But under pressure from the United States in particular, Spain has been forced to introduce new legislation or face the consequences of being labeled a bad player and commercial partner. To that end the country has amended its copyright law and indicated that it is prepared to get tough on facilitators of copyright infringement.

This week there was another sign that when the circumstances are right, Spain is indeed prepared to take a tough line against operators of file-sharing websites.

The case dates back to 2006 when IFPI affiliate PROMUSICAE (Spanish Music Producers) and MPA affiliate the Federation for the Protection of Intellectual Property (FAP) teamed up to file complaints against local file-sharing sites.

What followed was police action in February and March 2007 which saw the closure of 21 websites including Bajatetodo (plus linked sites Bajateseries, Bajateanime and SoloDVDrip) and the arrest of 10 locals, none of whom had previous criminal records.

The case against Bajatetodo and associated sites has just concluded after more than six and a half years and it’s particularly bad news for the site’s former owner.

In a decision handed down October 30 but only just made public, the head of the Castellón criminal court sentenced David León Marín to 18 months in jail along with a fine of 21,000 euros.

The court said Marin had “..made available to Internet users content protected by intellectual property rights without authorization from the legal owner for profit and to the detriment of others.”

In addition to the jail sentence and fines the 32-year-old was handed a ban which forbids him from creating or administering any website for a total of three years.

“With his technical intervention and having indexed, classified and discussed the works, [Marin] made the works directly available for download. It was his direct work and acts as an intermediary which gave access to the work in question,” anti-piracy group FAP said in a statement.

FAP further adds that the verdict is in line with the decision in a case concluded earlier this year which found that the admin of three sites – Divxonline.info, Estrenosonline.es and Seriesonline.es – was guilty of “communicating a work to the public”. He was sentenced to one year and seven months in prison.

“The significance of this ruling is that it confirms what other Spanish judges have also estimated and what we have always maintained in our defense of intellectual property, which is that linking is an act of making available to the internet user and should be considered a continuing offense against intellectual property.”

The decision to jail Marin comes just a day after former Minister of Culture Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, whose name was used to refer to Spain’s anti-piracy ‘Sinde Law’, said that the problem of unauthorized links appearing online would not be solved by putting citizens in jail.

David León Marín has 10 days to appeal.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In January 2012 it was revealed that the United States had threatened to put Spain on a trade blacklist but just months later the country responded by introduced the so-called Sinde Law which was designed to offer greater protections for copyright holders. However, even though the legislation included provisions to close infringing sites, there was clearly no appetite to do so.

Now, a year-and-a-half on, Spain is having another go at appeasing the United States. Under new measures approved yesterday, operators of file-sharing sites – who up until now have been able to operate fairly freely – could have to face a harsh new reality.

The Government-approved amendments to the penal code target owners and administrators of file-sharing sites that link to content hosted elsewhere. Previously these types of sites remained within the law provided they didn’t profit directly from a file-sharing transaction. Under the new amendments, those making even indirect profit from an infringement (such as via advertising) now face jail sentences of up to six years.

But while the government has signaled a crack down in one area, it insists that flexibility will remain in others, particularly against basic search engines and regular users.

“In no case will we act against regular users, neutral search engines, or against P2P programs that allow the sharing of content,” Minister Alberto Ruiz Gallardón said.

The idea of going after sites and not users was welcomed by local writer Lorenza Silva.

“You can not criminalize the entire population,” he told Elpais. “But making life difficult for the biggest contributor to the problem and going after those who generate the most benefits from it is the right strategy.”

But already questions are being raised over the new amendments. To show that a file-sharing site operator has committed a crime under the law it will be necessary to show that there has been a “significant breach of intellectual property rights” but there are no clear guidelines on what that actually means.

And for Spain, a country in which it is commonplace to buy counterfeit DVDs on the streets and where youth unemployment has reached 56%, there are many who think the government has got its priorities wrong.

“To jail? We’re not going to put anyone in jail for copying a disc or links. It sounds more like a pantomime,” local rock musician Sr Chinarro told Elpais.

Now that the Cabinet has approved the amendments they will head over to parliament for debate. Only time will tell if the government will really follow through with its threats against local sites or whether the population will respond by spending more money on media in any meaningful way. While there is a chance of the former, the latter seems a distant dream.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Four months later Spain introduced the so-called Sinde Law which was designed to offer greater protections for rightsholders. It included a provision to close infringing sites but to date that has never been used.

“More than ever, websites providing or linking to illegal content can be secure in the knowledge that takedown measures are nonexistent and result in no consequences,” the international Intellectual Property Alliance complained last year.

However, all that could be about to change. Today the Spanish Government unveiled its plans for amendments to its copyright law that will excite copyright holders eager for protection. During a press conference Culture Minister José Ignacio Wert said that the reforms have three objectives.

The first, with a nod to the SGAE scandal in 2011, is to ensure that content rights management entities operate with “greater transparency” than they did in the past, with fines being levied if irregularities are found.

The second objective is to crack down on those who facilitate “large-scale” downloading of movies, music, TV shows and other cultural content.

Finally there is to be a review of the right to make private copies, for which rightsholders are currently compensated through a levy on blank media. As we will see, objectives two and three are linked.

In respect of piracy, the reforms aim to boost the powers of the Comisión de Propiedad Intelectual (Copyright Commission). The draft, known as ‘Lassalle Law’ after Secretary of State for Culture Jose Maria Lassalle, envisions the Commission obtaining new power to deal with infringement.

Sites will be required to remove wide ranges of infringing content on request, such as that from a particular rightsholder or artist, without having to deal with each instance individually as is the case today. Failure to comply will be costly, with penalties of up to 300,000 euros ($388,400) for sites that repeatedly fail to remove illicit content.

“This is about putting in measures to prevent recurrence,” said Culture Minister Wert, who went on to clarify that search engines such as Google, that may unwittingly link to content but comply with takedown requests, would be exempt.

Further augmenting the tools available, the draft sees the Commission being empowered to force companies to remove their advertising from illicit sites. In line with moves already underway in the United States and elsewhere in Europe, payment processors will also be forced to withdraw their services.

Finally, the amendments to the right to make private copies will be of real interest to users of file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent and eD2K. Currently Internet users aren’t prosecuted since their downloads are covered by a levy on blank media, but the draft envisions these freedoms being removed – and then some.

The reforms see the right to private copying only covering legally obtained media, meaning that in theory file-sharers could be prosecuted for their downloads from unauthorized sources. But that’s not all. Even though the blank media levy will be removed, compensation will still be paid to rightsholders. However, in future it will be the general Spanish tax-payer footing the bill, rather than just those doing the copying.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

For this reason The Pirate Bay has been hosted in many countries over the years, hopping across borders when one country or another became intolerant to its activities. As legal and political pressure mounted on the site its options narrowed further, with the threat of police raids eventually forcing even more drastic countermeasures.

For a while now the site’s true location has been unknown, hidden away in a far-off cloud and identifiable only by the connections it makes with the outside world. However, the site has to come up for air somewhere and for the last three years the site has received its Internet connectivity from Scandinavia, courtesy of the Swedish Pirate Party.

With the actual site located who-knows-where, last week the Pirate Party received the call they had been expecting. Local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance told the pirates and other Internet companies further up the chain that continuing to work with The Pirate Bay beyond Tuesday 26 would result in legal action.

Rights Alliance have the backing of the world’s largest movie and music companies and fighting them in court would be a huge burden for the Swedish Pirate Party, one that would sap their resources and divert them from their mission. So, reluctantly, the Swedish pirates have now stopped hosting The Pirate Bay, but not before a new plan was put into action.

Sometime earlier today the ropes connecting the Pirate Bay galleon to the shores of Sweden were cut and the ship sailed away into the sunset. And then, as if by magic, it split into two parts and docked in two brand new ports.

With a seamless transition The Pirate Bay is now being serviced by the pirate parties of Norway and Catalunya.

“TPB did of course have lots of backup transit lined up for ages. This is however the first time we are going to show two at the same time,” The Pirate Bay’s Winona told TorrentFreak.

“It will be interesting to see who is now blamed for hosting TPB. In the end, maybe the anti-interneterians will understand that they can’t win a fight when they have the people against them.”

The decision to choose Norway and Spain as locations for The Pirate Bay is perhaps best viewed through the prism of recent court action in the former and a complete lack of action in the latter.

Following initial pressure and a court case in 2009, the IFPI and several movie studios failed to force local ISP Telenor to block The Pirate Bay. Their 2010 appeal was also rejected when the court found that there was no legal basis to force Telenor to block the site. While that ruling on ISP liability will be of some comfort to the Norwegian pirates, the position could change if the law is amended.

But of course there’s a backup – Spain.

Despite introducing new legislation after the US threatened to place it on a trade blacklist, Spain currently offers a favorable environment for file-sharing sites.

Last April and just a month after the so-called Sinde Law went live, the Spanish Ministry of Culture revealed that the Comisión de Propiedad Intelectual (Copyright Commission) had received dozens of site closure requests from rightsholders. However, according to the Intellectual Property Alliance, little has been done in response.

“To date, only two websites have closed in response to complaints submitted to the IP Commission by IIPA’s member affiliates, and those websites closed voluntarily,” the IIPA wrote in a recent submission to the USTR.

“As of yet the IP Commission has not once made use of its authority to request a judicial writ from the Administrative Court to order the closure of a single infringing website or service. Meanwhile, IIPA is aware of at least 80 complaints that remain outstanding. More than ever, websites providing or linking to illegal content can be secure in the knowledge that takedown measures are nonexistent and result in no consequences,” they add.

Spain also offers other benefits to a site like The Pirate Bay since under current law file-sharing linking sites are not explicitly illegal. Also of interest is an IIPA complaint that Spain’s e-commerce laws do not make it clear that infringement notices are an effective means of providing ISPs with knowledge that infringement is occurring on their services.

Which is just as well, since The Pirate Bay may well attract quite a few of those.

Update: Comment from Swedish Pirate Party Leader Anna Troberg

“It is wonderful to be able to pass on the baton to two sister parties. It is testament to the pirate movement’s maturity and strength. We help each other and work with our sight set firmly on the future. Today, there are more than sixty different Pirate Parties all around the world. Every cut connection to The Pirate Bay will generate two new connections.

“You always have to chose your battles wisely,” Troberg adds. “It would be crazy to enter a game where the rules are decided by the other team. The Pirate Party’s mission is not to produce martyrs for the copyright industry. Our mission is to create longterm political change that ensures that the copyright industry in the future will not be allowed to threaten companies, organisations and individuals into silence with our common judicial system as a weapon.”

Update 2: The party may issue a police complaint.

“The Pirate Party has a board meeting in a few days. I will recommend the board to file a police report against the Rights Alliance for unlawful coercion,” Troberg says. “It is important to determine precisely how forgiving the system is to those who try to abuse the judicial system to silence others.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

On March 1st the Sinde law went into effect and now, a month on, the Spanish Ministry of Culture has revealed that in total almost 300 official complaints have been received.

The Comisión de Propiedad Intelectual (Copyright Commission) has received 213 copyright complaints plus 79 closure requests from rightsholders against specific websites accused of online piracy.

The Commission will investigate all allegations and has the power to dismiss claims or set the ball rolling for further action, including the removal of links said to infringe copyright through to the court-ordered closure or ISP blockade of entire websites.

Although the process between complaint and site shutdown can in theory be completed in about a month, the Ministry of Culture reports that no punitive action has yet been taken in respect of the 300 complaints.

It is not clear how many of the complaints being processed, if any, are the result of a hacktivist sabotage campaign launched on the day the Sinde law came into effect.

The group Hackivistas encouraged sites to link to a copyrighted track from artist Eme Navarro, a member of the music rights group SGAE but also an outspoken critic of the Sinde law. Hundreds of websites reportedly linking to Navarro’s song without permission, with Navarro subsequently reporting them to the Ministry of Culture.

While the initial aim of the campaign was to overload the Commission, it was also designed to discover more about the uncertain takedown process. Current thinking suggests that Spanish hosting companies will be asked to shut down non-compliant websites and ISPs will be asked to block those hosted outside Spain.

In theory it’s possible to shut down sites within a month, which could mean that the first closures from the first batch reported by the Ministry of Culture will be seen in April.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Threatened with being put on a United States trade blacklist, the Government passed the so-called ‘Sinde Law’ in a rush late last year. The law allows for the blocking of allegedly infringing sites based on reports from copyright holders, a position similar to that proposed by the US SOPA bill.

Today the Sinde law went into effect and immediately it was met with resistance from opponents. The group Hackivistas was quick to organize a rather unique form of protest. They encouraged sites to link to a copyrighted track from the artist Eme Navarro, who’s a member of the music rights group SGAE, but critical of the Sinde law.

While Navarro generally publishes his music under a Creative Commons license, he created an “all rights reserved” track specifically for the protest. Thanks to the hacktivist campaign hundreds of websites are now linking to this copyrighted song without permission, and Navarro reported a first batch of sites to the Ministry of Culture early this morning.

As a result, the commission tasked with reviewing all the requests will be overloaded with complaints. All the reported sites have to be processed on order of arrival, so the protest will significantly slow down this review process.

“The aim of this action is testing this law and being the first ones who use it in order to show the absurdity and the censorship that it will bring,” the hacktivists say commenting on their action.

The sites participating in the campaign do risk being blocked by Internet providers, but according to the law they have to be notified about the alleged infringement first. Then they get the chance to remove the infringing link to avoid being blocked.

Besides from the “sabotage” angle, another goal of the protest is to find out how the takedown process works. Right now there is still much uncertainty about how the commission will operate and how websites will eventually be blocked, a Hacktivistas member told TorrentFreak.

“Nobody knows how they will shut down websites. We suspect that they will ask Spanish companies hosting the websites to shut them down, and that Spanish service providers will block websites that are hosted outside of Spain.”

“They will also censor foreign websites, so anyone in the world can join us. We want to check what happens in every case,” the hacktivist added.

Hacktivistas is known for their controversial campaigns. In 2008 the group gathered in front of the headquarters of the socialist party to share copyrighted files in public. The police knew what was going on but didn’t touch them, suggesting that P2P downloading is legal.

In the years that followed the group wrote handbooks to avoid internet censorship, mapped copyright lobby networks, and launched fake governmental campaigns to promote copyleft and free access to cultural goods.

Joining the current protest is easy, websites can add a link to the infringing track through a simple piece of code provided on the campaign website. Just make sure not to ask Eme Navarro for permission.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

More than 100 leaked cables showed that the US had helped draft new Spanish copyright legislation and had heavily influenced the decisions of both the government and opposition.

Now, another diplomatic leak has revealed how the US voiced its anger towards outgoing President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero last month upon realizing that his government was unlikely to pass the US-drafted Sinde (site blocking) Law before leaving office.

In a letter dated December 12th and sent by US Ambassador Alan D. Solomont to the Spanish Prime Minister’s office, the US expressed “deep concern” over the failure to implement the SOPA-style censorship law.

“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 obtained by El Pais.

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.

But along with the pleas came the stick.

In the letter, which was also sent to Minister of Culture Ángeles González-Sinde after whom the law is named, Solomont noted that Spain is already on the Special 301, the annual report prepared by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) detailing ‘trade barriers’ based on intellectual property issues.

Solomont’s threat was that should Spain not pass the Sinde Law (described by some as the Spanish SOPA) then the country would be degraded further and placed on the Priority Watch List. This serious step would mean that Spain was in breach of trade agreements and could be subjected to a range of “retaliatory actions”.

In the event Zapatero’s government left office without passing the law, but the incoming Partido Popular (People’s Party) were quickly pressured by the US to take the necessary action.

In another media leak it’s now been revealed that American Chamber of Commerce in Spain chief Jaime Malet wrote a cautionary letter to incoming Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy. He warned of the potential flight of foreign investment from Spain and urged him to take action on the protection of intellectual property once in office.

“[The law's] lack of approval before the elections has been a blow to the country’s seriousness in this matter of such importance,” said Malet, while urging Rajoy to “to retrieve the consensus reached.”

Rajoy’s government quickly responded and fully implemented the legislation within 10 days of taking office.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This state of affairs led to huge pressure on Spain from the United States, and behind closed doors the two countries drafted new laws in preparation for a time when Spain was ready to clamp down on file-sharing. That time has come.

After taking power in mid-December, Spain’s incoming Partido Popular (People’s Party) government has now fully approved their pending Sustainable Economy Law (LES), legislation designed to stop Spanish Internet users from accessing file-sharing sites.

Deputy Prime Minister Maria Soraya Saenz de Santamaria announced at a press conference that the so-called Sinde Law, named after outgoing Minister of Culture Ángeles González-Sinde, will now be fully implemented.

The legislation, which will give the authorities the power to swiftly close file-sharing sites or have them blocked at the ISP level, was actually passed by the Spanish Parliament in February 2011, but the former government failed to enact a supporting regulatory framework and it has laid dormant since.

In her speech, Santamaria said that the new law’s objective was “to protect against the plundering of intellectual property rights” and to ensure that Spain “joined the international standard in the fight against online piracy.”

The decision on whether to shutter or block file-sharing sites will sit with the Intellectual Property Committee. This panel will have the power to take action against those providing illegal content and entities providing infrastructure, all within 10 days of a complaint by rightsholders.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

It therefore comes as a quite shock to hear that the Provincial Court of Vizcaya has sentenced the operators of both sites not only to fines, but a year in jail.

After originally being acquitted, an appeal in the case was brought by ADES (Spanish Association of Distributors and Publishers of Entertainment Software) and Promusicae, the well-known recording industry outfit.

While the court agreed that neither site actually hosted any infringing content, it noted that the defendants organized and made available links which enabled free downloads of copyright works, from which they intended to profit via advertising.

Crucially, the Court of Vizcaya viewed linking very differently to other courts handling similar cases in the past, when it described the act as “communicating to the public” and not an exchange between individuals.

Lawyer for FenixP2P, Carlos Sanchez Almeida, says the decision is completely wrong and can only be viewed as a political statement.

“FenixP2P was a P2P links page that all courts have declared exempt from criminal liability in recent years,” he explained.

“Given the general atmosphere in the country after the internet campaign against the Sinde Law, a statement like this can only be understood in political terms.

“The Provincial Court of Vizcaya did not hear directly from experts and witnesses, in violation of the principles of contradiction and immediacy,” he added.

Almeida says he is considering his response to the decision, possibly to include an appeal to the Constitutional Court and even the European Court of Human Rights.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The case dates back to May 2009, when music rights group SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores) filed a complaint against Jesus Guerra, the operator of file-sharing link site Elrincondejesus.com. SGAE claimed the site abused the copyrights of its members.

At full trial Judge Raul N. García Orejudo ruled that offering an index of links and/or linking to copyright material is not the same as distribution, noting that under current Spanish law there is nothing which prohibits such sites from operating.

In March this year, however, an SGAE appeal resulted in Elrincondejesus.com being subjected to a fine of 3,587 euros by the Provincial Court of Barcelona.

In addition to P2P links, Elrincondejesus had offered links to files held on sites such as MegaUpload and RapidShare. The Court said that by offering these direct links Elrincondejesus had made copyright works “publicly available”, even though the site had not uploaded them to the Internet. This, the Court concluded, was a breach of SGAE’s rights.

All this must’ve seemed like very bad news for index-web.com, a site with the same structure as Elrincondejesus that had been fighting an almost identical case against SGAE dating back to 2009. After initially being cleared of wrong-doing at a May 2010 hearing, following an SGAE appeal Index-web.com would now have to face the Provincial Court in Barcelona, the same court that had found Elrincondejesus liable in March.

This month that case went ahead, but rather than SGAE coming out on top again as it had done against Elrincondejesus, the pendulum swung the other way. The Provincial Court, with the same judges presiding as in the previous case, decided that links – whether to material on P2P networks or cyberlocker-type services – do not infringe intellectual property rights.

Lawyers for Index-web.com, Javier de la Cueva and David Bravo, say the ruling is significant and represents the “..first final decision in civil proceedings issued in our country stating that pages of links to P2P sites or direct downloads do not infringe any intellectual property rights.”

Cueva and Bravo say the ruling from the influential Barcelona court will become the legal standard for interpreting Spain’s intellectual property laws in future, and will have implications for Ley Sinde, the Spanish government’s troubled anti-filesharing legislation.

Following the ruling in favor of Index-web.com, Cueva and Bravo – who also represent Elrincondejesus – have filed an appeal on the site’s behalf, hoping to overturn the 3,587 euro fine handed down in March.

What remains to be seen now is how the US government will react. As part of Operation in Our Sites, US authorities previously seized the domain name of sports links site RojaDirecta on the basis that it operates illegally. The Provincial Court ruling appears to put the legal status of RojaDirecta beyond doubt.

Nevertheless, just this week federal prosecutors urged a judge not to return the site’s domain following a request by Puerto 80, the company behind Rojadirecta.

“Returning the Rojadirecta domain names at this time would provide Puerto 80 with the very tools it used to commit the crimes the government has alleged it engaged in prior to the seizure,” the government said in its filing.

Since it is committing the same ‘crimes’ as RojaDirecta, will Index-web.com have its domain seized by the US too?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.