US Threatens Spain For Not Implementing SOPA-Like Law

SharkLaser writes "In a leaked letter sent to Spain's outgoing President, the US ambassador warned that if Spain didn't pass SOPA-like file-sharing site blocking law, Spain would risk being put into United States trade blocklist. United States government interference in Spain's intellectual property laws have been suspected for a long time, and now the recent leaks of diplomatic cables confirm this. Apart from the cables leaked earlier, now another cable dated December 12th says U.S. expresses 'deep concern' over the failure to implement SOPA-style censorship law in the country. 'The government has unfortunately failed to finish the job for political reasons, to the detriment of the reputation and economy of Spain,' read the letter. Racing against the clock in the final days of the government, Solomont had one last push. 'I encourage the Government of Spain to implement the Sinde Law immediately to safeguard the reputation of Spain as an innovative country that does what it says it will, and as a country that breeds confidence,' he wrote."

Comments

The sad irony in this matter..

[Superken7]

Actually, thanks to Wikileaks we now know that the head of PROMUSICAE (the RIAA-equivalent in Spain), Guisasola, secretly pushed for having Spain included in the infamous 301 List. http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=10MADRID179
After Spain was finally included in that list, he claimed that being included in that list was "a national dishonor", and used this argument in order to push for Ley Sinde, the aforementioned SOPA-like law.

Only a few days ago, this law was finally passed. Most Internet users are against this law because it does not change which sites become illegal - it merely changes the *referee*. As a result, judges have been replaced by a commission whose members are privately selected by private lobbying parties (aka spain's RIAA). This might sound like something outrageous, but sadly this is exactly what has happened.
If this was not bad enough, keep in mind that this occurs right after *years* of judges ruling *in favor* of those websites that they want to take down (no hosting sites, just linking sites)

Re:Now do you understand

[OzPeter]

Being a big bully is one thing. It's one thing if we're a big bully on things like human rights. What's more distressing to me is that we're basically allowing the media companies to push the US into being a big bully for things that even our own citizens think is ridiculous.

Before the media companies there were other commercial interests that pushed the US government to do their bidding. Go back to 1893 and you'll find that sugar interests were responsible for Hawaii being taken over by the US. And that is just one example.

Re:Dear US of A

[thisnamestoolong]

With the amount of money that it takes to be a viable candidate for the office of the president of the United States, you can be sure that anyone you see on the ballot was bought and payed for long before you had any say in the matter. Couple this with the corporate collusion in media ownership to take care of 'outliers' (not that I agree with everything he says, but look at the time Ron Paul was given in debates in relation to his poll numbers), and you have a system where we really don't get a choice at all.