to email accounts used for registration, then forgot the account info for slashdot as well. Who knows, maybe it happened in a different order? Long story short, they made another account. I'm sure there were other considerations too, I'm not going into depth.
All in all, just my 2 cents. Cheers.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
well, bullfighting is common in france too
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.
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).
And no matter how long you've been a member, it's nice to see you offering as little information as you complain about!
What's wrong? Where? How is it wrong and what's the correct version? Without offering such an analysis, you're just spewing hot air (hot bits?) yourself.
Now, as to that...
Saying that no content is downloadable is contrary to the article, which states that only the downloading of unauthorized content is banned. I agree that that is sensationalistic, factually incorrect, and should have been caught.
On the other hand, the article does seem to indicate that ISP's may be criminally liable for the actions of their users:
But the government is going after Internet service providers; it's a criminal offense for ISPs to facilitate unauthorized downloading.
Now, that still leaves open to interpretation what "facilitation" may be-but in this case, the summary does seem to match the article.
Also, it is stated in the article that despite this new regulation, blank media will -also- be taxed! It seems to me this is a bit of "having it both ways" on the part of the content providers-outlawing personal copying AND getting tax revenue. Again, it seems that the summary is essentially correct on this point.
While the summary is incorrect on one part, and it should have been caught (and should still be corrected), this is still a subject of interest to many of us who visit this site.
However, regardless, if you're going to make assertions as strong as you just did, it's generally helpful to back them up. If you can't manage that, don't let the door hit you, there's enough of those here.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
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.
Someone posting as anonymous coward should be less flippant asking for references. But I love shutting assholes up.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Stuff that _I_ upload? But _I_ am not doing anything, it's _them_ downloading stuff they know they shouldn't download.
Companies would really like this because it would mean they get twice the amount in damages as they would get if you buy it in a store.
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.
Here you go. While an actual figure like "10th in the World" is hard to compute accurately, the figures given in the link should show that Spain is not exactly a struggling country.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
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.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Great idea! Linux distributors should register as copyright holders so they can get their cut of the media taxes!
Seems better than killing retarded people legally and having hundreds of people waiting in the death row.
Yes, and gay marriage is legal, and there's no death penalty, and... it's so unrelated.
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.
Not bypassable by Joe Average or as it is in Spain that should actually be Pedro Promedio
I've found that the average Joe has no trouble using OpenVPN. All you do is double click on a configuration file and the entire network connection is setup, DNS and all. VPN Networks like anoNet (http://anonet.org/) provide unlimited access to the data (porn) and services (P2P) that users want. The user never has to worry about the heavy hand of The Man, as all links are encrypted with rotating keys.
And in even later news, Spanish ISPs block all incoming port 80 traffic.
This is great as long as both parties are using it...
As usual, the Professional Pirates (tm) can easily overcome this obstacle.
At most this new law will increase the cost of internet access in Spain, decrease, diminish, and increase the difficulty of the ligitimate usage of the net, and possibly result in some legal actions that ruin some kids lives and criminalise some ISPs (further increasing the cost of internet access!).
Overall though, you're right: Except for those lives that get ruined for the profit of a mega-corp, nothing substantial will change as a result of this.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
(In point of fact, you are republishing copyrighted material when your computer sends it over in packets, so you are *also* directly breaking the law yourself.)
If you want an apt analogy, here goes:
Stuff that _I_ sell? But _I'm_ not doing anything; it's _them_ bringing the contraband to the register and _my employee_ that hands it to them! It's their choice to pick the items off of the shelf!!
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BTW, amusingly, the downloaders make the reverse argument: "Stuff that _I'm_ downloading? _I'm_ not doing anything! I'm just making a copy of what's already being published on the web!"
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None of this has any bearing on the morality of copyright laws. If you think (as I do) that copyright laws in their current form are a bad thing, then petition to have them changed. But don't pretend that P2P sharing of copyrighted material is somehow "white" or "gray": legally, it's "black."
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
SSU. SSU introductions. Passive-active-passive peering. Double-ended passive-passive TCP sockets using a mutual introducer (so what if so few nodes can introduce; you only need one per hundred thousand or so). A distributed mixnet with partial restricted routes - a comparatively low number of peer connections to less restricted connections, to tunnel to a large number of peers using multiple hops. Hell, you get anonymity as a side dish to that. So does everyone else. Fuck it, make 'em full restricted routes. May as well add encrypted, protocol-masquerading steganographic transports to thwart application-layer traffic shaping.
Stuff like this is already well in development. Not everything has to use a thousand inbound and outbound TCP connections like Bittorrent, there are many different approaches to this sort of thing. Not to mention there are a lot of tricks in TCP. Some threat models see the ISP as malicious. Free speech ultimately demands anonymity, and the ability to be able to punch through any effective barriers blocking the protocol that allows that.
By the time they would successfully enforce such a thing, we would probably already have a fielded, very good way around it, and by then, it would be extraordinarily difficult - possibly computationally infeasible, given enough time and effort - to block, or perhaps even detect.
And remember, comparatively very few peers are in Spain.
You could just turn the upload of Spanish residential connections down to shit, like 32kbps or something, and allow only ACKs to bypass that limit. But there'd still be enough left over bandwidth from everywhere that *doesn't* legislate itself into the Internet Dark Ages to keep the stuff moving, and there are tricks on top of anything that has already been done, at that...