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File-Sharing For Personal Use Declared Legal In Portugal
New submitter M0j0_j0j0 writes "After receiving 2000 complaints regarding 'illegal file sharing' from ACAPOR regarding P2P networks, the Portuguese prosecutor refused to take the case into court on the premise that file sharing is not illegal in the territory if files are for personal and not commercial use. The court also stated that the complaints had, as sole evidence, the IP address of users, and that it is a wrong statement to assume an IP address is directly related to one individual. TorrentFreak has a piece in English with more details (original source in Portuguese)."
...among a lot of insanity...let's just see what German...err, the EU has to say about that.
Portuguese citizens need to be reminded that they're still under the jurisdiction of U.S. law, and WILL be extradited to the U.S. for breaking any IP laws!
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Someone better stop this sh*t before it spreads!... Common sense that is!
Where's the RIAA/MPAA/1% at with damage control?
Oh thats right, they are buttering up the EU and other large groups instead of small member or non-member nations...
If they suddenly went POOF, I wouldn't have a care in the world
Nice.
Portugal is also a very pretty country with lots of nature, and did I mention CHEAP housing with LOTS of land for pocket change? Plus low taxes, and even lower for the seniors.
Perfect retirement country, I may be heading there one day...who knows.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Anyone got a lead on good Portuguese proxy servers I can torrent through?
Want to help me set some up?
Silence is a state of mime.
And this is how it will remain until the bribe I mean the interest free financial bailout monies are forwarded. At which point the subject will be revisited.
Why Portugal May Be the Next Greece
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Enabling pirates since ~1577. Thanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Fernandez
Silence is a state of mime.
âoeWe are doing anything we can to alert the government to the very serious situation in the entertainment industryâ
I can't quite put my finger on it exactly, but for some reason that sentence made me LOL bigtime. Luckily no coffee was in my mouth at that moment, or I'd have ejected it explosively through several facial orifices.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
No, I'm pretty sure that assaulting ships at sea and robbery in general is still punishable, even if you don't charge for your services.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
You just wait until various acronymous industry groups start blaming Portugal's "lax" IP laws on their financial problems. With entertainment revenue's bottom dropping out, as it does to an extent when people have little or no disposable income, we're bound to hear industry groups blaming it all on legalized file sharing. Sigh.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The result has been a decrease in drug use and all associated problems
I don't think you really drove the point home. What this literally means is that decriminalization of drugs results in:
- LESS crime
- LESS violence
- LESS injustice
- LESS corruption in government
In other words, decriminalization has the exact opposite result of what the government propaganda teaches us. That should immediately raise a red flag and cause a citizen to lose trust in government. The fact that drug use itself also goes down, rather than up, is just the icing on the cake. The reason drugs need to be decriminalized is not simply to lower drug use; it is for the much more critical reasons stated above.
and you're using it personally (meaning not distributing to the public at large), it's legal. In other words, downloading a song to listen to yourself is probably fine, but putting music on your Portuguese-hosted website probably isn't.
Exactly. Playing music at your private parties is also illegal, unless you own the music or you have been licensed to do so.
This is a closely-guarded secret held under wraps by the US government, corporate-owned media, Big Pharma, and most especially the sickening for-profit prison corporations. You as a US citizen will NEVER hear about this on the news. Bill Maher should open every show talking about Portugal and compare it US prison statistics.
Portuguese with some legal background:
It has always been legal to own or acquire (download) unauthorized copies of most content. *
It's legal to make how many copies you want for your own use and to share with other people
within your "personal" sphere.
What is illegal is "making such content available to the public", emphasis on "public" as in
"general public".
What the A.G. clarified is that, in the particular case of BT and similar P2P protocols,
the act of seeding a file you are downloading, or did just download, enjoys the same treatment
as if you were downloading using a traditional protocol, i.e., benefits from the "personal use"
exception.
This does not mean you can happily run a public W4R3Z FTP server with impunity, but it does clarify
an important issue re: the law vs P2P downloads that had had no previous legal interpretation.
It has also brought about an interesting IP != person argument which will be interesting to follow up on,
in case of more serious offenses.
AC
* thanks to the lobbying efforts of the BSA-equivalent in the 90s, computer programs are dealt with differently
and enjoy no "personal use" rights.
Piracy = making money off of other people's works = bad
File sharing != Piracy
Thank goodness the portugese legal system understands that as most of the rest of the world (Including Slashdot) seems to think those things are one and the same.
From Wikipedia:
Just because Americans don't hear about foreign films doesn't mean they don't exist, or even thrive (like all other film industries, including the American one).
O DIAP considera "lícita" a reprodução para uso privado, "ainda que colocando-se neste tipo de redes a questão de o utilizador agir simultaneamente no ambiente digital em sede de upload e download dos ficheiros a partilhar". in publico.pt
Rushed translation from that original article in portuguese:
DIAP considers reproduction for private use "legal", adding "even though there is the issue of a user acting simultaneously as uploader and downloader of the shared files."
This is a great example of media spinning towards the opposite side, look at the full quote from another source:
[...] even though there is the issue of a user acting simultaneously as uploader and downloader of the shared files, we understand as legitimate the use of P2P networks by their users for private use -- articles 75-2a and 81-b of the Code of Author's Rights and Associated Rights -- even though one can gather that once the copy is done the user does not stop being part of the sharing process.
So what sounded like a warning to change the law was actually them specifying that the download vs. upload issue is irrelevant for this particular case. A really strong point, and the rightsholder associations are fuming like mad (especially since they were the ones that caused this following a silly charge of 2000 IP addresses.) Considering the conservative tendency of the current government and the current political shitstorm here, it wouldn't be shocking to see a change to the law try to slip through Parliament. Also, if the EU someday decides for a copyright directive that outlaws private copying (lobbies are powerful, remember), it's bye bye for our downloader's paradise here.