BitTorrent Sites Step Closer to Legality in Spain
Written by enigmax on November 04, 2008In September a Spanish court decided that the eDonkey indexing site Sharemula operated legally, indicating that linking to copyright infringing material is permitted under the law. Now that decision has been reinforced as a court decides that a torrent site previously shutdown by the police, also operated legally.
In July 2007 we reported on the case of TodoTorrente.com, one of Spain’s largest BitTorrent sites. After a year long investigation by Spain’s Anti-Piracy Federation, an announcement was made by the Directorate of Police and Civil Guard – the site had been raided and closed by judicial order while the administrators arrested.
According to Spanish police, the site caused the entertainment industries 535,000 euros in losses and made 30,000 euros in profits. Unfortunately the authorities didn’t have the benefit of foresight, which would’ve given them an understanding of how Spanish law would deal with a site that links to copyright infringing material.
In September 2008, a Spanish court ruled that providing links to copyrighted material is not a crime. The Provincial Court of Madrid ruled that Sharemula.com, a site offering eDonkey links to movies, music, software and games, did not break the law. Furthermore, the court’s decision was final and could not be appealed.
If the ruling in the Sharemula case holds up, this means that TodoTorrente was not breaking the law either. Lawyer David Bravo who was involved in the TodoTorrente case, has contacted TorrentFreak with an update on the TodoTorrente situation. David notes that the coverage of the TodoTorrente raids and arrests had a great impact in the Spanish media, and further afield.
Of particular interest was a gloating editorial which published in Portal Latino, which claimed that TodoTorrente wasn’t “kids playing on a network” but an “illegal business”, and celebrated the closure. David explains that the media uproar this caused left little room for the arrested admins to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
However, after an application was made to Magistrate’s Court No.3 in Orihuela, it has now issued an interim order of dismissal of the case against TodoTorrente. The court decided that the site or admins didn’t commit any crime “since the investigation showed that the website was limited to providing links to downloads and didn’t offer downloads directly.”
Essentially, the court has decided that TodoTorrente operated in a similar manner to Sharemula. The decision is open to appeal, but there is no doubt that BitTorrent sites are getting closer to legality in Spain.
Previously: VIPeers Intoduces Free BitTorrent Hosting
Next: ShowInsider Ranks Pirated TV-Shows
24 Responses
First!
Good news tho.
ALthough its discerning that the news media is on the side of the facists.
EDIT:
by “news media” i’m referring to Portol Latino of course.
I’m spanish and this is a victory in the road to free sharing
Ice breaking news…. :)
Fuck yeah!
Time to get some trackers going in Spain, just in case those nutcases in charge of Sweden ATM keep on going with their anti-people, pro-MAFIA-loby policy.
@1 : You cannot read Spanish obviously: the article makes a point that the website was running at a profit is all. The profit was made conducting an activity that was deemed illegal in another similar case (website linking to copyrighted content)
There’s not a fascist government in Spain and why don’t you learn what basic english words mean. Using “discerning” makes no sense whatsoever – perhaps you meant disconcerting but perhaps that word has too many letters in it.
This is a great win for filesharing!
in english:
http://derecho-internet.org/node/448
hope so. i don’t want put too much hope
Great News!
Thanks TF ;)
F**K MPAA/RIAA :)
“ALthough its discerning that the news media is on the side of the facists”
Of course these are the same companies of parasites!
There is an handful of them and they must be exterminated world wide. These corporations are a mortal danger to our societies and once we are done with them they should be nothing left of Vivendi/Univer-sale Sony, EMI, Time Warner and others MPAA, RIAA, BIPI IFPI plagues.
@6
Hey! Trolls paid by the corporations of parasites!
Tell you master that we are coming for them with pest killer to protect our societies against terrorists such as them.
At least you will be useful for something.
One thing that is important: that the the industry shall not succeed if they try lobby the government to change the law. Hopefully, the public opinion shall be on the side of keeping them legal. In addition, let us hope that it shall happen in other countries as well. I think that, in addition to hoping that it shall happen, that every person should take active steps to ensure that it happens, and do not leave it to chance. Such matters as upholding basic justice, like not sending torrent site administrators to jail who have done nothing wrong, is too important to leave to chance.
Roze
http://www.10ch.org/
I dont get it, on the first line you say:
“Furthermore, the court’s decision was final and could not be appealed.”
Then on the second:
“If the ruling in the Sharemula case holds up”
If its final and cannot be appealed it automatically holds up right? or tell me what i am missing (not being a prick, am really confused)
Anyways, good news! but if it keeps going this way, its only a matter of time before the MAFIAA convince the US government that Spain has WMDs so “lets do something about it”… oops, forgot, Bush’s time is up! Unless McBush comes in…… :(
http://www.eZee.se
with canada in same boat perhaps if isohunt prevails it could mean a whole new industry opens up as torrent sites would be allowed to host here and generate some ISP revenue in a time when the economy is sliding a bit.
DOWN WITH FACIST ALIENS
@13
I guess it has something to do with the legislative body rather than the judicial.
Roze
I Guess all the sites will have a new home if it doesn’t go well in other places.
http://www.p2ptechtime.com
Forget spain, we need some serious help here in the UK, these ISP’s are pushing us hard!!!!
I wonder if this will have any bearing on the Blubster lawsuit.
I think the title should be BitTorrent Sites Step Closer to be proven legal in Spain.
There is no law against it explicitly and for the time being, no sentence has considered it ilegal.
And for the sake of file sharing, the office of prosecutors has stated that they wont go after people downloading musci/movies because they lack the legal basis to be given warrants for such petty crimes.
Number 18 “Forget spain, we need some serious help here in the UK, these ISP’s are pushing us hard!!!!”
Forget Spain?? Help Us?? One of the dumbest self centered comments I have ever heard.
In Spain there has been an open war going on between Internet activists versus the recording industry, A lot of work has gone into this. What have you done in the UK?? Nothing. Help yourselves if you can ashole…
lets hope the same happens in canada
Mmmm …that’s what I call good news. :>
Lets not get into the same boring fight. No matter where in the world there is a victory for torrents and other file sharing sites its all got to be good.Lets focus instead our attentions on who the culprits are that are flooding the public trackers with uploads that are not usable due to incorparated viruses. Could it be that certain companies are quite happy to see torrent downloads full of viruses therefore disscrediting the whole ethos of file sharing.
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