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.

Comments

Short lived ruling?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

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.

Re:Short lived ruling?

[CannonballHead]

Allow me, for a minute, to be a Professional Musician. I shall now think to myself.

Me to Self: Self? ("yes?") You know, I wrote[/performed] some great music here. I think I'd like to sell it to people.

Self to me: That's a great idea. But you know, once you sell it the first time, anyone can download it for free.

Me to Self: Well, I really do want to make some money on this... but I'll only get paid for the first sale, huh?

Yup.

Ok. Well here's what I'll do; I'll just wait until someone is willing to buy my 3 minute recording for about $10,000. They can distribute it as much as they want after that.

...

Seriously. Plumber analogy is bad. Why? Toilets keep breaking. The SAME toilet. Music doesn't "break." And if it's free to download again, and if the only time the originator gets paid is the FIRST time, then that FIRST time is going to be pretty stinking expensive, and we'll be back to the rich people (or a church) being the "patron of the arts" ... that system. Which worked back in the 18th century. But really not a whole lot since, if I remember correctly, Beethoven.

Re:Short lived ruling?

[MyLongNickName]

Spot on. However, don't expect that to go over very well. Folks have been conditioned to believe they are entitled to get whatever they want for free. Somehow to them, the only thing worth purchasing are physical goods.

Re:Short lived ruling?

[Anonymous Coward]

If, instead of being akin to losing some sales to piracy, all sales were legally lost to piracy..

That would be bad. But I think people are talking about sales being legally losable, not lost.

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.

Backwards. That's how the company goes out of business: creating negative value for the people for buy their product, instead of ignoring (or trying to attract) the people who don't. DRM is what causes all sales (as opposed to some sales) to change from losable to lost. People can play the non-DRMed content, so some of them will buy it. A market still exists. People can't play DRMed content, so no market exists at all, except the advertising market on the pirate torrent sites.

If you justify copyright infringment based on..

Nobody's justifying infringement. They're saying that it might be legal. Different thing. There are way too many things in this world that are legal that I wouldn't justify or do. I'm not about to start drinking bleach, even if my government doesn't point a gun at me and say I'm not allowed to.

Companies need to look to their profits, not pirates. Pirates aren't going to pay; they're not in the market. If you try to look at things from the pirates' point of view, the whole thing is really bleak. And God help you if you adapt copyright policy to their point of view. Adios, creation.

Copyright policy should look at things from the seller's point of view: who is in the market? Those are the people whose money you want. They aren't downloading the songs from someone else; they're buying it. Or at least that's the case if you're selling. So take their money. (Or leave it, if you're not in business.)

If we're going to talk about the common sense aspect of things, then DRM is the last thing I'd expect a profit-seeking business to pursue. I'd like to see a pro-DRM manager justify their decision to not have customers.

Spanish Justice : a oxymoron

[carnicer]

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.

This is what I've said all along

[Locke2005]

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!

Re:What isn't copyrighted material?

[santax]

I agree, it doesn't makes sense at all. This is what good lobbying can do for an industrie. Most of the dvd's and cd's I buy I happen to fill with the music I make with my band... Even weirder it gets when you take into account that I am effectivily paying myself that way but despite numerous letters I still have to recieve my part of the fair-use money.

How is this a change?

[Hurricane78]

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. :)

Re:What isn't copyrighted material?

[gstoddart]

And this makes sense? I buy all my music and use CD/DVD for data copying. So I'd have to subsidize someone who doesn't feel he has to buy music/movies? What a joke.

It doesn't make sense, but it was the media companies who pushed for the levies in the first place.

Once they realized that everyone said "ok, screw you, I'm downloading since I've already paid you" they wanted to have their cake and eat it too -- they want the levy and for downloading to be illegal.

I'm betting that a couple of courts have sided with only dinging people once (and supported the notion of fair use) and said if there's a levy, the download is legit.

Since I know I pay the levy here in Canada, I wouldn't feel so bad about copying music if I was so inclined.

Cheers

Re:nice!

[Anonymous Coward]

By that logic it's illegal for a lot of people to go to Vegas simply because where they are from gambling is illegal.

Re:pre-trial ruling

[pato101]

That is limited to music and films, under the right of private copy, in the same sense that you can share your CDs with your friends -as far as you don't make profit from it-.
You cannot download privative software legally from P2P or whatever (note that you cannot share that software with your friends either).

Not a layer, but a Spanish guy as well.

Re:pre-trial ruling

[rvw]

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.

The same is true for the Netherlands, although Brein pretends it's otherwise. So here you can download copyrighted content for private use. Another thing that's legal is to make a copy of a cd or dvd for a friend or relative. As long as you don't ask money for it, and don't do this in batches (like 30 cds for the complete classroom) you won't have any problems.