This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Legal
Spanish court says BitTorrent site not illegal
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 17 March 2010
And now another country where existing copyright rules have not been especially helpful to record companies trying to protect their intellectual property – Spain.
A court in Barcelona has rejected a complaint made by the country’s main collecting society SGAE against a Spanish BitTorrent tracker and search service called Elrincondejesus.com, which provides links to all sorts of illegal content. The judge said that linking to unlicensed content did not, in itself, constitute copyright infringement.
Given Spanish courts have, in the past, said that under the country’s current laws file-sharing itself is not illegal, the latest ruling is perhaps unsurprising. The liability of websites who link to but do no host unlicensed content has been much discussed in other jurisdictions also, of course, often with differing results.
Where such services are not run for overt profit, so that it is hard to prove conspiracy to defraud, actions against such services rely on the concepts of contributory and authorising infringement, which vary from country to country. Obviously, in Sweden, The Pirate Bay was found liable for any piracy it enables via charge of contributory infringement.
It remains to be seen if SGAE appeal. As previously reported, the Spanish government recently announced plans to introduce new laws that would enable the courts to shut down copyright infringing websites. It is thought said new laws would cover services like The Pirate Bay and therefore, you would think, would also change the legal position with regard to Elrincondejesus.com. Though exactly how the proposed new laws would work remains to be seen.
