Spain drafts new IP law
p2pnet.net News- Spain has announced a new draft Intellectual Property law, says European Digital Rights.
“The law aims to adopt [sic] the existing copyright and intellectual property rights to the context of IT and implement the European Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC), it says, quoting a press statement [Spanish] as listing the main changes as:
1. The right to "interactive disposition" which regulates the way authors offer their works on the Internet.
2. Libraries can present their contents in telematic media as long as they remain within a closed intranet.
3. Quotes of both text and audiovisual material are allowed as long as its main use is teaching/ research. It is legal to quote press and journals as long as there are no economic benefits from such quotes. If the quote serves a commercial purpose, previous authorisation from the owner is necessary.
4. A new private copy regulation is designed to harmonise the rights of authors, distributors and users. The right to make a private copy is specifically acknowledged. To compensate for private (digital) copies, the Spanish government plans to create a new process to compensate for the economic impact. Within five months after the law is approved, all implied market sectors must reach an understanding about the type of economic compensation for every piece of sold equipment or information bearer suitable for digital copies. The agreement will be renewed every two years. The draft law specifically excludes hard disks and equivalents, DSL connections, as well as any other medium that doesn’t have as its main goal to make copies.
5. The law creates a legal context for digital rights management (DRM). Spain has chosen for penal sanctions on circumvention. It also turns into a crime to publish about the very existence of systems to elude copyright protection. The press release however promises some extra measures in order to assure that DRM won’t collide with basic user rights.
So far, consumer organisations and cyberactivists aren’t very happy with the draft law, says the EDR.
“It doesn’t address the problem of the levy on blank CDs,” it says, adding:
“Organisations like Internautas have argued for a long time that many CDs are very commonly used to make back-ups of data. There is also a clear tension between allowing private copies and legally protecting DRM at the same time. The announcement of possible extra measures does not specify how this tension will be addressed in practice.”
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See:-
European Digital Rights – New IPR law proposed in Spain, July 27, 2005
July 29th, 2005 at 1:10 am
“It also turns [it] into a crime to publish [information] about the very existence of systems to elude copyright protection.”
And don’t forget to pick up your brown “respect copyrights” arm band at school next week kids…
Not that it has anything to do with brown arm bands… but I think Germany passed a similar law not long ago making it a crime to even discuss copyright circumvention in public much less publish such information.
July 29th, 2005 at 5:43 am
If my kid ever came home with a “respect copyrights” arm band on… I’d go into the school and shoot everyone in charge for their own stupidity… @_@
July 29th, 2005 at 5:43 am
Sooo is this kind of like a DMCA law, cept for spanish people? xD
July 29th, 2005 at 11:10 am
it is impossible to legally protect DRM while allowing private copying.
DRM’s sole purpose is to prevent private copying. Extremists in these cartels believe the only way to stop traffic on the internet is to prevent private copying. In theory this WOULD work.. in practice though, they acknowledge that there are a certain number of people capable of hacking even the best DRM on their own and seeding the net! This leaves the internet still packed with copyrighted material, and the average consumer screwed because they can’t copy their media into the formats and bitrates they want.
July 29th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
DRM’s sole purpose is to tie access to the media to specifically authorized brands of access technology. DRM can not stop copies from being made, just possibly render the copies inaccessible, a technique which none of the current generation DRM actually try to do yet.
What the dinosaur industry associations who are the sole beneficiaries of these laws (same concepts in Canada and the USA) want is a nice scam: they want the right to launch lawsuits, levy, and technologically prohibit the same activities.
July 29th, 2005 at 2:47 pm
Sorry, I wasn’t logged in..
August 1st, 2005 at 10:31 am
As usual the politicians love to legislate unenforceable crap, that no one with any sence will take the blindest bit of notice of.