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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.
I heard the same thing about Sweden... then suddenly The Pirate Bay went down after police raided the building that housed the servers.
There is a thing called fair use. In the Netherlands for example we pay about 24 eurocents on every empty cd or dvd we buy. In return it is legal to download music and movies for personal uses. I can imagine Spain also has this ruling.
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 am sure you are joking but just an fyi - if you happen to be coming from the US - going to another country with the intent of doing something that would be considered illegal in the US (e.g. sex w/13 y/o) you would be convicted of doing that crime upon your arrival (assuming they 1) knew of your intent and 2) prove that you did it).
/. so step 1 is out of the way :)
Well you made a post on
BTW there was, about 6 months ago, a trial where a guy sent e-mails to his friend talking about going to south america to get underage prostitutes. He did this. When he came back the cops arrested him. Not sure how they knew he actually did the deed (I don't remember) but they used his e-mails to show his intent. He is in jail.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
There's only 3 countries that haven't signed on to the Berne Convention (Iran, Myanmar, and another one I can't remember)
The one you can't remember is Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Cambodia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kiribati, Kuwait, Laos, The Maldives, Mozambique, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, The Seychelles, Sierra Leone, The Solomon Islands, Somalia, Taiwan, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda and Vanautu.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
You are intentionally lying. Read the truth from a dozen newspapers by googling [justicia cataluña colapso]. Unfortunately justice in catalonia is so overloaded as in the rest of the country.
Yes, we do. We also pay to SGAE (the spanish RIAA) when you buy a DVD recorder mp3 player, a mobile phone or a hard disk. 6 months ago I bought a 500 GB hard disk, and 13.92 of it went to SGAE.
Obviously, after paying that I demand the right to pirate all what I want.
The law in Spain is that any non-profit copying of material is OK. All the judge has done is make it clear to the RIAA that P2P involves no exchange of money so therefore it's legal under Spanish law.
(IANAL but I live in Spain...)
No sig today...
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.