Comments on: So, Telcos Not Obliged To Hand Over Swappers Records, But Individual States Can Step In?

By: Reena

Reena — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:05:41 +0000

Me neither, I’m an engineer

By: Alexia

Alexia — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:51:53 +0000

@Reena Let’s put this way, I can’t see Irish IP law being as favourable as Spanish law.. But then again I’m not a legal head.

By: Reena

Reena — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:43:54 +0000

Yes, it’s so. How is the situation in Ireland at the moment? I’m living in Limerick and I leave my Bittorrent on the whole day (and night) >:)

By: Alexia

Alexia — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:49:35 +0000

@Reena Interesting.. That under Spanish copyright law, the rights of private use extend to giving copyrighted material to another without receiving payment in return, while part of the Spanish seat of Government has banned file-swapping. Sounds like legal limbo. Almost Irish, really.

By: Reena

Reena — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:20:03 +0000

The Spanish Intellectual Property Law defines the concept of Private Copy as the one you make of the original medium (CD, DVD, mp3 file). You can share that copy while you don’t receive any money for it, in peer-to-peer networks, giving that copy to a neighbour or whichever way you prefer.

If you receive money in exchange, that is called “profitmaking” and you can be taken to court. That is one the problems we have in Spain with people who sell burned CDs in the streets.

Regarding to software, that law stablishes a different concept called Security Copy, and that means you can only make one copy of the CD that can’t be shared in any way.

There is also another big organisation called SGAE (General Society of Spanish Authors, more famous than Promusicae) that is claiming that every person has to pay a “canon” when he or she buys a CD, DVD, computer, printer…as it can be used for making copies of registered works….it’s crazy, because if I buy a new hard drive today, I would pay e12 extra because of this. Everytime you buy a CD or DVD in Spain, you are paying this and it doesn’t matter if you use it for your pictures or College work.

There is a big platform called “Everybody against the canon” that has reached 2 million signatures and they’re taking these to every politician they talk to, as we have elections in March. And also, there are some lawyers that have created a big movement against all this madness in the Internet.

If you speak spanish you can read a book called “Copy this book”, written by one these lawyers:

http://elastico.net/archives/005194.html

Also you can check these people’s blogs:

http://www.filmica.com/david_bravo/
http://www.cortell.net

(Don’t trust on what the Spanish congress do. They change their mind every day…)

By: Alexia

Alexia — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:51:43 +0000

@Reena: What legal basis do you to support your opinion that the swapping of copyrighted files without the agreement of the rights holdy is lawful? From my investigative work, I find that the Spanish congress banned all peer-to-peer swapping of files almost two years ago. Do you have evidence to support that this situation has been reversed? Has the Spanish Government backpeddled?

Telefonica claimed that they being forced to share personal data with other entities was illegal. That’s a different issue.

By: Reena

Reena — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:08:23 +0000

Promusicae is asking now to the Spanish Goverment to force Telefonica to give them that data with the help of a groups of judges…Does it make sense to anyone??

The point is that file-swapping is legal in Spain (well, it’s not ilegal) and they can’t take anybody to court at the moment…so they keep threatening…