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Spanish Website Blocking Law Implemented
Sir Mal Fet writes "In a very polemic move by the Spanish parliament, the infamous 'Sinde' law, already discussed here, was implemented on December 31st. Albeit modified from their original version, the law will allow the Spanish government to request ISPs to summarily close a website due to copyright infringement (English translation). If the ISP refuses, then it's passed to court where a judge can order the website closed. It seems it's one good, one bad over there. The law is in public consult until March, and No Les Votes, a Spanish organization that opposes the law, has already started a campaign to boycott it (English translation)."
Website Blocking Law !
David Bravo: - The Sinde Law have numerous side effects: introducing a strong legal uncertainty in the regulation of the Internet, seriously hampers the activity of technological entrepreneurs
- The intellectual property landscape in this country is appalling: the Embassy of the United States has imposed the adoption of the Law Sinde - Only intelligence can dialogue and work to resolve the current challenges of intellectual property.
Enrique Dans:
- Obviously not going to help anything.
- To know how to proceed to invalidate any inconvenience that may result in the absurd attempt to block the network, download this simple "Manual of lawlessness Sinde" that hacktivists developed (edited by traffickers Dreams).
(googled-translated, O_o, sorry for that)
Yeah, the ISP refuses and goes to court to dispute it (as in proving they're not infringing). If you are a suspected murder, you usually go to court _before_ being forced to do anything. That's called presumption of innocence, and it's somewhat of a big thing in Europe.
Soon, a certain Spanish organization may find out that it's website has already been taken down.
Anything other than a judge decreting a site to be closed is likely unconstitutional, and the first ISP to drag a case to the court will void the law, because the law itself voids the principle of "innocent until guilty". I'm not spanish (I'm from a neighour country), but it seems if one of these cases reaches an european court it will stand no chance, so this seems to be a "pleaser" law - it's written and whatnot (and given that Spain recently changed powers, it's not difficult to guess why now), but if you try to enforce it on the wong people, a shitstorm will rise. Considering that Spain is one of the countries that signed the Lisbon Treaty (and one of the few countries to referend it), the ones actually approving this law will have no interest whatsoever in enforcing it, specially considering the precarious finance state of the country.
Europe is not the USA. A law approved by whatever congress equivalent you have can be discarded as inconstitutional, if it violates rights present in the constitution. Also, Spain is bounded by EU law in many domains, and citizen rights violations can be forwarded to EU tribunals (such as the subversion of the principle "innocent until proven guilty"), so even if the government is serious about it (which I doubt, this seems to be a "pleaser" law), they could be walking into some serious fines if someone appeals to an EU court.
(to be read with Simpon's Apu voice)
You are not welcome here anymore. Thank you, come again!
The problem is, most contracts I've seen regarding hosting/housing/internet services specifically protects the provider against any kind of legal responsability. So you won't have ISPs refusing unless it's their own sites.
They only ram it up your ass when you don't give your face for what you believe to be right. We're not all ACs.
It should have been polemical (polemic is the noun) but it is English. From Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polemical) :
polemical adj 1: of, relating to, or being a polemic : controversial 2: engaged in or addicted to polemics : disputatious
Unfortunately there's no mod for ignoramous so I had to.... oh right, simple English. So I guess that's just "dumb-ass" then (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dumb-ass).
You don't have to be so xenophobic. It was in the quote of the article. /. shouldn't have to simplify/edit a quote every time there's a big scary looking word in it.
What does it mean to "summary close" a website?
Are we talking that the website has to be hosted at a Spanish provider in order to be closed, or are we talking yet another (idiot) DNSSEC-breaking solution?
Or simply a custom DNS entry on whichever DNS servers an ISP controls?
"Very polemic move"? What the hell does that mean? Is this website not in English any more?
Mark me down as troll/flamebait, whatever. But at least do it in English
I do believe polemic is a perfectly cromulent word. Maybe you mean you'd rather like the english sentence in question in 'murrican?
Required viewing before enacting such punishment-based copyright legislation should be the movie 'Caddyshack'... so that they can get a stark reminder that the game of 'whack-a-mole' usually has no winners.
Somehow watching Bill Murray's epic fail in his attempts at getting those groundhogs should be enough for them to understand that this is a pointless battle that will never, ever be won.
Well, it probably won't happen not the least because the copyright holder would demand payment for letting them watch it!
The next video would be one of Gabe Newell discussing the success Steam has had in making users pay for reasonably-priced content with a convenient platform and easy-to-use interface.
[/wishful_thinking]
"News for Nerds"... hmm, last time I checked, the vast majority of nerds knew how to use dictionaries. Or dictionary-browser-extensions. Or whatever is the current-day equivalent.
Begone from my sward!
Um, it is in English.
Polemic:
b. the art or practice of disputation or controversy —usually used in plural but singular or plural in construction
No sig today...
I'm spanish. I'm truly sick of the fearmongering this sorry excuse for a technology website keeps spewing. In this particular case the summary is wrong and retarded, the 'articles' it cites are retarded and there's nothing to see here. The Sinde law will not be 'implemented', there is no such thing as 'implementing' a law. This is only ridiculous. Maybe it makes some sense to information-deprived shit-overloaded US-centric morons who read this website and go ZOMG the sky, it is fellings, it's the end I tell ya!
There has been a change of government in Spain. The incoming idiots want to make a statement. That is all. There have been tens of lawsuits where the only websites closed where the ones who profited, if only by having google ads, from their pages. And the closed sprout again with same content under a different name, with no ads, in a couple of hours, case closed. If there are no ads the page is considered not for profit and spanish courts have never considered P2P any more illegal than lending a magazine. I wish the fucking stupidity about this would go away. But I digress.
In Spain there is still due process for everything. We don't have a MAFIAA, we have a smallish group of whiny artsy retards who get 50% of the budget of any 'spanish' (read ingrown, incestuous, embarrasing shit that should never cross our borders) movie from our taxes. One of the linked articles say that Spain has 'emerged' as a 'safe-haven' for 'piracy'. It didn't emerge, the legal standing of lending things you own has always been the same and it was legal to copy a Phillips Cassette in the 50s and it's legal to make a torrent of a movie today if you own it. What was punishable by death was to use Fe-grade cassettes. But still. Spain is also not a 'safe-haven' for piracy, but same story: we have rights across Europe and we like it that way. Where is The Pirate Bay hosted? Several places now. Has it been closed? Not that I know, just as not one of the small pages in Spain will not be closed as long as they steer clear of making any profit off sharing.
The natural state of the art industry (an oxymoron in itself) is small, very small. Prices are too high for the crap that's selling and it's okay, only kids (or underdeveloped adults) with too much money on their hands buy said crap. I myself stick to music that was written some centuries ago. Yesterday I had some silly fun out of IBNIZ, give it a try, with a week of practice anyone capable of understanding some assembler concepts like stacks and basic bit wrangling can churn a trance track every 4 hours.
You're probably talking about the European court of human rights. It's usually a last resort though; national courts will typically be the first try, which can mean waiting several years before the initial (national) decision is overruled.
Implemented two days ago? Public consults until March? Boycott the law?
Nobody Expects The Spanish InConfusion!
I agree, TFS is immensely confusing, at least for non-Spanish citizens, and lacks any contextual clues. It's like a very bad translation of an article meant only for Spanish domestic consumption where many assumptions are made about the target audience's previous knowledge of the subject and the Spanish domestic political/legal landscape and legal/legislative procedures.
It reads a lot like Japanese instruction manuals from years back that had almost completely indecipherable English translations, many of which were quite humorous, but unfortunately very unhelpful.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The plead itself can be embarrasing for the country, and - if found guilty - the fines won't be light. National courts will have greater fear of being discredited by an international authority than compromising their relationship with the (ever-changing) government. Even if they stick with it, Spain can be easily kept in the "digital stone age" while other countries progress by their example.
No, you are very wrong. The ECHR is not an EU court, it is part of the Council of Europe. It decides in cases of citizens against states subject to the European Convention on Human Rights. It is the court of last resort for such cases.
The member countries of the European Union are subject to the The Court of Justice of the European Union. Violations of EU treaties and law is brought before this court. Justice is far quicker and harsher in this court.
I think you are very optimistic, politicians don't have to believe the law in question will actually work, hehe :)
There is no game of "whack-a-mole" if they, the politicians, are not the one's playing. The people in charge of policing and executing this law on the other hand have no say.
What you should keep in mind is that unlike the US Congress and administration, European Union member states are subject to strict control by their peers and the [superior] European courts (the central EU treaties and the separate Human Rights Conventions). So called sovereign countries such as Spain are subject to a supra-national system of law equivalent to "federal" government. In the end I believe these laws will fail in some manner, if they are brought before the The Court of Justice of the European Union.
The linked page describes the procedures in short. To quote a relevant paragraph: "The Commission can start these proceedings if it believes that a member country is failing to fulfil its obligations under EU law. These proceedings may also be started by another EU country". The European Commission is the EU's executive body and represents the interests of Europe as a whole (as opposed to the interests of individual countries).
I fondly remember learning the greatest measure of how positive the European Union actually is for European citizens and consumers in law school; The example involved a simple trade dispute between France and Germany if I remember the details correctly. The subject was some sort of tax on different wine products.
The mere fact that another EU country, Germany in this case, had slightly different tax laws for similar products that left French-produced products at an disadvantage, gave France the right and ability to complain to the EU courts. The verdict was clear, the Germans had to adapt and similar trade rules were instated in all of the member countries. This happened again and again in other cases.
That is how the EU works internally and externally (see the RoHS directive). The member countries have the ability to ensure that both their own market and that of their neighbors do not become too different. If Spain and other countries suddenly have an "advantage" or make trade with companies in other EU countries difficult it will be subject to legal scrutiny for very selfish reasons that will benefit both Spanish and European consumers.
No probably the http://europa.eu/about-eu/institutions-bodies/court-justice/index_en.htm which is supposed to upheld the "federal EU legislation" against the local governments and in generally gets involved in almost every principal case as a standard practice by the local supreme courts, the fact that few cases actually make it all the way is due to a process of advisory where the national court ask the EU court for advice, on cases where EU law may be relevant.
The interesting thing is that the main tactics in the war on "fair use" seams to be outsourcing the regulation to private parties who does not get a realistic choice to refuse a takedown request as it will always be both more expansive and more risky to defend their customers rights then not.
This allow some interesting legal doublethink in the context of the US supreme court where you can protect the "freedom" of the "oppressor"(telco) instead of the "oppressed"("uploader"), by granting corporation a privileged personhood status,something that is a bit harder with the general EU legislation because corporation and consumer tend to be more clearly defined.
The basic tactic is to avoid involving the courts, as it spread the risk of financial loss move evenly between the accuser and accused in favor of a "private" pseudo system where it's almost free to accuse and expansive to defend, when things go to court the content industry almost always get's less then they ask for, if anything at all.
It's still the wrong word. The parliament's move doesn't have any relation to a polemic.
(Polemical is not a synonym for "controversial". It specifically relates to polemic.)
Depends on the ISP, wouldn't it? I imagine there are still some small ones out there who are willing to stick up for their customers.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
From wikipedia (don't you have a computer?):A polemic ( /pÉ(TM)ËlÉmÉk/) is when the argument, debate or opinion, leans toward attacking the other person as opposed to the discussion at hand. That is, an argument or rhetoric becomes polemic when they have pejorative implications of the dignity of opposition. This is most common in a heated debate, where frustration or a sense of righteousness promotes hostility. The word is derived from the Greek ÏÎÎÎμÎÎÏOEÏ (polemikos), meaning "warlike, hostile",[1][2] which comes from ÏÏOEÎÎμÎÏ ('polemos), "war".[3]
Please take your aliteracy elsewhere. Most folks here have been to college and actually read, and read harder fare than People Magazine.
OOPS, I should have realized that since you're an aliterate you probably haven't heard of that word, either. It must suck to have such a small vocabulary. At any rate, an aliterate is someone who knows how to read, but doesn't.
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