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File Sharing Ruled Legal In Spain
stupid_is writes "As a follow-up to a previous discussion a judge in Spain has ruled that under Spanish law a person who downloads music for personal use can not be punished or branded a criminal. This seems to be a teeny bit clearer than the first article, which points out that downloading is a civil, and not criminal, offense for individuals. The Spanish recording industry federation Promusicae is predictably a bit peeved, and says it will appeal against the decision." From the article: "The state prosecutor's office and two music distribution associations had sought a two year sentence against the man, who downloaded songs and then allegedly offered them on a CD through email and chat rooms. However, there was no direct proof he made money from selling the CDs. Justice Minister Juan Fernando Lopéz Aguilar says Spain is drafting a new law to abolish the existing right to private copies of material. Due to different regulatory regimes in Europe, the proceedings against file sharers differ greatly in each country. However, most European judges tend to take a harder stance on file sharing. Twenty two people in Finland were fined €427,000 last week for illegally sharing movies, music, games and software, while courts in Sweden also fined two men who had downloaded movies and music for personal use."
Everyone also needs to keep in mind that in most countries where these things are issues, the offenses related to downloading things versus sharing them are completely different. I don't believe anybody even in the US has been taken to court merely for downloading. It's always about sharing (redistribution). It's frustrating when the media tends to use the two things interchangeably.
The comparison with Finland is invalid since the sentence was given for filesharing and not for downloading files. Untill recently the legislation in finland was as clear about downloads (i.e. they were legal). Now we have the new european version of the DMCA and there haven't been any cases to test whether that status has changed. Since the legislation is essentially (supposed to be) the same throughout europe, I would guess that simply downloading stuff is still legal.
The Spanish recording industry federation Promusicae is predictably a bit peeved, and says it will appeal against the decision."
I don't know what they expect by filing an appeal.
I mean, nobody expects a Spanish inquisition.
Someone fetch the Promusicae the comfy chair or some soft cushions.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate.
One in three discs is pirated. So, are you referring here to counterfeit discs produced on the black market and sold for 3 bucks in the subway? Because those are COMPLETELY different from burning a mix cd from tracks off the internet, which rarely, if ever, get sold. Want to talk unreferenced statistics? The highest downloaded tracks online are also the highest purchased CDs. Shocker.
I buy two artists these days: R.E.M. and Weird Al (Sony connections be damned, I think they just do production anyway...) Every day I listen to the radio and there's just nothing on that I'd bother plunking down my cash for. I'd rather get another DS game or another DVD.
I think people don't buy music because they found other things to be interested in. There's a gigantic amount of entertainment choices out there now. We're past the days of the walkman. Music has to compete against movies (now portable), the DS and PSP, at home there's hundreds of TV stations.
Plus I don't think many people, at least in this corner of the cyberverse, have many good things to say about the media racket.
Is the record retail business going bust due to filesharing?
Maybe, but there are other forces at work here....
You may be loosing business to the likes of Amazon.com, Ebay, and other non-brick and mortar
retail outlets that are undercutting your price. Also there are LEGAL download sites
(such as itunes) that offer customers the choice to buy just the cuts they want, not the entire
CD. Face it, your method of business is going the way of the dinosaur. File sharing may be
part of the problem, but by many accounts it is a small percentage.
Blacklist the pirates? Maybe a good idea, but good luck!
Why don't you modify your business plan to include internet sales? Get a fraging website
for crying out loud! If you don't join 'em you won't beat 'em!
There were 21 persons who are paying in all that 427000 EUR. So it's about 20 000 EUR per person.
And the persons who were sentenced were administrators of the torrent-sharing site, not some guys who just downloaded some songs.
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication - Homer Simpson
Is that in spain there is "law" that allow the sgae and company (RIAA equivalent in here) to tax the cd's and dvd's with more than one euro each (in the case of dvd's), to "compensate" for loses due to piracy.
Just so you can understand better... last year they got 300 million euros just in that concept. And believe me, you can bribe a lot of people with that.
Oh, I almost forgot, that money is shared unequally among the capos of the SGAE, leaving all the other 80.000 members with nothing.
In fact, the U.S. Congress took Judge Stearns up on his suggestion, adding the concept of commercial value and intent to profit to the criminal portion of the U.S. Copyright Law in the No Electronic Theft Act.
I would not be surprised to see the Spanish law changed to close this loophole as well. {Prof. Jonathan Ezor, Touro Law Center Institute for Business, Law and Technology}
While I know the parent is fake, and made up, I just caught this one line:
They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
And I have to ask... how well has that War on Drugs turned out?
This is a totally old troll rant posted many times before. You all got suckered in again dammit...There is no record store people...
c id=13420069 and http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=187189&cid =15444081 here and http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171333&cid=142 69664
See - http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=160324&
"But this one goes to 11!"
...I remember borrowing tapes and making copies. I never bought music, I bought blank tapes. If a friend didn't have a song I wanted, I listened for it on the radio and recorded it off that (granted the quality sucked). This is basically the same thing as file sharing. Why were they not tracking down the millions of kids that did this in the 80's?
Do you really need to ask? Widespread copying was a harder task in the 80s. You had to find someone who owned a copy of said music, which meant a local friend. The quality of the copy was degraded, often being quite poor after many iterations of copying. Compare with today, where you can make an exact replica of music from someone on another continent, on nothing more than a whim.
Music companies cared in the 1980s, but piracy was at a nuisance level rather than threatening the entire business model.
In Common Law, this ruling would have made a precedent which other judges in further cases should follow. In the Spanish system, judges are only required to follow what is stated in written law; rulings for previous similar cases are used only as a guide, but are not mandatory.