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Deutsch: Spanisches Gericht urteilt: Links zu P2P-Inhalten nicht gesetzeswidrig
A civil court in Barcelona has recently ruled against SGAE (the Spanish collective society of authors and editors) in a case brought against Jesus Guerra who was administrating a site called elrincondejesus.com with links to P2P content.
SGAE accused Guerra of infringing copyrights by having reproduced and communicated to the public works owned by their constituency. The defendant argued that his website was a non-profit site only providing links that could be used by users only through eMule, a P2P application, to connect to other Internet users. No content was actually hosted on that specific website.
The judge ruled in favour of the defendant arguing that linking "does not suppose distributing, reproducing or making publicly available copyrighted works." In the judge's opinion, the creation of an index of links is not an infringing practice as linking is an integrant part of the Internet.
"P2P networks, as mere conduits in the transmission of data between individual users of the Internet, do not infringe any right protected by Intellectual Property Law. Some P2P networks contain files that are not protected. There are also works which are no longer protected because the term of protection has run out; and there are works whose protection is not allocated to SGAE. Therefore, it has become necessary to clearly delimit which works are protected, and what conducts can infringe Intellectual Property Law, which was not done in this occasion," said the judge who considered it was difficult to clearly identify P2P users and the files they are sharing, even if they are infringing copyright and that the legislation in force was not adequate for the new technologies.
He concluded that "this is a mere exchange of files between individuals, without commercial gain, directly or indirectly (as it is difficult to establish a causal relationship between downloading and not purchasing a work) through a medium such as the Internet, which is distinct from other obsolete technologies ( such as exchange or copy of tapes), in the fact that it has become massive and global, as is the distribution by the same medium of publicity, access and authorised communication of works by their authors or managers with the corresponding monetary rewards and cultural diffusion".
The SGAE will probably appeal this decision.
Despite this promising decision, the situation might change in Spain with the modification of the legislation by the Government through the proposed Sustainable Economy Law presently under discussion. (See article 5 from current EDRi-gram).
A civil court declares p2p downloading networks legal (only in Spanish,
14.03.2010)
http://www.elpais.com:80/articulo/cultura/sentencia/civil/declara/lega...
The keys of a historical sentence in favour of P2P in Spain (only in
Spanish, 15.03.2010)
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2010/03/13/navegante/1268485864.html
Commercial Court sentence (only in Spanish, 12.03.2010)
http://www.bufetalmeida.com/upload/file/sentenciaelrincondejesus.pdf
Linking to P2P content declared legal in Spain (14.03.2010)
http://www.technollama.co.uk/linking-to-p2p-content-declared-legal-in-...