In a leaked letter sent to Spain's outgoing President, the US ambassador to the country warned that as punishment for not passing a SOPA-style file-sharing site blocking law, Spain risked being put on a United States trade blacklist . Inclusion would have left Spain open to a range of "retaliatory…

After becoming known as somewhat of a haven for both file-sharing sites and their users, Spain is preparing to crack down on breaches of intellectual property rights. In a blueprint published by the government today, sites said to infringe copyright on a large-scale face fines of up to 300,000 euros…

Every year the United States releases the Special 301 Report, which examines the intellectual property laws of important trading partners. One of the countries heavily criticized in the 2009 edition is Spain - largely because it views file-sharing for personal use and non-commercial BitTorrent and file-sharing sites as legal. Obama…

Together with their partners at the International Intellectual Property Alliance, the RIAA has submitted their 'piracy watchlist' recommendations to the Office of the US Trade Representative. Canada and Spain are listed as two piracy havens that require urgent attention from the US Government, even though the latter just adopted a…