[pp.int.general] Spain and the law of sustainable economy

[Eduardo Robles Elvira]

Hello everyone,

Some of you might have already heard news from Spain about copyright
law. First I must say that I'm late sending this email to this list
and I'm sorry for that,  but better late than never.

Recently, the Spanish Government (socialist PSOE) have proposed a new
macro-law of economy matters that touches multiple other laws, called
the "Law  of Sustainable Economy". In its First Final Disposition i.e.
hidden deep into the law, this law changes our "Internet Law" (LSSI)
by creating a "Commitee of Intelectual Property" which would be able
to close web sites without a Judicial Order.

The Spanish Internet community quickly against this new law. One day
after the new law hit the news there was a Manifiesto against it,
signed by thousands of bloggers (including us) and created by them.
Even the President Zapatero went and said that "no blog or web will be
closed". However we don't believe in words but in facts. Two days
after the law proposal, the Ministry of Culture reacted by having a
meeting with some people from Internet community which was quite a
disappointment for several reasons (mainly, the meeting was just a
mockery to try to explain the new law instead of debating its points),
but a new movement of people that wants justice have been created and
is still in place. There were also some demonstrations all over Spain,
we were on them.

This change in the LSSI is against our Constitution which is pretty
clear and states that "no publication or any other information media
can be closed without judicial order". But what's even more daunting
than the final disposition itself is the situation in which the law
have been proposed. The timing is perfect and it has been calculated
without any doubt. The same morning the Law of Sustainable Economy was
shown to the public, some of the lobby pro-industry artists gave to
the Ministry of Culture 2.5k signatures against piracy. This is not a
coincidence.

What follows a paragraph straight from a press release the day after
the law was proposed:
"It makes us sad to corroborate the succession of events in which the
Government uses the dangerous situation generated in the Telecom
Package in Europe as an alibi to justify the disconnection of web
sites with this new law, as we feared when that voting was held. We
don't think it's a coincidence that the socialists have waited for the
Lisbon Treaty and the Telecom Package to launch this constitutional
abuse: the Lisbon Treaty establishes the Communitary Law over National
Law, and that together with the Telecom Package would allow, as it was
already explained by the Judge member of the Spanish Constitutional
Tribunal Ramón Rodríguez Arrivas, to deactivate the constitutional
protections of our fundamental rights and liberties."

The day after we published that press release, the Ministry of Culture
González-Sinde confirmated our worst fears, saying that this law is
"inside the rights set up by the European Parliament". This was a
pristine reference to the recently voted "Telecom Package" to which
PIRATA as you can see, held an open position against [*].

Some of those well-known bloggers who were invited by the Ministry of
Culture to a meeting have managed to get some action, and have held
some more meetings with PP (the other major spanish party) and IU (who
has only 2 MP). Both of them have publicly stated that they are
against this change in the change in the LSSI law. We hope they
together can veto the final disposition in the Parliament but we don't
take that for granted; if PP is against this change is only because
they are not in the government and Internet is against it so they
don't want to lose votes, because when they were in the government
they proposed the same.

So this is the current situation. So what's our master plan here? Well
we have already went to public demonstrations against this, we have
given press releases, shacked the web, twitter, the news and the
radio, and we are collaborating with the people against this in the
forum that have been created in that effect. This email is getting
quite large so this it for now =)

Regards,
   Eduardo Robles Elvira.
--
[*] We can understand that the Swedish Pirate Party didn't have that
problem because their constitution doesn't seem to provide them that
right so they don't have something to lose with that, but we cannot
share that position. And together with the Lisbon Treaty, which states