Non-commercial p2p sites declared legal in Spain

The Spanish court has ruled that file sharing networks and link sites are legal as long as they are not for profit. The decision is a setback for the entertainment industry’s collection organization in the country.

The Spanish organization Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, in charge of collecting copyrights, is summoning p2p and links sites on behalf of its members to stop their activities, because they allegedly infringe copyrights. One of those sites is Elrincondejesus.com, which provides links to files on the eDonkey network. The site did not respond to the call and allowed it to go to court. The owner stated that he had no banners on the site and simply linked like any other search engine.

Last July, the Spanish court already ruled that there was in any case no urgent interest in closing the site immediately before the case was dealt with. In addition, he hinted that ‘p2p networks, which ensure the transfer of data between internet users, do not, in principle, infringe rights protected by the Intellectual Property Act.’

The full hearing of the case has now been completed and the judge has issued its final verdict. This stated that providing an index with links or linking to copyrighted material cannot be regarded as distribution itself. Spanish law would therefore not provide for the possibility of banning such sites, was his interpretation.

The judge decided according to Torrentfreak further states that the site cannot be regarded as a company, because the administrator had no profit motive. He also reiterated that p2p networks only transfer data from internet users and as such do not infringe copyrights.