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Spain's Proposed Internet Law Sparks Protest, Change

Posted by timothy on from the passion-of-gen-y dept.

[rvr] writes "Last Monday, the Spanish Government published the latest draft for the Sustainable Economy Act, which would enable a Commission dependent of the Ministry of Culture to take down websites without a court order, in cases of Intellectual Property piracy. On Wednesday, using Google Wave, a group of journalists, bloggers, professionals and creators composed and issued a Manifesto in Defense of Fundamental Rights on the Internet, stating that 'Copyright should not be placed above citizens' fundamental rights to privacy, security, presumption of innocence, effective judicial protection and freedom of expression.' Quickly, more than 50,000 blogs and sites re-published the manifesto. On Thursday morning, the Ministry of Culture Ángeles González Sinde (former president of the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) organized a meeting with a group of Internet experts and signers of the Manifesto. The meeting was narrated in real time via Twitter and concluded without any agreement. On Thursday afternoon, the Prime Minister's staff had a private meeting with the Ministry of Culture and some party members (who also expressed their opposition to the draft). Finally, Spain Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced in a press meeting that the text will be changed and a court order will continue to be a requirement, but [the government] still will search for ways to fight Internet piracy."

3 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Duh. by marcansoft · · Score: 5, Informative

    A few notes for those not aware of how things have been going around here lately (I'm Spanish):

    • The current Spanish government is in bed with the local equivalent of the MAFIAA (the SGAE).
    • Downloading copyrighted audio/video works is legal in spain, as long as no profit is made (this does not apply to software). Whether uploading is legal or not (or how illegal it is) is somewhat debated. There have been plenty of people "turning themselves" in for downloading, with no arrests made.
    • To offset the legal downloads, just about everything relevant to copying has a levy on it, including writable optical media (the levies there are ridiculous), but also the writers, hard drives, USB sticks, MP3 players, cellphones, printers, scanners, photocopiers, etc. For example, you're paying the SGAE €12 for each hard drive, except for those bundled as master drives on new systems. These profits are then theoretically distributed by the SGAE to artists in highly controversial ways.
    • Nonetheless, there is constant FUD claiming that "pirating" music and movies is illegal and will get you jailed (there are some pretty ridiculous advertising campaigns by the SGAE)

    The SGAE is nothing new, they're the usual corrupt mafia-like organization that you'd expect. They're just trying to screw over both consumers and artists as much as they can. They'd love to have it both ways (making downloads illegal and keeping the levies).

    Funny tidbit: the SGAE used to claim that Linux was a shareware version of UNIX on their glossary page. They later "fixed" it by lifting a paragraph from Wikipedia, in violation of the GFDL.

  2. Re:Joer, tío! by gerddie · · Score: 5, Informative

    They still are, generally (Rounding three years in Madrid quite soon) - Lately a judge decided that P2P sites are okay for private sharing. However, the government tries to slip in above kind of Internet law ruling for quite some time now, it is not the first time and sure it will be not the last time.

  3. Re:Wellcome to China. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The point is (I'm also in Spain), that the proposal states that if a website hosts illegal contents...:

    - If the server of that website is in Spain, it will be asked to remove the contents. If it refuses to do it, it will be taken down without a court or a judge involved
    - If the server is abroad (here comes the fun part), the Anti-Piracy comission will ask THE SPANISH ISPs (Telefonica, Ono, etc) to BLOCK ACCESS to that website

    This easily means that people from spain would not be able to access sites such as megaupload or rapidshare. This means that the Internet seen from Spain would be different when seen from another country.

    And this definitely smells like China's firewall.

    (sorry for poor english)