[pp.int.general] Sweden law in Spanish media (recently created Público newspaper)

[Carlos Ayala]

Original source, and my translation to English:

"Sweden is the last EU country in announcing the introduction of drastical measures against internet users that download files under copyright. Thus follows the path initiated by France and United Kingdom though, differing from the former, in Sweden internet access of reincident users won't be cut. This decision, however, does not relieve internet users, as their personal data will be delivered to the files' copyright holders to allow them to decide whether they sue the infringing users or not.

The opposite situation happens in Italy,
whose Privacy Protection authority has stated that private enterprises won't be allowed to effect a massive control to find out which users download what. (remark: what about public entities? public entities are also able to affect our privacy, and if those public entities become controlled by private entities, or if simply the public entities develop a liberticide behaviour, the result would be exactly the same)


The scenario in Spain



In Spain, by the moment, situation is pretty different from Sweden, France or United Kingdom. By the end of january, the European Court of Justice left it to Spanish law to solve a case between Promusicae (Music Producers Association of Spain) and Telefonica, in a case where the former wanted the latter to hand over the identity of those usersthat in 2005 had downloaded and fileshared using P2P software. Telefónica refused, and no court has so far forced them to do it.



Director for FAP (spanish acronym for intellectual Property protection Federation), José Manuel Tourné, considers "Internet has to follow some order", thus supports French-like initiatives  that, as he said, "are essential measures if they are applied in compliance with the fundamental user rights". (remark: like we stated in Berlin, as it's impossible to apply such measures without conculcating fundamental rights and civil liberties, there is no room for such measures)



One of main obstacles found by rights management organisations is that IP address (which identify internet users) are considered personal data by the Spanish Personal Data Agency. Also, in a criminal procedure, with the current Spanish law commercial (i.e.: economic) profit has to be found to consider filesharing as a crime.



And via civil procedure, ISPs can refuse to hand over their users' identification as they are only forced to do it "for the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of criminal offences" or "public security, including the safeguarding of national security and defence" (remark: here I haven't exactly translated the Público article, but quoted the 2000/31/CE directive, which is applied into the 34/2002 and 56/2007 Spanish laws that are the ones quoted by Público). This is the reason for Spanish P2P users to remain anonymous (remark: well, there would may be other reasons, for instance, if P2P users share only with trusted user, no one would be able to determine whether the shared files are under copyright or not; and if P2P users also encrypt their communications, it would be even more private ones )



A levy for filesharing



In USA, where filesharing is illegal, whether commercial profit is found or not, record industries are considering the addition of a levy to the Internet bill to fight the losses theoretically caused by filesharing. The purpose is that with the  collected money authors of the downloaded works get a compensation (remark: what a lie ... not authors but copyright holders would be the compensated ones; and we know that often they don't match ... even, record industries are usually the copyright holders, after signing contracts with authors), a measure that, when proposed four years ago, wasn't agreed by record industries (remark: I don't know how RMOs work in your countries; in Spain, the biggest RMO, SGAE, has a 38-member National Board formed by the bestseller authors and representatives of the Big Four, so record industries control the Spanish biggest RMO; maybe in USA record industries refused four years ago because the proposed formula didn't allow them
 to receive the collected money, and now they rescue the proposal ... their way). The levy, estimated circa 5 $, would be shared out between copyright holders of the most downloaded works (remark: for John's sake! how are they going to find out which are the most downloaded works ... without breaking privacy of internet users?)



Whether it becomes finally applied or not, record industries considering such alternatives makes people think that the prosecution system effected in USA is not giving the expected results. NPD Group estimates in a 20 % the amount of internet users that downloaded works under copyright during 2007."

The sad thing is that:

- this is not exactly the Spanish top selling newspaper
- this is maybe one of the best written copyright, levies and Internet surveillance article within the last months ... so if you don't find it good enough, and/or disagree with the mistakes that it has ... imagine the rest of Spanish media -if some of you speak Spanish, I recommend,, for instance, David Bravo's blog (he uses to quote bizarre mass media news related to this subject)-. Regards



                                                                                              Carlos Ayala
                                                                                               ( Aiarakoa )

                                                                        Partido Pirata National Board Chairman




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