Spain’s legal rollercoaster continues.
Spain previously proposed a piece of legislation that aimed to shut down file-sharing sites and make it easier to penalize caught pirates. At the end of 2010, the Spanish House of Representatives decided to reject the proposal due to the public opposition.
The law has now resurfaced with a few caveats, but the public still appears inflamed.
Spanish courts traditionally operate on the basis that P2P Web sites operate legally and that the only punishable offense comes when their operators are making monetary gains off the distribution of copyrighted works — monetary gains here have also needed to be significant to see site owners face any sort of harsh penalty.
The new legislation goes against this precedence by moving around it. The law says that sites offering infringing links to copyright works can be taken offline without a judicial order, and would likely lead to the shutdown of all major file-sharing sites in the country.
The revision introduced more judicial control by requiring a court to sign off on requests to hand over the personal details on Web site owners, but the legislation does not require a judge to be part of the decision about whether or not a site is infringing on copyrights.
So far, the new legislation has received almost entirely negative press in Spain. Even the president of the Academy of Cinema, Álex de la Iglesia, critiqued it as “a law that does not suit anybody.”
This legislation, part of the Sustainable Economy Law, was drafted by Minister of Culture Ángeles González-Sinde with help the US government. The extent of the role the US played in the provision’s creation is unclear, but this fact alone has faced a tough criticism and calls for the amendment to once again be removed from any legislation.
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