Website Blocking Law Implemented By New Spanish Government

enigmax
January 2, 2012
116
Sinde Law,
Spain
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Spain’s new government has wasted no time in approving tough new legislation to combat unauthorized file-sharing. After less than two weeks in power, the Partido Popular government has fully implemented the so-called Sinde Law. Spaniards can look forward to previously legal sites being blocked by ISPs or shut down completely, all within 10 days of a rightsholder complaint.

In the last decade Spain has truly emerged as one of file-sharing’s safe-havens. Countless court decisions have affirmed that P2P indexing sites operate legally, with most cases against site operators going in favor of the defendants.

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.

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Erthwjim

I know rojadirecta isn’t p2p, but I wonder what happens to them now with this new party in power.
- http://twitter.com/MAFIAAFire MAFIAAFire
  
  Good question!
  
  And I suspect the MAFIAAFire ‘TPB dancing’ addon is suddenly going to get a lot more installs in Spain ;)
  
  Unless they decide to block Mozilla of course, since they are the “Popular government”. Morons.
  - http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja
    
    Partido Popular my hairy ass. If they gave a shit about ppl they’d know file sharing is socially and morally accepted and it will flourish despite their futile attempts at stomping it. I can see the Spanish going to the streets though. Wonder if this party will be that “popular” when next elections come.
http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

Not the best start to 2012 for Spain.
They’d be as well resurrecting Franco and his fascist team of red-caps to ensure no-one has a peg-leg, a patch over one eye, a hook for a hand and parrot on their shoulder.

Best of luck to the real people of Spain, coz your People’s Party have sold you out to the MAFIAA – based on ignorance of the issues at stake.

Time for you guys to use mafiaafire.com, proxy servers, proxy browsers, and VPN’s etc. You’ll STILL get access to any blocked sites, OK? It’ll just take a little more work on your part is all.
- Anonymous
  
  Spanish ISPs should fight this law when it is unlawful to censor a lawful business. The European Court of Human Rights would also have a lot to say about this censorship law.
  
  I expect this battle has just begun.
  - http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja
    
    It’s amusing. You say, brilliantly, that the battle has just begun. A battle from the ppl against the very Government that should represent them for freedom. What are we living, the Middle Ages?
    - http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell
      
      With all due respect, it is getting to the point where I think that the Middle Ages and Dark Ages were more sane that what we have today.
      Serious there, we get more and more laws that are meant not to protect the rights of copyright owners (which they have none once they sell something to me, I can do anything except copy/distribute that work to others outside of my family with that thing while it is in copyright term) but to keep them from having to change their businesses to deal with 21st century reality.
- Guest
  
  This fascism can be traced to the White House.
  
  It seems we have to bring down the United States to liberate our own governments …
  - Nathan
    
    As a U.S. citizen I can say that most of us are just as pissed as you are. Honestly I was thinking of moving out of the country after college but it seems that it is becoming less and less of a viable option since our government can’t mind its own business.
  - http://www.facebook.com/john.gaspardo John Gaspardo
    
    what planet have you been living on ever since after world war 2 the us has been trying to play the role of world wide police man. no one is safe from an unnamed informant and do you think Europe has any balls left to stand up to the us? I live here and the only thing people here are good at is bitching about everything and doing nothing about it. Americans are to drugged out and just plain shell shocked from all the shit they keep doing to us here. people have the thousand yard stare when you even talk about the political crooks and their corporate masters
http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Dilly/1624894683 Don Dilly

‘Partido Popular government’ they are not going to remain #popular long at this rate though I detect the same sense of irony in the use of the term as many dictatorships use of the terms #peoples’ and ‘democratic’ in the name of their new single party state.
- Danny
  
  I agree. Certainly an ironic name!
  
  Also I like the use of true pirate speak like ‘plundering’ this has to be a miss-translation right?
- http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja
  
  Like China? Or maybe the “land of the free” where everything and anything is under surveillance and you risk cavity searches as you go to the bakery if they get delusional and think you are a Bin Laden cousin in a distant 89th degree?
PRIVACY is priceless to me

“Popular” often means quite the opposite, it’s a FASCIST government which is as “popular” as China and North Korea, and shouldn’t they solve the crisis instead?
Kill the fucking inbred king instead of voting for such morons!
Anarchy now!
- DannyUfonek
  
  We shouldn’t wait for long, the Spanish are experts at this :D
  - http://www.facebook.com/john.gaspardo John Gaspardo
    
    Im a fan of a good ole fashioned public hanging of the elected crooks. Like this if you agree
Anonymous

Well if this starts blocking formally ruled lawful sites then this is a case of the Government denying Spanish law and justice. Where exactly is the sense to censor a lawful business at the request of a rival business?

Maybe these blocked sites can then sue Partido Popular? Lost business and such.

Yes you can bet your last economically worthless $1 note that the United States is 100% behind this and all that happened in Spain is the list of US bribes and threats,

Once more this only highlights how copyright abuses the World when now this one law opposes and attacks other laws. Lawful and yet blocked and censored. Are the local sheeple happy?
- Ffgzfg
  
  What scares me is that the USA does not allow countries to think differently then them. And if they do, they threaten to stop doing business with them (Unless you have your own nukes…). It’s just “I’m the boss because i’m the biggest”. “No your idea is not better because i’m bigger”. What happened to our own culture? Do we really want the world to be nothing but fat fascists at McD?
  - Anonymous
    
    The United States these days reminds me of the British Empire during the 19th century. The British also used their domination of the World to Police the oceans and to interfere with other countries shipping. Not just to impose their laws on others but to ensure the British had the best trade routes including expelling other other country’s ships from their ports.
    
    We should never forget the British Empire’s contributions to this planet. Beyond the roads, schools and hospitals there was the blood covered repressive occupations. We British are the ones who give to the World our Concentration Camps; leading to millions of deaths, hundreds by our own hands.
    
    Then what is the price of tea? Over 1 million Chinese citizens turned into Drug Addicts due to the Opium from British ruled India. All done to balance Britain’s trade deficit due to the cost of tea imports. China went to War with the British over that one when Opium was unlawful but it is true to say that the superior British did a total massacre of the Chinese Army with almost no loss of British life. We stole Hong Kong then. China should remember their heroes.
    
    My point is that the United States should be very careful with the legacy they leave our planet. The more gain they make for themselves the more they hurt others.
    
    What the World most needs is another Superpower to be able to directly oppose the United States and to ensure balance. There are some hopefuls including the European Union, China, Brazil, India and more.
    
    Then the United States can no longer bully other countries around and may instead be subject to the will of others.
    - Borderliner
      
      > European Union
      Seriously? EU who basically mirrors everything the US does?
      
      I say that we need atleast half a dozen superpowers. This way there would really be a “balance” rather than the “right and wrong way” that existed during Soviet Union. This way if you don’t like the way A handles Z you wouldn’t have to automatically side with B (whose handling of X you might disagree with).
- Borderliner
  
  > Well if this starts blocking formally ruled lawful sites then this is a
  > case of the Government denying Spanish law and justice.
  New trials where the sites lose due to changed laws? Bet the US lobby would welcome this…
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http://digg.com/novenator/ novenator

That’s what happens when you elect a conservative government.
- John Galt
  
  I wouldn’t consider the Obama administration to be conservative. Fascists come in all stripes.
  - http://digg.com/novenator/ novenator
    
    The Obama administration has governing from the center-right actually. If you compare the established political parties in the US to those in other developed nations around the world, we have 2 conservative parties, a center-right one and a far right one. In fact, the GOP is far more conservative than most fascist parties in Europe (Le Penn, BNP, etc.).
    
    We probably disagree on some basic philosophical foundations here though (like the nature of fascism).
Bry

The most worrying thing about this is that it’s happening all over the world. America has been pressuring countries everywhere into doing this. SOPA isn’t just being passed in the USA, it’s EVERYwhere. We have one they’re working on here in the UK too, just like SOPA, that they’re keeping quiet about. Farewell internets.
Anonymous

Dude is like totally rocking and he knows it.
http://www.Total-Privacy dot US
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http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay

Not good. The MPAA has just done a checkmate on Rojadirecta. The ICE committed stalling tactics here in the US, and forced them to focus efforts on US domain seizure. Now, we have Spain’s government directly taking the fight to Rojadirecta a third time to fight to keep their domain. How the heck is someone going to fight against the seizure if there is no direct way to go after the copyright holders?
Obt

What this means for openbittorrent hosting in Spain is a good question.
KiRE

Mmm, I’m thinking that I should send my taxes to MPAA instead of the IRS.
Sdsdgz

Cool, i wonder what private organisation will be the next to get a personal police force paid for by taxpayers? Maybe they can go check how many people have copied my website design….

Bloody website design thieves!! It’s rampant all over the net I tell you, i can’t handle it anymore!!! Oh dear government please hold this bag of cash for me so that i can whisper in your ear…
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Haha

everyone start complaining about government stealing something from you….

FREEDOM.
Saying there website infringes on it.
- jack.ss
  
  There? Or maybe you meant their? Spell check can’t help you if you have no deeper understanding of the language you’re trying to troll in.
  Back to school little troll… :D
http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

What will really be ironic is if they start blocking Rojadirecta.
Anonymous

so the EUCJ ruling is being ignored by Spain. this will continue until someone takes the country to court. trouble is, who has the resources and the balls to do that? i dread to think of the consequences that would be taken against that person or company. any excuse possible, any trumped up charge that could be thought of would be used to break them! look at what happened in TPB trials. they were a complete fabricated farce!
Meh

People’s Party – yeah right…
Probably the U.S. pressured Spain and told them to change the law.
It’s actually getting quite silly that the countries have to accept and be on the same side with anything that comes from Washington or Brussels. Like their own countries can’t have any other opinion…
- Guestwhat
  
  Wikileaks proved it
  http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Cable/ayuda/EE/UU/materia/Copyright/elpepicul/20101203elpepunac_45/Tes
FUCK-SPAINS-GOVT

Another country bites the dust…

…And let’s bet that 95% of all Spanish citizens have no clue about this new legislation.
- Anonymous
  
  of course not. there’s no way that any government wants to be held accountable to the people. they are so scared of being found out that they are in the pockets of the entertainment industries (and the US entertainment industries, at that!) and other big corporations that this sort of thing never gets to be known until after the fact!
JuanSinNada

Partido Popular is the party of the people the same way the Patriot Act is patriotic. The tyrannical ruling class always likes to fuck with semantics. They all take master classes from George Orwell. Just remember “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength”. People’s Party is just a synomym for right wing fascist assholes.
harry krishna

do “cooperative” countries, such as spain, receive usa tax dollars when they pass laws such as this?
Guest

Let ‘s kill all the corporate parasites!
http://futbolgratisonline.blogspot.es/ Raportd

That’s time to fight with the Spanish government to stop this kind of stuff. I think they’re killing the essence of internet! They have to know how we use the net and how to take profit of it, not just censure. Sites like seriesyonkis o rojadirecta gives us information that we’ll not see or consume if they don’t exist and at the end it gives them indirect benefits.
http://otester.myopenid.com/ PiRat

People get the governments they deserve.

Stupid Mexicans.
- hcxangel
  
  Mexicans aren’t in Spain ¬¬
  - Danny
    
    but the spaniards are in mexico? Therefore mexicans are spanish, spain is mexico?
    - hcxangel
      
      Although mexicans speak spanish, Spain is in Europe and Mexico in North America. Sinde law is originally from Spain
    - aSKLK
      
      mmm, aren’t spaniards people who were born in spain…?
- Graysmith88
  
  ignorant, THINK and investigate before you post
- Abc
  
  Problem here is USA turning each country of the world into its slave.
  Nobody deserve that, not the american people, not the spanish people, nobody.
  
  They built up a perfect strategy with time and practice (during centuries), people are not to be blamed, they just need to learn to open their eyes and understand what really is important and what really isn’t.
Damian616ms

We ALL need to combat this. Even if people don’t get pirated things. These laws effect even legal p2p sharing as well. I seen the law first hand and it’s very bad and will limmit the net in most countries to what their government wants us to use. Basically it’s taking away every right we have and they will use the sites they control for breaking privacy acts. BTW people the US government is illegally installing anti piracy viruses on peoples computers now. I had one pop up the other day out of no where. When traced it traced back to Washington DC the ip a government pc. This trogan, keylogger mix opens ports for attacks tracks everything you do and everywhere you go. NO antivirus will find it sense it’s government made. How you can find it is do a file search for a file called antipiracy. it’s usually found in Program FileCommon Files and AppDataRoaming you’ll have to do this in safe mode and manually delete it.
- Ubernerdius
  
  Or you COULD use linux.
  - Danny
    
    Yurp, the only solution to viruses and the like is open source and trusted software channels. M$ fails miserably on both counts and that is why the huge number of viruses for windows exist! Switch OS and remove the problem!
  - Guest
    
    GNU/Linux is the best.
http://twitter.com/Power2All Power2All

INB4 people in Spain and Europe is going to switch to Perfect Dark.
It works good and is hard to fight against.
- Danny
  
  An N64 game? Why would you go from bit torrent to an FPS?
  - Anonymous
    
    (If you were being sarcastic ignore this)
    Perfect dark is a japanese peer to peer network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark_(P2P)
    - Danny
      
      I was joking but on a more serious note using perfect dark is not the answer. These kind of networks suffer from the problem that you have to share and allow people to search the files on your system. With bit torrent there is a level of obscurity as you cannot physically search other peoples machines for the files you want.
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Fenris

Not People’s Party, but Popular Party.
Zero

what an unbelievable conflict of interests for the supposed peoples party, also note the extreme irony.
Alyssa Blindy

And I thought Spain was a protagonist; guess not…
MC

You people have no idea how slow things Don’t work here.. This is laughable. I see file sharing in the average Spaniards life for a very long time.
Anonymous

2012 could be the War on the Net.I am all for it.Millions of people from all over the World uniting to take down the MAFIAA over and over again.
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Ale

This, along with the many EU-countries blocking sites, US confiscations of domains, SOPA incoming and third world countries blocking sites means that the internet is moving from a global network, to a connected series of national networks.

This is enough to bring a tear to my eye, that they are tearing apart the Internet before our very eyes.

We have a new and even better all-accomodating Library of Alexandria at our fingertips, and now we are setting it ablaze.

These are dark hours for the global Internet.
- Random
  
  Could not have put it better my self. Its times like this I am ashamed to be a human on this planet. We just keep making the same mistakes over and over. Its depressing.
- Danny
  
  The thing is if the internet breaks (DNS/IP system breaks) another more resilient system will evolve from it. There are already systems in place that would implement a distributed DNS and get rid of ICANN.
  - Abc
    
    Care to explain in depth?
    I understood only bits and pieces of what you said :(
    - Danny
      
      I’m not going to go into great depth but there are alternatives to the current DNS system that the internet is built upon. The DNS/IP system is currently run by ICANN who are basically owned by the US government and a more open structure to DNS is what is being proposed by many academics.
      
      This is a cat and mouse game and the entertainment industries have been loosing for a very long time. When one road is blocked on the internet another more open road will open up (To quote John Gilmour (1993): the net sees censorship as damage and routes around it). You only have to look back at Napster and see how far we’ve come to realise they will never win.
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Lube Oil VS John Doe

EU said they wont censor like SOPA. Liar, Liar pants on fire!!! Mafiaafire to be exact. >_> – see what I did there? mwhaha -_-
- http://blockaid.me BlockAid DNS
  
  The EU is a collection of countries in Europe that share economic, legal and judicial values, enshrined in their various treaties. Spain itself, has its own government and legal system and it was they who implemented the law, not the EU.
  
  That being said, it has always been a case of when this was going to happen, not if it was going to happen. My only worry is for public trackers like OpenBittorrent, whose trackers run out of Spanish datacenters, such as SoloGigabit.
Guest.

Most worrying for me is the possibility that the USA helped the new Spanish government into power having already agreed on the favours that would be returned to the USA..

Layer upon layer of corruption and hidden deals made by those in power.

(sorry if this has already been said)
- Guest
  
  Wikilleaks proved exactly that…
foff

The Spanish government are a bunch of corrupt jodito hijos de puta. Piracy will find a way. A lot of legitmate sites will get hit. Let’s see them shut down google for serving up copyright infringing links. Do you have the balls to do that spain? Huh do you? Go ahead and try and see how the general population loves you.
Anon

who cares
http://tinyurl.com/sniper2-o Mary Jones

This is what it is all about.
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Ralph Brubaker

How could the United States do this?? Shame! Shame on you dirty stupids.
Plop

It’s now time for the Spanish people to join the international standard in the fight against the infringement of our liberties under the banner of protecting the entertainment industries.

Fight for the rights of the artists to distribute their work any damned way they please without being told by governments that certain corporations have the right to restrict public access to their work.

Destroy the MAFIAA and their cohorts – the war is now!
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FNRIJIQDLTHE5EVEICJBE5WDGQ Allen

@well ………my co-worker’s sister makes $70/hour on the internet. She has been out of work for 5 months but last month her pay was $7727 just working on the internet for a few hours. Read more on this site http://nutshellurl.com/22i5
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Gyrade

You all are a bunch of idiot freetards.
- Anonymous
  
  And in violation of rule 14 we are now supposed to feed you?
  
  Obvious troll is Obvious. And Troll is Obviously Troll.
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prabhakar kumar

thank you
the given information is very effective .
I’ll keep updated with the same
MLM Software Noida
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