Linking to copyright protected works is a criminal offence according to Spanish Court

The Spanish Provincial Court of Vizcaya issued a remarkable conclusion. In a lawsuit against two file sharing sites, the Court decided that offering P2P links to free downloads of copyright protected files is considered as publishing, which is a criminal offence acccording to Spanish law. The administrators of these file sharing sites, FenixP2P.com and MP3-es.com, have been sentenced for one year imprisonment and have to pay a fine.

The Provincial Court of Vizcaya's ruling is remarkable. In other similar cases in Spain, judges decided that linking is not considered as copyright infringement, according to Torrentfreak. The following reasons for the Provincial Court of Vizcaya were mentioned to decide otherwise in this case:

- The Judges of the Court had a different interpretation of the definition 'linking' than the other judges. In this case the Court states that 'linking to' files can be seen as 'communication to the public' and not as 'exchange between individuals'.

- By linking to copyright protected files, the file-sharing sites attempted to generate revenues through advertising and thus to benefit from someone else's work.

By interpreting 'linking' as 'communication to the public', the Court stated that 'linking to' can be seen as publishing someone else's work. Therefore, the file-sharing sites infringed the exclusive right of copyright holders to publish their own work.

One of the filesharing sites's lawyers reported that he thought the Court's ruling was wrong and it could only be considered a political statement . The lawyer also declared that they are thinking about going to the Spanish Supreme Court (Constitutional Court) and maybe even the European Court of Human Rights.

It will be interesting to see whether the Court's ruling will be maintained, in case the filesharing sites decide to appeal against the ruling.

Reference: Torrentfreak                               

By: Karen Groen