In a massive operation, Spanish music rights and anti-piracy groups SGAE and SDAE have been raided by more than 50 police officers and tax officials. Operation Saga is the culmination of a two-year investigation into embezzlement, fraud, and misappropriation of funds, the latter connected to SGAE and SDAE collecting money on behalf of artists and spending it with companies they have interests in. The president of SGAE was among 9 people arrested.
After Spain virtually ruled out imposing a “3-strikes” regime for illicit file-sharers, the entertainment industries said they would target 200 BitTorrent sites instead. Now a judge has decided that sharing between users for no profit via P2P doesn’t breach copyright laws and sites should be presumed innocent until proved otherwise.
Internet service providers in Spain have now ended all government mandated talks with the music and movie industry after earlier refusing to disconnect alleged pirates. The talks were supposed to reduce online piracy but the ISPs say this is impossible if legal alternatives aren’t provided.
Ever since it became clear that running a P2P links site is not a crime in Spain, music anti-piracy group SGAE have threatened civil action. Yesterday the admin of two P2P sites had a home visit by members of SGAE, who took advantage of the admin’s legal naivety and conducted a search of his property without a suitable warrant.
Spanish copyright group SGAE has taken legal action in order to close down a site which offers links to copyrighted music hosted elsewhere. In seeking an injunction to close the site, SGAE said it was not necessary for the court to hear the site’s defense. The court disagreed.
In Italy artists and musicians have made a charity song to raise money for victims of the recent earthquake and over in Spain, artists have performed to raise funds for a seriously ill boy. Both events, thanks to the involvement of music industry lobby groups, have been touched by copyright controversy.
Copyright holders in Spain want ISPs to help offset the cost of piracy by imposing a surcharge on customers’ accounts. They also want ISPs to disconnect copyright infringers from the Internet. After many months in government mandated talks, no agreement has been reached.
