[pp.int.general] Some parting thoughts

[Eduardo Robles Elvira]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 7:47 PM, Boris Turovskiy <tourovski at gmail.com> wrote:
> Eduardo Robles Elvira wrote:
> Whoa. I didn't think that our goal of limiting copyright laws to commercial
> use is implemented somewhere already.
> Two questions:
> - Doesn't such legislation conflict with TRIPS?
> - Are there any studies on the impact of the legality of filesharing on
> artists' profits in Spain?

I don't know, really, perhaps someone else from PIRATA can answer
better those questions (forwarding to Carlos).

What the law says here in Spain is that you have the right to obtain a
copy from a copyrighted piece of work (if it's not software for which
we have an exception) if you're not profiting from that copy (i.e.
you're not selling it obtaining $$ benefits) and you don't do a
"public distribution" of that copy. Obtaining the copy is legally
correct, sharing it with others is in a more grey area but still
correct because peer to peer is not considered public distribution as
showing a movie in the cinema would be).

Still, there's a lot pressure made by the industry resulting in
increasing number of people think pirating is illegal, even thought
this is not actually true. It has been changed recently to specify
that it's only legal to make a private copy from a rightfully obtained
private copy, so that if for example you RIP a music CD with DRM that
is supposed to prevent you from making a copy then that copy is
illegal; the law is good but could be much better and cleaner, but
still it's better than in other countries in some respects as you can
see. Nevertheless, the government is trying to change the law to make
all this freedom go away.

Regards,
   Eduardo Robles Elvira (member of PIRATA).