September 2008 saw the acquittal of the Todotorrente admin, Rafael Mellado, a case which will now go to appeal.

In December last year, police again arrested Mellado, this time along with three other family members during an operation which targeted the illegal recording of movies in theaters. Mellado’s home was searched, his equipment seized and he was released on bail. He stands accused of preparing videos and making them available on the Internet through a network of file-sharing sites.

Following a complaint from Columbia Tristar, Universal, Disney and other studios, last week a magistrates court ordered the blocking of 16 torrent and other file-sharing sites allegedly operated by Mellado. Citing “ample evidence” that the sites were being used for “criminal activities”, the court also ordered that Mellado’s bank accounts and email addresses should be frozen. Mellado denies the charges.

In addition to todotorrent.com and trackertdt.com, the sites to be blocked include bajandoseries.com, estrenostotal.com, helicityspain.com, lanzadivx.com, lanzamp3.com, masqueforo.com, mejorinline.net, poremule.com, portorrent.com, soloestrenos.com, spadescargas.com, subestrenos.com and torrentmas.org.

Since the initial reports, a notice has sprung up on a handful of the blocked sites detailed above. In summary, the announcement from a claimed hosting company (Hostingpac.net – a domain which redirects to TodoTorrente) says that they have closed access to the sites because they are not only being accused of hosting them, but running them too.

“…one administrator from HostingPac.NET was arrested and accused of being the administrator of 16 file-sharing sites,” says the announcement, which goes on to deny the accusations leveled against him.

Details are very sketchy, but it appears the host claims that in some cases they offer hosting to clients (presumably in this case the operators of file-sharing sites) in exchange for placing advertising on them.

“We’re sorry for the damages that have been done to the administrators of those domains and their users. We hope that they’re back in a few weeks on a new server,” they conclude.

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

According to Spanish police, the site caused the entertainment industries 535,000 euros in losses and made 30,000 euros in profits. Unfortunately the authorities didn’t have the benefit of foresight, which would’ve given them an understanding of how Spanish law would deal with a site that links to copyright infringing material.

In September 2008, a Spanish court ruled that providing links to copyrighted material is not a crime. The Provincial Court of Madrid ruled that Sharemula.com, a site offering eDonkey links to movies, music, software and games, did not break the law. Furthermore, the court’s decision was final and could not be appealed.

If the ruling in the Sharemula case holds up, this means that TodoTorrente was not breaking the law either. Lawyer David Bravo who was involved in the TodoTorrente case, has contacted TorrentFreak with an update on the TodoTorrente situation. David notes that the coverage of the TodoTorrente raids and arrests had a great impact in the Spanish media, and further afield.

Of particular interest was a gloating editorial which published in Portal Latino, which claimed that TodoTorrente wasn’t “kids playing on a network” but an “illegal business”, and celebrated the closure. David explains that the media uproar this caused left little room for the arrested admins to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

However, after an application was made to Magistrate’s Court No.3 in Orihuela, it has now issued an interim order of dismissal of the case against TodoTorrente. The court decided that the site or admins didn’t commit any crime “since the investigation showed that the website was limited to providing links to downloads and didn’t offer downloads directly.”

Essentially, the court has decided that TodoTorrente operated in a similar manner to Sharemula. The decision is open to appeal, but there is no doubt that BitTorrent sites are getting closer to legality in Spain.

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

“CLOSED BY JUDICIAL ORDER”

According to the Police, todotorrente.com was responsible for more than 500,000 € in losses to copyright holders, while the site itself made more than 30,000 € in profits. Numbers that can’t be backed up by any evidence of course, but we’re used to that.

Todotorrente.com was not the only site affected by the raids. In addition, the police took down trackertdt.com, a sister site of todotorrente.com. Gamesfive.net, another sister site, now redirects to blackdivx.org.

This is not the first time that Spanish authorities take action against BitTorrent sites. Last year, 15 administrators of BitTorrent and eDonkey sites were arrested, in the largest P2P raid in Spanish history. Most of the sites that were shut down last year (17 in total) remain unavailable up until today, however, pctorrent.com now redirects to newpct.com, one of the largest BitTorrent sites in Spain.

A bittersweet week for Spanish pirates.

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