Fed up with the growing power of the anti-piracy lobby, a group of free-culture supporters gathered in front of the headquarters of the socialist party with their laptops, and started trading copyrighted files. The goal was to show that sharing copyrighted files is legal in Spain, something they appear to have achieved.
In 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 a renewed effort to put a halt to piracy, Spanish Police shut down two BitTorrent sites. Todotorrente.com and trackertdt.com were both taken offline and three administrators were arrested and accused of facilitating “copyright infringement”.
European file-sharers were given a huge legal boost today when the Advocate General to the European Court of Justice declared that EU law does not allow Internet Service Providers to be forced to reveal the personal details of people accused of file sharing.
A judge in Spain has dismissed a case against a man who downloaded and shared copyrighted music on the Internet. It was dismissed on the grounds that the man’s intent wasn’t to make money.
