Spanish court frees P2P file sharer
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Despite efforts by Spanish anti-piracy crews, the legal system in Spain, “continues to stand firmly behind those who share music and movies without financial gain,” says Ernesto in TorrentFreak.
As proof, a man who downloaded and shared 3,322 copyrighted movies walked free from a hearing at the Criminal Court of Pamplona.
Justices ruled he didn’t break any laws, “by downloading thousands of movies and an undetermined number of songs,” says the story, going he was cleared of alleged copyright infringements, “because there was no evidence that he profited from downloading the movies and music, or sharing them with others”.
The judge acknowledged the man indeed downloaded the files “without consent of the copyright holders” in 2003 and 2004, “but ruled that he only did so for for “private use or sharing with other Internet users,” says TorrentFreak, adding:
“This is not the first time a Spanish court has ruled in favor of a file-sharer.
“In 2006, a man was similarly acquitted, and more recently it was ruled that websites linking to p2p downloads (torrents for example) operate within the law. Spanish law dictates that there has to be ‘an intent to profit’ for someone to be held liable for copyright infringement.”
TorrentFreak – Downloading 3322 Copyrighted Movies is Okay in Spain, May 29, 2009
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May 30th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Wait, you mean it isn’t piracy if no one profits from it? What a wonderfully civilized concept.
I think this is one area where we could learn from the Spanish.
May 30th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Well, what do you expect from a country that still allows bullfighting?
May 30th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I mean the crime of bullfighting.
May 30th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
let’s hope that Pablo receives a comparable verdict.
May 30th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
“by downloading thousands of movies and an undetermined number of songs,” says the story, going he was cleared of alleged copyright infringements, “because there was no evidence that he profited from downloading the movies and music, or sharing them with others”.
Make perfect sense to me.
Since there is no way to stop people from sharing information (fortunatly!) because of the nature of computers they were only two possibilities:
1) Centralized p2p system such as Napster. The governement levy a small tax on internet providers and the distribution of the money is done according to “dowload data” monitored by an independant and official organization.
2) Sound and movie recording have to be free since there is no way to monitor accuratly who is downloding what even with BT.
The solution number one hads been killed by the parasites and criminals at the RIAA/MPAA/IFPI/VIVENDIQUE-UNIVERSALE/RUPER MURDERERS and the like because by killing napster they killed all the p2p centralized systems.
The only kind of centralized p2p system is BT. Unfortunatly what is centralized in BT are not the repositories of files but the repositories of shorcut to the files. This does not represent not even closely what people actually download!
There is also a plethora of totally anonymous P2p solutions that did not became popular yet because the entertainment parasites has been poweless to efficiently monitor the downladers. People know that despite all the uindustry Nazi type propaganda.
If they were succesful to loby governements in violating the privacy of the citizen further these solutions would become wide spread and they will be no way at all to tell who is exchanging what.
These solutions are already deployed very succesfully in countries who have nasty governement such as China and their infamous cyber great wall where most of the traffic now transit via anonymous WIFI, proxies and onions routers.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:33 pm
” Well, what do you expect from a country that still allows bullfighting? ”
Yes, it is surprising that a country that would support something that brutal
would make the right decision regarding the RIAA bullshit machine.