We figured that the pressure on the Spanish gov’t to change copyright laws would be ratcheting up, so it should be no surprise to see a NY Times article suggesting that there’s “growing pressure” on Spain to change its copyright law. As you may recall, Spain actually has quite reasonable copyright laws. It recognizes that non-commercial copyright infringement isn’t the same thing as commercial scale infringement. It recognizes that creating a search engine for files is not the same as actually distributing those files. It also recognizes that people have a right to privacy. These are all reasonable findings… unless you happen to have an increasingly obsolete business model and you don’t want to adapt. So when Spain finds that a file sharing network doesn’t violate copyright laws because it only points to infringing files, but doesn’t do any of the distribution, the industry spins it as Spain being weak on copyright, rather than just accurate in applying liability.
Of course, childish threats from Hollywood to leave the market (yeah, that’ll stop file sharing…) has convinced some to put forth new copyright laws that mirror those elsewhere. This, despite the fact that an economic analysis of the new law suggests it would do more harm than good.
The NY Times piece is pretty one-sided, never expressing any skepticism about the industry-provided numbers. It quotes three people in favor of changing the laws, and only one against it. And the one against it focuses on the privacy and consumer rights issues, but doesn’t mention the basic liability issue. Either way, I’m sure we’ll start seeing more articles like this until Spain feels it has no choice but to capitulate, and one more set of copyright laws will be adjusted in favor of the entertainment industry, and against net progress yet again.
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