Spain's new piracy penalty: Six years in jail

http://www.zdnet.com/spains-new-piracy-penalty-six-years-in-jail-7000020973/

by Libertatea • 13 years ago

104 66 13 years ago

benologist2• 13 years ago

a) it's a proposal

b) it's for the people operating/owning "link" sites that exist purely to profit from and facilitate piracy. These people gamble the income from millions or billions of monthly ad impressions are worth it, they don't deserve a free pass.

c) users of such sites are not being targeted, except by the site owners peddling mountains of spyware and affiliate scamware all over their sites

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

If this is all true I honestly don't see much wrong with this law. 6 years might seem like a lot for a non-violent crime like this but with the amount of money those sites can make anything less probably wouldn't be much of a deterrent.

zimbatm• 13 years ago

"6 years might seem like a lot for a non-violent crime like this but ...". 6 years is a lot for a non-violent crime. Full-stop. It doesn't matter if you like the practice or not.

What happens if you have a legitimate publication and link to a source that happens to also have illegal material ? This opens a can of worms.

betterunix3• 13 years ago

Except that those sites are not infringing copyrights. Those sites are just pointing people to the infringing copies. Take the sites away, and the infringing copies continue to exist, and everyone just goes to sites hosted outside the jurisdiction of Spain (or they find a new way to share the links).

antr• 13 years ago

  > a) it's a proposal

It has already been approved, the proposal was made on May this year.

frank_boyd• 13 years ago

a) it's a proposal

In English: The US has expressed its threats again.

betterunix3• 13 years ago

"it's for the people operating/owning "link" sites"

In other words, six years in jail for telling people where they can download possibly infringing copies of copyrighted material? Wow, when you put it that way, it sounds ten times worse.

rvschuilenburg• 13 years ago

"after pressure from the US over its piracy record".

ghostDancer• 13 years ago

As seen on the first group of leaks from wikileaks, Joe Biden pressured and threatened spanish government till they made a law then called Biden-Sinde or Sinde , as it was not enough for RIAA/MPAA lobbies, now we are going to have the new one and they have removed the right to remove DRM for backup personal copies also (which existed before) , when the corporation masters order the US politicians obey when the US politicians order the lame spanish politicians crawl and obey to their masters. Edited to add that the piracy numbers they usually use for Spain are all lies.

Fuxy3• 13 years ago

US can't impose trade sanctions on a EU members without incurring the wrath of the EU so very unlikely.

Nux3• 13 years ago

Really? Cause it looks to me like USA is doing exactly whatever the fuck it wants.

In the end a lot of this is done behind the scenes, EU spirit may be OK, but the signing is done by people and people can be threatened, bribed etc.

Fuxy3• 13 years ago

The only way it can be done in any way is is EU sanctioned it's members as well (don't recall it ever happening) otherwise merchandise would simply find another route to get to Spain or the US sanctions the entire EU (shooting itself in the foot).

Although i kinda wish they did. They EU is not some lightweight when it comes to economic power.

atlanticus• 13 years ago

Pretending the Spanish government has no responsibility for its actions makes it so much easier for the US to get its way, but I guess it makes people feel better.

Mordor• 13 years ago

Spain, a country with high unemployment, takes a step towards crushing its IT infrastructure.

Nux3• 13 years ago

I'm not sure about the IT infrastructure, but it's quite fantastic what's going on!

kaonashi2• 13 years ago

The high unemployment is fantastic? Or the response in the face of it is?

altero• 13 years ago

However, users of these link-sharing sites will not be targeted under the new law and search engines and peer-to-peer users will also be exempt.

Most of these sites are actually warez search engines. This makes this law pretty toothless.

cliveowen• 13 years ago

Jeez, if I was Spanish I would probably get the chair.

txutxu2• 13 years ago

Spanish here (living outside).

I've work for the government and their lawyers, in companies based on pirated software (from MS, from Adobe, etc).

Can we please start fighting piracy there ?

Then we should follow fighting piracy in the power positions.

We have a lot of that, and trust me, even on public evidence of the crime, they don't go a single year to jail.

Maybe when all that is clean, we should think on how we can waste our jails better...

susi22• 13 years ago

Can you revise your comment? I can't understand it.

balabaster5• 13 years ago

I think what this person means is that he's worked for both government, their lawyers and private corporations where there is evidence of large amounts of illegal software in use.

Also they are saying "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." i.e. they make sure their own house is in order before passing judgment on anyone else. Get rid of all their own illegal software and only then are they in a position to charge others with the same crime after all, nobody is above the law.

... except those with enough money or information to bribe, blackmail or topple governments and assassinate other world figures with impunity.

txutxu2• 13 years ago

Sorry, I think @balabaster did get it and did explain it more clearly than me. This is a very emotional topic for me and maybe I was not clear enough with the message I did want to transmit.

Ygg2• 13 years ago

What he probably meant is that public institutions are the nest of most heinous file sharing that go unpunished, while individual owners and small business suffer the brunt of these laws.

davekinkead2• 13 years ago

Perhaps this is not the best example given that Spain isn't from a common law tradition but I find the encroachment of criminal penalties for what are essentially civil matters very disturbing.

Criminal law exists to sanction actions that threaten society enough that the state is justified punish offenders ie murder or physical theft. Civil law by contrast exists to right wrongs between private parties ie suing for compensation.

Copyright violations strike me as a clear case for tort. It's a commercial, not a penal matter, but thanks to effective lobbying, the state has now become the MPAA's commercial lawyer.

Silhouette• 13 years ago

Civil law by contrast exists to right wrongs between private parties ie suing for compensation.

I'd be the first to agree that draconian penalties for copyright infringement are inappropriate, but I don't think the above is a strong argument, partly because it assumes that whoever is being sued for copyright infringement actually has sufficient funds to make good on any harm they've done, and partly because it assumes that harm can be quantified to a standard a court will accept. Neither of those things is necessarily true, though substantial harm may come to the copyright holder who has been wronged all the same.

davekinkead2• 13 years ago

Civil law by contrast exists to right wrongs between private parties ie suing for compensation

Civil law exists for exactly this reason, and has for hundreds of years. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(common_law)#Purpose>

Whether or not it is effective or fair is a different matter. As you point out, there are often financial & power imbalances between parties. One would have to make a very different kind of argument that this justifies the state prosecuting on the wronged party's behalf rather than say, making tort more equitable.

reginaldjcooper• 13 years ago

Okay, then you can jail people if and only if you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the downloaders they enabled were going to buy that music otherwise. Criminal court? Criminal court standards.

Six years is still pretty fucking ridiculous. And I somehow doubt the newspapers will see any management go to jail for grabbing people's photos from Flickr.

acd• 13 years ago

Use Ubuntu, employ programmers without work in Spain to replace proprietary software with opensource government systems. Save a lot in the long run on license costs. Proprietary software companies will become desperate and offer huge software rebates.

CaptchaReader• 13 years ago

This has been done already for years. Regions like Andalucia, Galicia or Extremadura have been enforcing the use of free software, even creating their own Ubuntu based distros. It's not software piracy what is being targeted here, but movies and music. The software industry can't (or doesn't want to) lobby as hard as the entertainment industry.

ashray3• 13 years ago

6 years is way too much for a non violent crime. There are rapists and murders and drug dealers who get by with less at times. It's amazing what the right kind of lobbying can do in this world.

On the other hand, I personally see this as part of a policy of appeasement and am now waiting for some huge 'donations/low interest loans' to come out to Spain from the USA/MPAA/RIAA/etc.

I'm not Spanish but I have seen the culture of copying and sharing and using pirated software that exists in Spain. A penalty like this may shut down a file locker or two, or may even take down a few torrent sites, but it will do nothing to deter file sharing in general - what's more ridiculous is that the proposal clearly states that it's in line with the people's culture to generally share software/music/movies/games/etc.

Given that it's such a half assed effort it could only be a response to pressure from the US, a response tuned to not raise too many eyebrows in Spain but at the same time unlock some bonuses/favors from the US govt.

Ultimately I think this has come as subsequent pressure and a fallout from the whole Rojadirecta debacle a few years ago.[1] (those guys basically sued the US government for seizing their domain... AND WON[2]!)

1 - http://torrentfreak.com/tag/rojadirecta/

2 - http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-returns-seized-domains-to-stream...

outworlder• 13 years ago

Any jail time AT ALL is too much for non-violent crime. If a citizen is no threat to others, it is not necessary to take away his freedom (and along it, his job, and contact with his family). This is a monetary crime at best (usually, without profit for the pirate) and a monetary compensation is in order, nothing more. A hefty fine can hurt a lot and is a deterrent, but not taking away the ability to support oneself.

a2kadet• 13 years ago

You think Bernie Madoff should have walked?

joelle• 13 years ago

I totally agree that 6 years is way too much. It's absolutely absurd. Punishment definitely doesn't fit the crime.

balabaster5• 13 years ago

Er, am I missing something... doesn't this violate section 20 of their constitution which guarantees a right to freedom of expression?

matthewmacleod• 13 years ago

You're missing something. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of this particular situation, it's self-evident that a right to freedom on expression is not carte blanche to publish anything – you're still rightly subject to controls.

ds92• 13 years ago

OK, there could be an argument that knowingly linking to infringing files is outside of freedom of expresssion. But the article says nothing about a knowledge criterion.

It says "owners of sites found to be making money [directly or indirectly!] from linking to pirated material will face prison sentences of up to six years and the closure of their site. ... users of these link-sharing sites will not be targeted under the new law"

This is even worse. Users who knowingly post links to infinging files would be a more appropriate target than the site owners. Under the new law, anyone who allows user posts will have to pre-moderate everything or prohibit users posting links?

The obvious problem with the law is much more basic: how can the site owner know whether there is or is not infringement at the other end of a link? Are site owners expected to somehow have a list of all copyrightable works and know the terms on which each of them is licensed to each recipient?

Placing the burden on the operator of the linking site creates a situation where no one will dare to make a link, because if it turns out to go to something infringing the linker will be subject to prosecution.

devx• 13 years ago

This is what I found with a quick search on the Constitute Project:

"the right to freely express and spread thoughts, ideas and opinions through words, in writing or by any other means of reproduction."

balabaster5• 13 years ago

This would imply that it's not against the law to post a link to other material regardless of the legality of that material. It's exactly the same as saying "Go to X address if you want to obtain illegal drugs" and then getting arrested, charged and imprisoned for sending someone to a known dealer...

bane• 13 years ago

This makes as much sense as life in prison without the possibility of parole for littering.

bostonpete• 13 years ago

This should not come as a surprise to anyone. Spain has been trying to crack down on piracy since the 16th century.

na85• 13 years ago

If I wanted "witty" puns I'd read reddit comments.

snarfy• 13 years ago

This isn't even about Spain. Once the precedent is set internationally, they will argue they need to bring the US laws in line with international law.

Spain's new piracy penalty: Six years in jail

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