The entertainment industry has been pushing hard for new copyright laws in Spain, even pretending that they might pull out of Spain if the laws aren’t changed. That’s because, under existing laws, file sharing for personal use is considered legal. Of course, economists have pointed out that the new laws would do more harm than good.
TorrentFreak is now reporting that someone has been checking in on Spanish gov’t IPs, and discovering that it appears that gov’t officials are regular uploaders and downloaders of unauthorized content. Of course, as noted, that is legal in Spain right now — but it does raise some questions about why the government would be so keen to change the law. And, before someone brings it up: no, an IP address is not evidence by itself, but as a bit of aggregate information it is a good way of getting a general sense. The problems with IP as “evidence” is when they’re used to accuse a single person, not of understanding the wider usage patterns.
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