Spain makes P2P filesharing illegal and kills legit Internet usage?
Instead of directly going after the filesharers themselves the Spanish have decided to make it a criminal offence for Internet providers to facilitate filesharing. It's not clear how "facilitate filesharing" is defined, but if it simply means "allowing it to happen", ISPs in Spain are in for some massive headaches. Blocking P2P is far from easy because it's possible to "hide" the traffic by using standard Internet protocol ports (like http and ftp) and encryption.
Spain seemed to be on the right track when it decided to levy a tax on recordable digital media. The tax would be paid back to copyright holders, and is probably a far more sensible way to compensate them than introducing Draconian laws that will see ISPs in the dock for failing to hold back the P2P tide.
Other related posts:
US to pressure NZ into copyright compliance?
Hyperlinking to copyrighted material is illegal: Australia
More on NZ FACT's 'Anti P2P program'
Comment by RaF, on 30-JUN-2006 02:01
"Spain seemed to be on the right track when it decided to levy a tax on recordable digital media"
It's wonderfull that I have to pay if I save my personal photos into Cds because someone think that ALL cd and DVD media are used to burn copyrighted media.
Only a silly person could think something like that, but all our Spanish politics are proud to be silly.
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Comment by freitasm, on 29-JUN-2006 20:29
This just show how legislators can be insensible to modern technology. P2P has nothing to do with illegal content copy. If this is the case they should make Windows Media Player, the Apple iPod, and even the CD Recorder illegal.
Clueless people.