Spanish judges repeatedly rule against file sharing platforms

The criminal court in Vigo (Galicia) ruled earlier this month that the admin of three sites that offered streaming access to movies and TV series be convicted to a jail sentence of one year and a fine of 1825 Euro for infringing copyright. If the operator refuses to pay the fine, the jail sentence will be prolonged by twelve months.

The sites, www.maxivideos.tv, www.simonfilms.tv, and www.siglox.com, offered streaming services of newly released movies and series to users who had to pay one Euro per movie, with a minimum consumption of ten movies. Despite the payment model, no copyright fees were paid.

At the end of January, another ruling opened the way up for further prosecution of the admins of divxonline.info. An appeal by rights holders group FAP was upheld. The defendant argued that the site only provided links and that there was no direct commercial goal connected to the site. The judge accepted evidence brought forward by the FAP that, indeed, there was such a commercial end to the site.

And that is not all. In a few months time, a total of six cases against admins of file-sharing platforms were concluded, all ending in favour of rights holders.

Without exception, the admins were initially cleared of charges as the judge considered it not proven that the sites had a commercial goal. In Spain, file-sharing platforms are only illegal if there is a commercial gain for the sites’ operators.

However, in all six cases, the prosecutors appealed this decision. And without fail, the court of appeal ruled that, indeed, there was a commercial goal to operating the sites and that the procedure should continue.

11 February 2010