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EU Government Piracy

Spanish Website Blocking Law Implemented 65

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the banning-things-is-fun dept.
Sir Mal Fet writes "In a very polemic move by the Spanish parliament, the infamous 'Sinde' law, already discussed here, was implemented on December 31st. Albeit modified from their original version, the law will allow the Spanish government to request ISPs to summarily close a website due to copyright infringement (English translation). If the ISP refuses, then it's passed to court where a judge can order the website closed. It seems it's one good, one bad over there. The law is in public consult until March, and No Les Votes, a Spanish organization that opposes the law, has already started a campaign to boycott it (English translation)."
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Spanish Website Blocking Law Implemented More

Spanish Website Blocking Law Implemented

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  • Nobody expects the Spanish (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hogmoru ( 639374 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @04:26AM (#38570088)
    Website Blocking Law !
  • David Bravo: [filmica.com] - The Sinde Law have numerous side effects: introducing a strong legal uncertainty in the regulation of the Internet, seriously hampers the activity of technological entrepreneurs
    - The intellectual property landscape in this country is appalling: the Embassy of the United States has imposed the adoption of the Law Sinde - Only intelligence can dialogue and work to resolve the current challenges of intellectual property.

    Enrique Dans: [enriquedans.com]
    - Obviously not going to help anything.
    - To know how to

    • Re:David Bravo and Enrique Dans Opinions (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rev0lt ( 1950662 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @05:16AM (#38570242)
      It's funny how a (somewhat)developed country with one of the highest unemployment rates (>20%), with an estimate of 40% of its finantial sector completely deregulated (through an interesting concept of "non profit" or "associative" banks), with a recently elected government, and the likely candidate for rescue in 2012 by the IMF and the european fund, has "time" to vote and pass this kind of legislation, that probably will be voided when disputed on an european court.

      • Re:David Bravo and Enrique Dans Opinions (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @05:47AM (#38570370) Homepage

        The even funnier thing is that copyright violation for non profit/personal use isn't against the law in Spain.

        This law is supposed to be used to take down link-farm sites which have advertising alongside their pages of links. Those pages make money for the owners so they violate the 'non profit' part of the copyright exception.

        At least, that's the story they used to sell it to the politicians.

        How it will actually be used is anybody's guess, but it could be used for almost anything given the general level of corruption in Spanish politics and the 'nightmare' economic crisis (ie. there's no money left to steal - every politician's worst nightmare!)

        • This law is supposed to be used to take down link-farm sites which have advertising alongside their pages of links. Those pages make money for the owners so they violate the 'non profit' part of the copyright exception.

          Oh, you mean like this site does: http://www.google.com [google.com]? Yeah, it's time someone took care of those infringing bastards!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The recently elected government didn't vote and pass it. It's the final act of the outgoing government.

      • You could say the same thing about America and SOPA. After all, rather than the Republicans manning up and getting on with fixing the problems of unemployment, roads etc - they decide now's a good time to f*** over a large chunk of a new sector of their economy. All because an old sector of their economy paid them to - sorry gave them campaign contributions to.

  • Expected (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Soon, a certain Spanish organization may find out that it's website has already been taken down.

  • Good luck! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rev0lt ( 1950662 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @05:01AM (#38570198)
    Anything other than a judge decreting a site to be closed is likely unconstitutional, and the first ISP to drag a case to the court will void the law, because the law itself voids the principle of "innocent until guilty". I'm not spanish (I'm from a neighour country), but it seems if one of these cases reaches an european court it will stand no chance, so this seems to be a "pleaser" law - it's written and whatnot (and given that Spain recently changed powers, it's not difficult to guess why now), but if you try to enforce it on the wong people, a shitstorm will rise. Considering that Spain is one of the countries that signed the Lisbon Treaty (and one of the few countries to referend it), the ones actually approving this law will have no interest whatsoever in enforcing it, specially considering the precarious finance state of the country.

    • Awesome! So in other words, all someone has to do is upload a music file to an opposition's candidate's site and get them shut down? When they pass SOPA in the U.S., I'd love to see some of this go down - imagine the sites that could be shut down... Yeah, those pro-SOPA too. ;)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rev0lt ( 1950662 )
        No, what I said is "everything will remain the same, because of technicalities". And US legislation has no power in Europe.

  • What does it mean to "summary close" a website?

    Are we talking that the website has to be hosted at a Spanish provider in order to be closed, or are we talking yet another (idiot) DNSSEC-breaking solution?

    Or simply a custom DNS entry on whichever DNS servers an ISP controls?

  • Required viewing before enacting such punishment-based copyright legislation should be the movie 'Caddyshack'... so that they can get a stark reminder that the game of 'whack-a-mole' usually has no winners.

    Somehow watching Bill Murray's epic fail in his attempts at getting those groundhogs should be enough for them to understand that this is a pointless battle that will never, ever be won.

    Well, it probably won't happen not the least because the copyright holder would demand payment for letting them wat

    • I think you are very optimistic, politicians don't have to believe the law in question will actually work, hehe :)

      There is no game of "whack-a-mole" if they, the politicians, are not the one's playing. The people in charge of policing and executing this law on the other hand have no say.

      What you should keep in mind is that unlike the US Congress and administration, European Union member states are subject to strict control by their peers and the [superior] European courts (the central EU treaties and the se

  • More slashcrap (Score:5, Interesting)

    by __aancvu2993 ( 2022320 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @06:12AM (#38570418)

    I'm spanish. I'm truly sick of the fearmongering this sorry excuse for a technology website keeps spewing. In this particular case the summary is wrong and retarded, the 'articles' it cites are retarded and there's nothing to see here. The Sinde law will not be 'implemented', there is no such thing as 'implementing' a law. This is only ridiculous. Maybe it makes some sense to information-deprived shit-overloaded US-centric morons who read this website and go ZOMG the sky, it is fellings, it's the end I tell ya!

    There has been a change of government in Spain. The incoming idiots want to make a statement. That is all. There have been tens of lawsuits where the only websites closed where the ones who profited, if only by having google ads, from their pages. And the closed sprout again with same content under a different name, with no ads, in a couple of hours, case closed. If there are no ads the page is considered not for profit and spanish courts have never considered P2P any more illegal than lending a magazine. I wish the fucking stupidity about this would go away. But I digress.

    In Spain there is still due process for everything. We don't have a MAFIAA, we have a smallish group of whiny artsy retards who get 50% of the budget of any 'spanish' (read ingrown, incestuous, embarrasing shit that should never cross our borders) movie from our taxes. One of the linked articles say that Spain has 'emerged' as a 'safe-haven' for 'piracy'. It didn't emerge, the legal standing of lending things you own has always been the same and it was legal to copy a Phillips Cassette in the 50s and it's legal to make a torrent of a movie today if you own it. What was punishable by death was to use Fe-grade cassettes. But still. Spain is also not a 'safe-haven' for piracy, but same story: we have rights across Europe and we like it that way. Where is The Pirate Bay hosted? Several places now. Has it been closed? Not that I know, just as not one of the small pages in Spain will not be closed as long as they steer clear of making any profit off sharing.

    The natural state of the art industry (an oxymoron in itself) is small, very small. Prices are too high for the crap that's selling and it's okay, only kids (or underdeveloped adults) with too much money on their hands buy said crap. I myself stick to music that was written some centuries ago. Yesterday I had some silly fun out of IBNIZ, give it a try, with a week of practice anyone capable of understanding some assembler concepts like stacks and basic bit wrangling can churn a trance track every 4 hours.

    • You underestimate the power of marketing. People will buy what they are told to buy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msobkow ( 48369 )

      I agree completely. When I clicked on the link that's supposed to be the English translation of the legislation, it took me to an article about how to boycott any artists who'd supported the legislation. I still don't know what the legislation actually SAYS, and I'm not going to judge it based on the paranoia of someone who obviously pre-judges in favour of freetard downloading any more than I'm going to accept the claims of the *AA without question.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rev0lt ( 1950662 )
      The problem everyone sees is the same - the political tides are changing, and what we trusted as the EU may not continue to be much longer. EU is not USA (with god's bless, for those who are believers), but for the rest of us, the economic groups are "buying " the government at sale. There isn't "we the people", you have "we the buyers". I'm from Portugal, I have friends working in Spain, I buy stuff from major spanish outlets, and I receive this kind of news as a warning sign (specially considering the in

      • I fondly remember learning the greatest measure of how positive the European Union actually is for European citizens and consumers in law school; The example involved a simple trade dispute between France and Germany if I remember the details correctly. The subject was some sort of tax on different wine products.

        The mere fact that another EU country, Germany in this case, had slightly different tax laws for similar products that left French-produced products at an disadvantage, gave France the right and abi

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rev0lt ( 1950662 )
          The RoHS directive is a bad example - the scope of the law is blind and the legislators had no care for business depending on specific products. Not that I'm criticizing the EU regulation process - I think globally it's an example of civility and a monument to what the people (and politicians) can achieve when working together. I just despise some abortions of a legislation, and RoHS (which, it should be mentioned, actually forced international manufacturers into dumping dangerous chemicals in the productio

    • Re:More slashcrap (Score:5, Insightful)

      by langarto ( 718855 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @07:47AM (#38570856)

      You may be Spanish, but don't seem to know shit about what you are talking about. There is no much fearmongering in the linked articles. The point of the law is precisely to bypass the due process that you claim that exists in Spain.

      Thanks to this law, any copyright holder can ask to have a website closed without having to prove before a judge that there is an actual copyright infringement. There is a judge involved somehow, but he does not get to judge the case before closing the site (as was the case until now). This law opens the gates for American style corporate censorship (like when US Immigration and Customs Enforcement decides that a web site should have its DNS stolen because Warner Bros or Universal say that it hosts "illegal" content).

      And the change in government has very little to do with this law. Both PP and PSOE agree with it. Both voted for it.

    • Mod parent up for opposing a nuance-rich, thoughtful european voice, an a european & european-country subject, to

      information-deprived shit-overloaded US-centric morons who read this website and go ZOMG the sky, it is fellings

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