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I received a call from the Director of the Masters Degree Program where I was teaching telling me that the Dean had called and had asked him to "make sure I did not teach there again", and on a second call saying "it's your choice, but also your responsibility". The Director called me and first asked me to remove any link to the university from my website, and also to "hide" the fact that I was teaching there. Then he told me about the pressures and threats he and the Program received (to be subjected to software licenses inspection, copyright violations inspections, or anything that may damage them). Obviously I had to resign to save his job (and everybody else's at the Masters Program). So I did.
This on-line music platform, based in Madrid, Spain started way back in 1998 when the extension .mp3 was still unknown to most people. Though licenses were granted by authors and artists, Weblisten never came to agreements with record labels. This obviously became fatal.The legal battle went on for years, but this little Spanish David eventually was beaten by the Music Industry Goliath.
Weblisten, a Spain-based website that offered many thousands of international and local songs for download and streaming, has been shut down by a the Third Criminal Court of Madrid following the company's admission of criminal copyright infringement.
The Spanish government has issued a press release announcing a new draft Intellectual Property law. The law aims to adopt the existing copyright and intellectual property rights to the context of IT and implement the European Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC).The main changes are:1. The right to "interactive disposition" which regulates the way authors offer their works on the Internet.2. Libraries can present their contents in telematic media as long as they remain within a closed intranet.3. Quotes of both text and audiovisual material are allowed as long as its main use is teaching/ research. It is legal to quote press and journals as long as there are no economic benefits from such quotes. If the quote serves a commercial purpose, previous authorisation from the owner is necessary.4. A new private copy regulation is designed to harmonise the rights of authors, distributors and users. The right to make a private copy is specifically acknowledged. To compensate for private (digital) copies, the Spanish government plans to create a new process to compensate for the economic impact. Within five months after the law is approved, all implied market sectors must reach an understanding about the type of economic compensation for every piece of sold equipment or information bearer suitable for digital copies.The agreement will be renewed every two years. The draft law specifically excludes hard disks and equivalents, DSL connections, as well as any other medium that doesn't have as its main goal to make copies.5. The law creates a legal context for digital rights management (DRM). Spain has chosen for penal sanctions on circumvention. It also turns into a crime to publish about the very existence of systems to elude copyright protection. The press release however promises some extra measures in order to assure that DRM won't collide with basic user rights.So far, consumer organisations and cyberactivists are not very happy with the draft law. It doesn't address the problem of the levy on blank CDs. Organisations like Internautas have argued for a long time that many CDs are very commonly used to make back-ups of data. There is also a clear tension between allowing private copies and legally protecting DRM at the same time. The announcement of possible extra measures does not specify how this tension will be addressed in practice.
A Spanish judge has dismissed a case against a man who shared music files on the Internet, saying he committed no crime because his aim was not to make money.In a ruling made public Thursday, Judge Paz Aldecoa of No. 3 Penal Court in the northern city of Santander said that there was ``no talk of money or any other compensation beyond the sharing of material available among various users.''`No offense meriting penal sanction has been committed,'' the ruling said.The state prosecutor's office and two music distribution associations had sought a two-year sentence against the 40-year-old man, whose identity the court asked not to be revealed.The prosecution accused the man of violating copyright laws by downloading albums from Internet file-sharing systems and then offered them to others through e-mail and chat rooms.But the judge said a guilty verdict ``would imply the criminalization of socially accepted and widely practiced behavior in which the aim is in no way to make money illicitly, but rather to obtain copies for private use.''
QuoteA Spanish judge has dismissed a case against a man who shared music files on the Internet, saying he committed no crime because his aim was not to make money.
A Spanish judge has dismissed a case against a man who shared music files on the Internet, saying he committed no crime because his aim was not to make money.
Since the case focused on private copying without profit, the situation in Spain would suggest that an individual can download and distribute copyrighted work with impunity - providing it was done without profit. But don't expect the entertainment industry to wrap up its enforcement campaign just yet.The IFPI feels since case was specific against the distribution of pirated CDs for profit and not file-sharing, this ruling does not change the legality of trading copyrighted works. In a statement, the IFPI expressed the status of unauthorized file-sharing has not changed.“This case is not about p2p file-sharing – the judgment refers to an individual who distributed physical music CD-Rs that he had advertised on the internet. Swapping copyright infringing music through peer-to-peer networks remains illegal in Spain as it is throughout Europe and the virtually everywhere else. The Spanish Justice Minister has confirmed in a statement that file-sharing copyrighted music without permission is illegal. The judgment is being appealed.”Although the IFPI claims this judgment is not about P2P or file-sharing, its interesting to note the decision is being appealed - not to mention the law allowing private copying is being reconsidered.
