File-Sharing Site Admin Sentenced to 6 Months Jail
Written by enigmax on April 11, 2009A 22 year old man who ran a site which offered links to copyright works has been fined and sentenced to 6 months jail in Spain. While non-commercial file-sharing sites are legal in Spain, the judge decided that because the site had advertising and therefore profited from copyright infringement, this constituted a criminal offense.
Back in September 2008 we reported on the case of Sharemula, a site which offered eDonkey links to movies, music, software and games. Like many file-sharing sites, Sharemula found itself the subject of legal action but eventually the Provincial Court of Madrid ruled that the entertainment industry had no case against the site since it has broken no laws. The court ruled that neither the site nor administrators had operated illegally by offering links to copyright works, since they had not done so for profit or commercial gain.
Yesterday, Spanish Criminal Court No.1 made its decision in the case of file-sharing site infopsp.com. According to the complainants – Spanish Association of Publishers and Distributors Entertainment Software (ADESE) and the Spanish Videographic Union (UVE) – the site, which had around 17,300 members, operated illegally.
The site didn’t host any illicit content itself but instead offered links to video games, movies and music hosted on 3rd party sites. Under Spanish law, so far so good. However, in order to stay legal in Spain, the site needed to demonstrate it was not profiting from copyright infringement – this is where it all fell apart.
The court heard that the site carried advertising from Impresiones Web, Google Adsense, Canalmail and Correodirect and also gained revenue via premium SMS. According to the court, this turned the site from a legal entity into one profiting from copyright infringement – a criminal offense.
The judge handed 22 year-old site administrator Adrián Gómez Llorente a total fine of 4,900 euros ($6,500) which includes compensation for the complainants. Llorente was also sentenced to 6 months jail but it’s unlikely he will serve this since he doesn’t have an existing criminal record. It is believed that this is the first conviction of its type in Spain. Neither party intend to appeal.
ADESE President Alberto Gonzalez Lorca said of the decision, “This ruling is a very important precedent for the videogame industry which is at the forefront of creating jobs and wealth even in a financial crisis, but is helpless against a problem as serious as piracy.”
The big question now is how a court would view donations given to torrent sites. We’ve already seen the police in the UK call voluntary donations “subscriptions” in the OiNK case. Time will tell how a Spanish court will view them.
Previously: Biased Anti-Piracy Laws Cause Problems in Denmark
Next: Mininova Adds Another Billion Torrent Downloads
55 Responses
Besides, even when you “don’t profit” commercially, you still profit every bit of the money you should have spent on the product intended for sale, but you kept instead. “One possession one purchase”. Filesharers are thieves and the torrent sites are shams making cash on their advertising but offering nothing but the work of others as the draw. It’s all about “principle” they say. And now TPB wants to make money on VPN.
LOL. Some principles.
Here’s some fodder that I won’t stay around to answer becouse of the dumbness of the industrys claims.
I wouldn’t buy 1% of all that I have downloaded, it wasn’t worth it! Hell most isn’t worth it.
The stuff thats worth buying you pay for:
A really good movie (not the standard tag-line hollywood flick that doesnt stay in memory more then a couple of min.)
A band you support and like (not the generic dumb-asses that sings false and pitchy but get it altered with technic).
A deliverysystem that isnt F UP as most online buy-sites both as delivery and price.
And no I DON’T believe in the market that is all about greed. I believe in people that make reasoned desisions (about <2% of the planets people).
So To Summerise: GO AWAY YOU BOUGHT TROLL!!!
SNF – Stupiedity Never Fails
obviously the guy committed douchebaggery with the ads and should pay for that. we dont want ads you fcukers!
“One possession one purchase”, eh? Have you ever read a EULA? Because when stripped of all the quasi-legal BS what it says is “NO possession” no matter how many times you “purchase”. So that new e-book or game you just bought, guess what? You don’t OWN it. All you did was give some fat cat corporation your money for their PERMISSION to read or play the thing only in the manner THEY dictate — and too frickin’ bad for you if your equipment can’t handle their DRM or you’re disabled and they’ve decided that adaptive technology constitutes “infringement” as in the case with Amazon’s Kindle being stripped of its text-to-speech capabilities. Perhaps we should get around to putting EULAs on our dollars and see how they like being told they don’t really own those but merely have a non-exclusive license to use them ONLY in the manner prescribed by the EULA, all other uses constituting violation thereof and subject to fine or imprisonment for “improper infringement”.
so lets see if i understand this right.
What the site was doing was in principle legal, but because they made money out of acts that allegedly others did illegally (copyrightinfringement), he was SOL.
“Profiting from copyrightinfringement” isn’t that exactly what those antip2p companies that offer their services to rightsholders do?
I mean, beside the fact that MediaSentry/SafeNet acted allegedly illegal per se in USA and thats why MAFIAA has now outsourced this stuff to a company in europe;
Would something that might be legal in spain(?) (that is: observing traffic on the internet) become illegal in spain when it is done in connection with copyrightinfringement?!
Those companies clearly profit massively from acts of others.
its unreasoned mind get him! *big angry mob chases him down the street*
Thank you, #4. Acessing information via this manner is my ONLY way of doing it. So, next thing up will be that the screen reader I use is going to be marked illegal and violates every bit of copyright on this world. Why, because reading microsoft’s prompts out is a violation of their copyright… the start menu items being read outloud plus what is inside every program I have on this commputer is breaching copyright! Give me a break. If this were so, the amount of fines I would have to pay would be so large that I highly doubt there has ever been that much money on the UNited States ALONE. IF this also were so then the same thing would go for my lg ENV phone. Reading their prommpts outloud should be banished too, since by having access to that information makes me a pirate. Of course reasoned minds.. would make much more stronger logical inferences than just say “you still profit every bit of the money you should have spent on the product intended for sale, but you kept instead.” First, what did i keep–the product or the money or the profit? secondly, when you download you don’t really profit. Let me make this a bit more clear. Downloading and uploading are both activities that require bandwith. I am already paying for the bandwith I am using, so that profit is cancelled in that manner. Not all of it, but some. Secondly, when people are downloading from me they are not paying me anything to have access to that material,so therefore I am not gaining anything from making that available either. So where is the profit already! Thirdly, if i spend that money on that same product I can’t control where it will end. Its a sad thing, but its a really true thing. I have collavorated on other musician’s projects for instance, when its exciting to see the number of successful sales and whatever, but its OTHER PEOPLE THAT GET THAT BIG SUM OF MONEY, NOT US! And what do they do? waste it. Waste it on drugs, more ridiculous laws, on a lot of things to make hell on earth become true. So now that you have this bit of information MR. or MS. Unreasonable mind (PotHead), reason some more and let me know what you think.
“Besides, even when you “don’t profit” commercially, you still profit every bit of the money you should have spent on the product intended for sale, but you kept instead.”
And when I was going to buy a movie but I read bad reviews on IMDb so I decided not to buy it, I’m a thief. I should have bought it.
In other cases against file sharing sites (like Sharemula) it was established that link sites are legal, even if they have ads and make revenue.
In this case, the problem was that users were forced to sign up and receive ads-by-mail to be able to use the service. So, for the judge, that’s equivalent to sell access to the copyrighted material (even if it’s on a 3rd party site).
Bye Bye RLSLOG.NET ROFL
I think the ramifications of this are staggering. This judge made it illegal for anybody who runs ads on their site to link to copyrighted material available for download.
Think about how many people might have links to these sites on their blogs, link pages, and probably news outlets. Are they all breaking the law?
What about people who link to site sites with the links to the pirate site? Are they helping them profit by linking to them?
What if you didn’t know the particular site had warez on it? You too could be spending 6 months in jail.
The bottom line is if you have a site in Spain, and you run ads and you link to one of these sites no matter what the purpose is, you are guilty of copyright infringement.
I think that’s crap.
With people like you, it’s even more pleasurable to fill up those TB’s.
I love you Reasoned Mind, you give me reasons to download 50 times more than I need.
“Besides, even when you “don’t profit” commercially, you still profit every bit of the money you should have spent on the product intended for sale, but you kept instead. “One possession one purchase”. Filesharers are thieves and the torrent sites are shams making cash on their advertising but offering nothing but the work of others as the draw. It’s all about “principle” they say. And now TPB wants to make money on VPN.”
You fail at logic. I’m not even going to try react seriously to your statement since I’ve repeated the same facts and arguments against people like you countless times but you seem to suffer from selective deafness.
Does anybody have the exact revenue data for the site? If the adds where simply to compensate for the server costs then I don’t understand this judgement at all and would find it reticulous.
donating to a site which is running a service, what ever it is, should be legal… we donate money to the man behind a site cuz we like what he does, the service itself so to speak
#16
“With people like you, it’s even more pleasurable to fill up those TB’s.
I love you Reasoned Mind, you give me reasons to download 50 times more than I need.”
So true dude! So true… :)
Reasoned Mind is funny! He’s become almost like Torrentfreaks own troll-mascot, haha! :)
My guess is he’s propably paid by the **AA on an hourly basis (if it’s per Post, they are screwing you buddy!!), to create a “balanced” viewstand for new noob-readers of torrentfreak, so they will be aware of the MAFIAA’s stand on piracy.
He propably don’t even believe in what he’s writing, only it’s his job to do so.
Hmm, I was wrong. It’s not funny, it’s quite sad really…
I feel for you Reasoned Mind. Hope you find the strength to cast down your corporate chains one day, and become a x-troll!!! I belive in you, you can do it!!
does this mean google spain will get fined and jailed too??? i’m pretty sure google spain makes a $hitload of cash from their ads :)
I wonder if this news will send Blubster founder Pablo Soto shaking in his wheelchair?
LOL @ Reasoned Mind. Yesterday you made pro-sharing comments and today you are against it. Maybe you forgot to change your posting name again…
“we dont want ads you fcukers!”
TPB has advertisements too…
“I hope the mininova admins awaits the same faith!”
Did you mean ‘fate’?
It is just a settlement, defendant settled. It is not a true court ruling, the judge just passed the settlement.
Here at Spain courts have ruled repeatedly that elink and torrent webpages are 100% lawful even if they are for-profit, this is just a settlement.
BTW it happened at November, but Spanish mass media have published it now. Why?
Google profited from the ads too. Put Google in jail.
Hey Reasoned ass, go get a real job. I wasn’t going to download anything today but after reading your post I’m going to download a bunch of movies I don’t even like and distribute them among my friends
I’ve downloaded many games any movies. If the developers provided a “pay what you think it is worth” method, like certain music providers do, I would pay for most of the things I’ve downloaded. Paying $60 for a game that only gives me four hours of entertainment isn’t worth it to me. I’d gladly pay $15, though, and I’m sure many other “pirates” would, also. I’m also sure that there are at least a few people who would find the game much more enjoyable than I did, for whatever reason, and might be willing to pay more. Lower your prices, and you’ll get more sales… often the sales increase will be greater than the price decrease, resulting in greater overall profit. Get your heads out of your asses, MAFIA.
This add a precedent.
It can be use againts pirate bay and many others file shring site with ads.
Just saying.
but lets be fair if they believe in “sharing” and “freeware”
Why they make money with it?
are they going to jail everyone? the mindset of the world right now where everything is black and white, but not about now, about then, before the internet and before globalization. look, face it, the world has changed, the internet offers the ability to easily take copyright material and distribute to many people who have the desire to “crack it” how many people are you going to jail for it? are you going to take all your people that are intelligent enough to do this sort of thing and put them in jail? then have the tax payers money pay for it, so not only are you losing what they could be paying in but your also losing what you pay to keep them in. piracy is here, its not going away.
X-Pirate:, oh right, forgot they’re legalizing pot now, ’cause who knows what else they’re smokin… and please stop falsely classifying people. It just generates yet more stereotypes, and plus you know what happens when you assume
“This judge made it illegal for anybody who runs ads on their site to link to copyrighted material available for download.”
It’s too early to say that. Since we don’t know the details, infopsp might have been actually profiting from ad revenue, unlike most torrent sites(i.e. The Pirate Bay) which put their ad revenue right back into covering their operating costs hence they make no profit.
Either way, Spain’s “profiting from copyright infringement” laws are going to be changed.
Next up, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom of TPB. Hope they get the jail time they deserve for profiteering off the hard work of other people.
Everyone who is against P2P file sharing, are you against libraries too? P2P is essentially a library of information. If it wasn’t for P2P, I wouldn’t be the person that I am today.
Because of torrents, I taught myself how to program with c++. So fuck all you motherfuckers who say torrents are worthless.
Does it seem a little weird that you’ve got to prove you’re NOT profiting, instead of leaving it up to the prosecution to prove that you ARE?
In other words, you shouldn’t have to prove that your actions are legal – law enforcement should have to prove that you’ve done something illegal.
That’s called ‘innocent until proven guilty.’
“obviously the guy committed douchebaggery with the ads and should pay for that. we dont want ads you fcukers!”
So take the fail pirate bay out then seeing as they serve up many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ads per year.
“So, next thing up will be that the screen reader I use is going to be marked illegal and violates every bit of copyright on this world. Why, because reading microsoft’s prompts out is a violation of their copyright… the start menu items being read outloud plus what is inside every program I have on this commputer is breaching copyright! Give me a break. If this were so”
But it isn’t so so your whole arguement is a load of complete hysterical hogwash isn’t it you stupid failf*ck n00b…
@29: “Does it seem a little weird that you’ve got to prove you’re NOT profiting, instead of leaving it up to the prosecution to prove that you ARE?”
So where did you read that it was like that because as far as I can tell you just pulled that out of your @ss.
Idiot n00b, use logic in your arguments and people that think may take you more seriously … discounting the majority of 15 twits here who go LOLWUT YEAH TEH TRUTH BECAUSE IT AGREEZ WIT MAH TAKE ON TEH ARTICLES to any piece odf made up hogwash like so many commenters here have put forwardsa already, LOL.
Yay, stupid p2ptards…
Demonoid registrations just opened up. Enjoy!
“Demonoid registrations just opened up.”
Again? That keeps happening all the time. Just accept it that we don’t want to join your stupid spamming tracker!
@reasoned troll mind
“Besides, even when you “don’t profit” commercially, you still profit every bit of the money you should have spent on the product intended for sale,”
This is just like general motors, you people did not buy our crap cars but now you will pay us anyway. So there
Same attitude as mpaa/ifpi trolls.
Hey calm down everyone, I’m just trying to get in with the fat cats so they will pay me to lick the cheese off their cocks, seeing as they can’t reach themselves what with all the flab & bundles of cash in their pockets getting in the way.
@1 Reasoned Mind
“And now TPB wants to make money on VPN.
LOL. Some principles.”
You fail to mention that the VPN was
implemented in response to your (and your mpaa/ifpi handlers) efforts.
Hopefully you will be fired next.
The web in question is not a p2p web is a direct download previous pay web whith ads and registration requirement
this guy also used a sms pay system to deliver codes for download, he was in every moment cashing indirectly downloads for profit, secon point if was a settlement in a penal court, penal courts can´t set a precedent in the actual court system, third point if was in November 2008, if was the typical last minute fodder news, and fourth point this not affect in any way to p2p webs or p2p ifself.
And one more thing iam from Spain and i know evething about the current developments in courts for two reasons, first, one of my cousins is a intelectual property lawyer and second iam a computer engineer, i know how the technology works.
Sorry for the possible ortography mistakes in the text.
Self-conflictuous comments win
in
3
2
1…
lol wut
adblock plus + noscript + customizegoogle + firefox 3.1 major pwnage….
btw, if you write an essay in the comments section, understand that only basement dwellers will understand your 1337 rant.
Not true. Reasoned Mind never understands them.
Haha, love this thread. Reasoned Mind-troll sure got a beating in this one!! :P
@Darkcom:
Thanx for commenting. Always great to get some local expertise on the subjects. Good to hear that it’s not relevant for p2p-community in spain. Oh, and don’t worry about the typoh’s, we got the point. It’s all good bro :)
@28:
U Reasoned mind’s big bro?? U gonna beat is up after school? :P
Very worying judgement. Doesn’t bode well for TPB, they’ve been making millions out of advertising and scrounging donations over the years.
Whilst a Spanish judgement won’t affect Swedish law, this case does offer a compelling precedent under EU law. Especially when it comes to civil judgements.
It won’t be popular with all the vocal leechers that post here, but when has their opinion mattered when it comes to things being heard in the court room?
Bad news for us all, I think
“And when I was going to buy a movie but I read bad reviews on IMDb so I decided not to buy it, I’m a thief. I should have bought it.”
analogy fail. try again. “decided not to pay for a product but use it anyway” and “decided not to pay OR USE a product” are two completely different things.
if this guy was profiting from the hard work of countless artists who didn’t see a cent from him…then he got off too easy.
Look at this!!!
It´s unbelivable!!!:D
http://www.youtupe-com-watch-2332-fsdkjfc-1223-11ds.inserat.in
Hey Stormblade?
Go blow a goat, u spamming jackass!
Making money from a legal activity is illegal.
Welcome to Spain.
this guy is next
http://pastebin.com/m39b7c14d
i lived in spain for a few years. They have some of the most corrupt politicians/legel system on the planet.
Hey Stormblade look at this!!!
It´s unbelievable!!!:D
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/finger.jpg
I was sentenced to 1 year prison sentence and € 130 000 in damages in the 5amrs france ….
visit my support site and facebook;)
http://www.soutenezmoi.free.fr
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=56903113307
No you weren’t brechet … and no ;)
OK OK You got me I do work for them, and yes i do suck cock what can i say I have a Reasoned Mind.
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