Slashdot Mirror
Downloading Copyrighted Material Legal In Spain
Sqwuzzy notes a judge's ruling in Spain that makes that country one of the most lenient in the world as respects sharing copyrighted material over P2P networks. "The entertainment industries in Spain must be progressively tearing their hair out in recent months as they experience setback after setback. ... After Spain virtually ruled out imposing a '3-strikes' regime for illicit file-sharers, the entertainment industries said they would target 200 BitTorrent sites instead. Now a judge has decided that sharing between users for no profit via P2P doesn't breach copyright laws and sites should be presumed innocent until proved otherwise." This ruling occurred in a pre-trial hearing; the case will still go to trial.
All the entertainment industry have to do is set off a few bombs on trains in Madrid. After that they can dictate terms to the Spanish government.
i'm assuming this has at least one or two more appeals after the real trial before downloading copyrighted material is found to actually be illegal.
of course, IANAL, especially not a Spanish lawyer, so i could be totally wrong.
"To stop the terrorists."
I heard the same thing about Sweden... then suddenly The Pirate Bay went down after police raided the building that housed the servers.
I'm pretty sure if I go to microsoft.com or any other website the content over there is copyrighted, but yet it's legal for me to download it. I can even download software they provide free of charge, and they are copyrighted, but it's still 100% legal.
Just why would anyone think downloading something that has a copyright on it would be illegal?
Now I can have legally approved sex with a 13 year old AND listen to my downloaded Counting Crows album at the same time... *take a holiday in spain, leave my wings behind me*
I want you to say:
Lack of gain
in Spain
Drives RIAA mainly
INSANE!!
fifty times. You'll get much further with the Lord if you learn not to offend His ears. ;)
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
I thought everything was copyrighted by default?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Given that the ruling seems to violate several international agreements on copyright, I wonder how long it will last.
I also don't get the common sense aspect of it. If, instead of being akin to losing some sales to piracy, all sales were legally lost to piracy, how would companies stay in business? Well, they'd do it by erecting technical barriers to copying. DRM plus a million. Because they would have to.
If you justify copyright infringment based on "information wants to be free", then expect people to try their damnedest to change what their information wants to be.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Everyone shhhh! Stop posting these stories, or else we're gonna have to host TPB and its ilk in outer space or something.
stuff |
At least that's what is said at least in Catalonia. In Spain, Justice is not reliable at all. It is collapsed and it's not independent from political forces. Therefore, the term "Spanish Justice" is an oxymoron, a contradictio in termini.
Wow, never thought I'd see common sense creep into any courtroom when it came to copyright. Doubt it will last.
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
Big Content has always had to deal with the cost-of-doing-business, just like every other industry. Sharing a video tape, a book, a CD or whatever else it has to produce, does take away from their business (though there is discussion that sharing leads to future purchases in the same way giving out free food at the grocery is an advertising expense).
From a business perspective, I am absolutely certain it has become cheaper to produce their content to CD over Tape (or DVD over VHS), and even more cheaply as a digital download. Content, just like insurance/financial services, is one that should could thrive if it embraced the newer, cheaper methods of production/sales/distribution than trying to do things the old way.
I'm glad that the court is identifying that internet-based sharing is no different in essense, than sneakernet sharing which is always something the companies have had to deal with and has always been a cost-of-doing-business. The fact that it is "online" is ultimately irrelevant, and even if greater sharing drives down sales (which is debatable), online/digital distribution should also lower costs which if done properly, should allow them to remain profitable. Business is about adaption. No business has a fundamental right to exist. Suing your customers and taking rights they either explicitly had, or felt they had is no way to keep those customers, in which sharing and distribution become irrelevant.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Downloading material is not copyright infringement. Distributing copyrighted material (uploading) is. No one should be punished for downloading unless it can be proven that it was their intent to distribute the material to others. Unfortunately, the P2P protocols are built around the premise that everything you download is automatically shared with other people. Plus, the RIAA goes to great lengths to attempt to confuse people about the difference between downloading and uploading.
Let's put it this way -- if receiving on unauthorized copy of copyrighted material was actionable, then I could just copyright something, arrange to have someone else email it to everyone in the world, then start suing everybody who didn't delete the email!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
no profit
copyright laws were created so that some other guy with a printing press or vinyl press wouldn't make and sell copies of a book or recording all on his own without regard to the creator
it never was intended, and never had anything to do with, the idea of someone reproducing material and giving it away FOR FREE
simply because such a person would be insane: all that expense for nothing. to not be motivated by profit is simply nonsensical on the old media world, which was the whole point in copyright: keep the profit with the creators
but the issue of effortless file sharing is a fundamental change in how media works, and has more to do with traditional publishers coming to grips with a new reality. IANAL, but i would like to see a legal argument that says copyright law is only valid for the pursuit of those PROFITING from illicit copies, that those copying for free are essentially outside the scope of the spirit of intellectual property laws and their intent and purpose. which is a fundamentally true argument: the internet is new technology and makes possible what was not possible before, so to apply laws from an old era onto it without thought is to fail to understand the issues in play
such an approach would draw a nice line between the old media world and the new media world as defined by the new economic laws the internet forces onto the world, welcome or not
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I feel almost certain that Spain will face an international backlash because of this. In all likelihood, I'm guessing that the international community will put pressure on them to reverse these decisions. Nevertheless, as a piracy supporter, I'm delighted by this news and hope that other countries will follow suit. I'm not getting my hopes up quickly though.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
... the RIAA begins a search for the next General Francisco Franco.
Have gnu, will travel.
If only tpb moved from Sweden to Spain, then they wouldn't've sold out.
I assume that Spain has a supreme court of some kind, and that there are avenues to appeal. I have a hard time believing that higher judges would accept that mass internet copyright infringement is a right. But you never know. This is Spain, a country that has judges that take it upon themselves to prosecute foreign "war criminals", and was only recently rebuffed in their efforts to do so. They might well rule "Hey, download all you like here".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Well... the original intent of copyright was as applied to "commercial copying"... his reading of the law is 100% valid.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
That's if Telefonica - the national telephone monopoly will let you have a phone line, which in rural communities they often won't, due to having no spare wires.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Hey Spain, you're about to get new residents. The RIAA is moving in!
And you can perform the exact same song in a concert, to which people (having heard your music) will pay to attend!
Unless you're crap, in which case, you'd want to keep your music as secret as possible until after they've bought tickets.
I fail to see where your problem lies, really.
PS I can fix my own lavvie. I can fix someone else's.
But copyright means I can't sing that song at a party and I can't make a copy of it for someone else.
Under what law or jurisdiction are they prosecuting these crimes under? Does that mean that it is illegal to go to Vegas?
They don't sell a product either: they do not mix the CD, they do not press the CD, they do not package the CD, they do not transport or retail the CD. Yet all the people who DO do these things are paid just the once.
Before recording, we had musicians. Even though they had no product to sell: recorded music.
So your insistence that they do is wrong.
Finally, a testbed so we can see if this ruling has a detrimental effect on the artists, the economy, or the industry(Spanish, that is) as a whole.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
More interestingly, I wonder if this applies as well within the United States themselves? What happens if I live in a state where e.g. drinking age is 21, and I have a drink at another state where drinking age is 18 (supposing I am between 18 and 21)? Can I get prosecuted when I return to my home state?
(Disclaimer: I do not live in the USA)
Score: i, Imaginary
copyright laws were created so that some other guy with a printing press or vinyl press wouldn't make and sell copies of a book or recording all on his own without regard to the creator
That's not quite true in the US. Copyright law here was created to "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". It's not about some obligation to reward authors or artists, but simply to provide an incentive for them to create, for the ends of benefit of the public.
No recoup of expenses, either. This is a money driven world, not some socialist utopia where your needs are taken care of.
Sure it did. It grants control over redistribution to the creator. It paid no mind as to whether it was going to be charged for or not, or who distributed it.
No. No, no, no. The -purpose- was to give people who created works an incentive to release them by allowing them a means of turning their work into collateral. Instead of having to sit idle until someone came along and paid them, they could take the initiative and produce works of their own accord, and (if they didn't suck) not starve in the process. They could do like any other tradesman and focus entirely on their chosen field and leverage it to live.
Unless you'd like to think that you could spend a day doing manual labor and still have the energy to write software, make music, or create films. Sure you could, but it probably wouldn't be as good or in anywhere near the quantity.
Except it's not limited like that at all. If it were, it'd be pointless, which it definitely is not.
No it's not. It's simply a super efficient distribution channel. The physical channels would be just as efficient if copyright weren't in effect at all. What people -should- do is leverage that efficient distribution and communication to create new works and license them under terms they agree with, instead of jacking the works of others.
I'd buy into the argument that the internet and P2P were truly revolutionary if -new- works and more fairly licensed works were giving the RIAA and MPAA a run for their money. But they aren't. All they're doing is giving the MPAA and RIAA a run for their money by trading works owned by the RIAA and MPAA. Thus they prove the RIAA and MPAA's point.
If you're going to talk about intent and how copyright was intended to protect the profits of the original creator your argument falls to pieces: The intent of copyright law is not so that 20 people can pool together to purchase one copy of a piece of software then install it on each of their 20 machines because just like a second publisher re-publishing a book this action is also undercutting the profits of the original creator.
(Note that both of these concepts fall to pieces when you consider non-simultaneous sharing of a product.)
since you said Intellectual Property, what about stretching your claim to patents: if person X patents an item, and person Y makes the item for free and gives it away, is he in violation of the patent even though he isn't selling it? what if Y does it to flood the market and put person X out of business, because his other product lines can support the cost? I thought that IP law protects X in that regard. Perhaps the same or something similar could be said for copyright.
As far as I know, downloading always was legal.
What was illegal, was uploading, when you did not have a license to do so.
The reason downloading is not illegal, is the same reason it is not illegal to buy stuff from somebody, when later, you read in the paper that the guy you bought it from had obtained it illegally. (Note that I'm avoiding the word "stolen" here, because stealing implies that the original owner does not have it anymore.)
The person that in these cases gets prosecuted, is the seller. You just show the cops your contract, with the address of the seller on it, and you're good. Of course you have to give the object back to the person it got stolen for. But you can sue the seller for the money.
At least in Germany.
I know this, because it happened to a friend of mine.
Of course, because the **AA do not care about any authors or rights, and their objective is not to protect anyone, but to make money trough mafia-like tactics, they do not care, and spread FUD all over the media, about downloading being illegal etc. Which the media picks up happily, bundling it into a nice sensationalist news.
So what changed exactly? Did the **AA equivalent of Spain run out of money? Because that would finally be nice news. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Heck, for that matter, in my state the age of consent is 17; mere minutes away, it would be 16. Not that I'm getting any of it of course, or "it" of any age for that matter, but what sort of dilemmas could that create?
Quién quiere a vivir en España? I just wanted to try that. It won't render ¿.
Last I heard of it..they raised it to 16 (but it might have a sunset clause on this??). I believe it is still 14 if the other person is not more than 5 years older.
So, if you went out of the US, and did it with a 14 yrs old, and say you were 19 yourself and came back to the US. Would you still be safe? Do you go by which state has the lowest age of consent for prosecution?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How will other countries "follow suit"?
No new laws have been created, all the judge did was spell out Spanish law to the RIAA, ie. that non-profit copying isn't illegal here and never has been.
No sig today...
It depends. Usually, you have to obey the laws of the state you're in, not where you reside.
In your example, it wouldn't be illegal, unless the state you lived in enacted a law specifically saying "No citizen under the age of 21 of this state is allowed to drink alcohol, even when in another state."
It shows you don't live in the US, by the way, because all 50 states have had the drinking age set at 21 for a few decades now.
1. that those 20 would have paid for the product were the product not accessible to them for free
2. that demanding payment for a copy of a product is the only valid way you can reward creators
the internet changes the equations. but keep burying your head in the sand and make believing laws made for a world of vinyl and cds works for a world of ubiquitous internet access. its a game changer, and you're playing an old, obsolete game
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Perhaps he didn't know that the Canadian provinces are in a separate country?
"socialist utopia"
what i am arguing about has nothing to do with socialism. i am in fact quite the card carrying enthusiastic capitalist. but that didn't stop you from throwing around propagandistic terms to try to smear me, right?
that the internet has changed the rules of the game is not an opportunity to press your fears of what the new game might be to the forefront. in fact, what the internet does might in fact make for an even more capitalist-friendly world, by doing away with monopolistic and regulatory barriers to trade. if you only opened your mind and stopped quivering in your idiotic fears, you might see a world of ultracapitalism in what the web is making. that it is a NEW system of capitalism is the real motivator for your FUD: fear of the new, fear of the unknown, fear of change. not an intelligent reckoning of the ramifications of new technology, which is what your mind should be probing
but don't worry about it, just call me a socialist and you've won the argument
as we all know, obama is a secret communist muslim, and other retarded red herrings. moronic propagandistic terms are no replacement for intelligent debate. grow the fuck up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ages of consent in Oceania#United States:
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It depends. Usually, you have to obey the laws of the state you're in, not where you reside.
In your example, it wouldn't be illegal, unless the state you lived in enacted a law specifically saying "No citizen under the age of 21 of this state is allowed to drink alcohol, even when in another state."
It shows you don't live in the US, by the way, because all 50 states have had the drinking age set at 21 for a few decades now.
I didn't even bother checking, since it was just for the sake of an example. :)
Thanks for your explanation.
Score: i, Imaginary
Meet Marissa!
Actually, she was offering a better deal -- a whole CD for $1000 -- but didn't offer unlimited distribution after purchase.
I can imagine a band recording an album "on spec", actually, and I'm pretty sure it's happened already. But you'd need to have a very strong established fanbase.
In your defense the age of smoking does vary in several states.
Get real. Let's see: "Transformers 2 might be nice, perhaps it's in the public domain". You fail.
I am totally fed up with the terms commonly used in media, here in Spain, where they usually intentionally mix "Internet downloads" with piracy, when they want to refer to P2P networks, that are the real ones that are supposedly causing troubles to Entertainment Industry. Most Internet users do not distinguish between a website or FTP download from a download from a P2P network, but judges and lawyers do.
When you upload a file to an FTP server you are violating copyright laws, since you are using the right to distribute copyrighted content. When you share the same file on a P2P network, from the legal point of view, you are using your right to private copy of copyrighted content. Here in Spain we do still have the right to private copy, so when I buy a CD I can copy it for personal use. I have the right to lend my original copy of the CD to a friend, but private copy rights allows me to lend not the original but also the copied CD to a friend. And what can be shocking is that private copy law in Spain does not restrict users to a fixed number of copies for personal use. So, from the juridical point of view, sharing your CD songs on Bittorrent network is no different from lending your CD copies to friends.
Having reached this poing technology has evolved much more than laws. So copyrighted content sharing is no longer related to lend some CDs to some friends or relatives, but to the whole world. Spanish RIAA (SGAE) is struggling to press politicians so they "adapt" the private copy law or even make it disappear. I think they are taking the steps, though the things go slower that in other near countries. They have not managed to limit private copy law but they have succedeed in broadening the range of the "Canon compensatorio", that could be translated as compensatory fee. This is a tax that has been around since tape times, and used to add a percentage to the price of blank tapes or photocopiers among others (books, as copyrighted content, were also protected by this law). Nowodays SGAE has managed to extent this compensatory fee to not only blank media supports (DVDs, CDs, etc.) but also flash cards, mobile phones, hard disks, computers, mp3/4 players, etc. They even managed to ask for a fee on the Internet connection, though I think they have succedeed in it yet. It has been reported that the average Spanish family pays now over 300 euros a year with the current compensatory fee, that is entirley redistributed between Entertainment companies and artists (though the say they share it between artists) by SGAE itself, which is an obscure and privately led organization. 300 euros a year pro family is much more than what an averege Spanish family spent on copyrighted content a few 10 years ago (when copying means where not so effective).
Having said all this I would thank that at least I no longer have to put up with the ads at movie theaters or on TV calling me a thief for legally sharingmy copyrighted content, when I am just using a right, for which I have literally paid a significant amount of money. And not only that, but also taking into account that this money goes to an obscure and mafioso association (not even a company, that must keep its balance clearer), whose role in society is quite a bit less than beneficial.
A minor nit: It's just science. The useful arts is patents.
And since it is to the public benefit for works to be in the public domain, and for copyrights to yield the greatest incentive to authors while being minimally restrictive on the public, it would likely be a net improvement to allow natural persons to engage in otherwise infringing non-commercial activity.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
those copying for free are essentially outside the scope of the spirit of intellectual property laws and their intent and purpose.
Distributing free copies does not make it permissible to pirate. Even if you don't profit from the distribution, you still reduce profits for the original creators, who should be compensated for THEIR work. Illegal copying violates IP because it steals compensation away from the owner. It doesn't matter if the copy is on paper or an electronic file; if it belongs to someone it's theirs and they are entitled to any profits.
Thank you, captain obvious.
It's nothing new. It has always been like that, and worldwide.
I wonder why people believe this is not true. Misinformation spread by RIAA and its friends perhaps?
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think it is dangerous to try to assume or derive intent from laws.
A lot of moronic kids were just making up what they thought the laws in sweden should be (and presenting it as fact). You didn't hear this in the news.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
To some degree you have to respect copyrights. If sharing movies music and video games was completely legal and very accessible, well you'd end up with either no industry or a sick amount of DRM. I personally support upholding movie and application copyrights but am for allowing for a copyright reform towards music, which has many many other sources of income aside from music sales(or at the very least a short copyright life).
Could you spare us a proxy in Spain?
I was in the U.S. Navy from age 18 to age 20 and did copious amounts of drinking in foreign ports.
Nobody gave a shit about it as long as I made morning muster on time.
Then everyone gets the item for free. How is that bad?
At least that's what is said at least in Catalonia. In Spain, Justice is not reliable at all. It is collapsed and it's not independent from political forces. Therefore, the term "Spanish Justice" is an oxymoron, a contradictio in termini.
well, at least i can assure you it's independent from media groups. Now, seriously speaking, judges in spain are indepedent from political parties and from the administration - they cannot, by any reason, be removed from their position by any politician. However, the judges at the supreme court and the constitutional court are appointed by the parliament and the government. - i think this happens in many other countries.
I don't know who the hell talked to you about our legal system, but i would say he or she was deliberately including a political bias as part the 'objective' information provided to you.
Check, if you want, the Corruption Perception Index issued by Transparency International and you'll see Spain it's quite a decent country.
Armed forces are treated under a different set of rules in many circumstances, as you should know. For example you can drink, on a military base, at the age of 18...step off the military base and if you are drinking (and under age 21) you are breaking the law.
For the other folks who asked about "well what is considered under age, since each state is different". Honestly I don't know what the federal rules are...maybe it goes by the state in which you reside, maybe it goes by some federal limit - I don't ahve the answer - just relating an article.
For those worried about the proprieter of said services (be it drugs, prostitutes, etc) - don't worry the US can't and won't prosecute them. They are selling a product in their country and have to deal with their country laws. Only US citizens/companies have to worry about the US laws.
For those that mentioned college kids going to canada - yes they can be prosecuted for it, but prosecution has to prove there was intent to do so. Considering the offense is DUI (for those under 21 in the US, DUI is automatically given even if you are nowhere near a car) the prosection does not need to prove intent - they just say "we caught these kids in the US with alcohol in their blood." At that point nobody cares if they got their alcohol in canada (they would care if it is in the US since it's illegal to sell alcohol to minors in the US.
BTW the 21 Age limit is set by the state but every single state in the US has that 21 limit because the federal gov't gives bonus money to states which keep the age at 21 and older. So a state that keeps the age at 21 y/o+ gets federal money and makes organizations like MADD, DADD, and SADD happy. They piss off those under 21, but for the most part people under 21 don't vote, so it's a win-win for politicians.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
SPAIN, HERE WE COME!