Yet Another Spanish Court Finds File Sharing Site Legal; Compares File Sharing To Book Lending
from the spain-gets-it dept
Once again, adding to the increasingly long list of similar rulings in Spain, a Spanish court has ruled that a popular file sharing site, CVCDGO, did not actually transfer or host any copyrighted works, and therefore did not violate copyright law. This is the same thing that numerous Spanish courts have found. The entertainment industry will surely use it as part of its media campaign demanding that Spain change its copyright laws (something which economists have noted would do more harm than good). However, wouldn't it be nice if, rather than the knee jerk reaction to these rulings, the industry actually understood what the courts were saying? They're pointing out a simple fact: the service provider isn't actually infringing on anyone's copyright, no matter how many times the entertainment industry wishes it were so.Separately, the judge in this case noted that the industry seems to be totally overreacting to the issue of file sharing, noting that people have been sharing and trading content for ages:
In their ruling, judges Ocariz, Gutierrez and Campillo said that "...since ancient times there has been the loan or sale of books, movies, music and more. The difference now is mainly on the medium used -- previously it was paper or analog media and now everything is in a digital format which allows a much faster exchange of a higher quality and also with global reach through the Internet."
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Ancient movies??
Where are these movies the Spanish have been sharing since ancient times?
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Re: Ancient movies??
Thing is, there is still a Romeo and Juliet or even King Lear with a happy ending. But they don't feel the same as the ones Shakespeare wrote, even with these edits.
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Re: Ancient movies??
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Roaming Sabbaticals?
There must be some way to get these Spanish Judges to go on some kind of roaming lecture circuit sabbatical to educate Judges from other countries about the cases that they're ruling on.
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Common Sense!
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Re:
Howver, I do like the fact that someone who spends all day trying to attack a blogger thinks they know the law in a foreign country better than a judge.
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Re: ianal
- Immaterial, the objection is overruled
"Oh wait, we aren't suppose to look too closely at judges that think stealing is fine."
- Obtuse
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As an example, it's ilegal to fabricate a bomb (at least in Spain), but it's not ilegal to explain how to do it.
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cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
It's getting old and tedious.
1) copyright law was never about artist control
2) copyright infringement is not stealing. You can't equate a download to a lost sale, as you can actually GAIN sales through unauthorised downloading. "Ooh I like what I'm hearing, I'm going to buy their records/go to their concerts/buy their t-shirts/rave about them to my friends."
3) only way for artists to make money is to make quality content.
4) copyright law was never intended as (but nowadays used as) a welfare state for lazy copyright holders. (please note: content creator isn't necessarily the same as a copyright holder)
5) Mike Masnick, nor many commenters here, ever talked about abolishing copyright. But rather suggest change to it. To balance the law out to a more fair treatment for both the artists and the public. As right now the public is getting shafted left and right, and being cheated out of their cultural heritage, by locking up our culture behind perpetual copyright.
But of course, these points will fall on deaf ears on the apologists side. As they'd rather sandbag the discussion, and ignore the points raised by the opposition.
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Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
there even seems to be some evidence that it does good.
It is not like CD and DVD sales have dropped to Zero suddenly.
A lot of machines that people use now for media do not even have cd/dvd drives. And there is a recession on. And there are other things grabbing our attention and money - like games etc... And there are many more bands making tiny bits of money on the internet. Piracy may be an obvious thing to blame but it probably is not the culprit.
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Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
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Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
The fact that my culture will never be in the public domain in my lifetime disturbs me greatly. The things that formed my culture mostly took place during my high school years and for it to be locked down and not available to me by my 50th birthday tells me something is seriously wrong. I'm not there yet, but my spending spree days of buying media are long past already, and my culture is not as sell-able already as each generation has their own culture.
Will anyone honestly even remember who half of today's bands are 70 years from now? Of any that might possibly be, how many of them will still actually be profitable? There's no guaranty that The Beatles will even be profitable 20 years from now.
This is the absurdity of current copyright law.
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Re: Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
Abolishing it, you will never get done, too much opposition. This is in my eyes a decent compromise.
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Re: Re: Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
I think ultimately, elimination will come through obsolescence - but until then, I'm unwilling to concede any more monopoly privileges to abusers.
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Re: Re: Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
It's pointless to argue over things like term length when the whole concept grows more irrelevant every day.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
I think our time is best spent trying to minimize the damage to our government the maximalists are able to inflict and encouraging new creators to embrace superior models. I don't want to support something like limited copyright only to have folks turn around and holler, "See? Those pirates are stealing anyway!"
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
Somehow I doubt I'll ever see Copyright abolished in my lifetime. Hell, I'd consider myself lucky, if we ever get a bit more sensible copyright laws, laws that will make sure that the works will enrich our society.
If we look at the crap that's coming out of the music houses today, it's absolute drek. Sure, some gems are between them, but they aren't the norm, they are the rare exceptions. Usually it's just a few random people picked up from the street, put together under a label, and made to sing. They are nothing more than sockpuppets, controlled by the "big labels"... and by making sure that only their crap is peddled on terrestrial radio, they make sure there is a revenue source.
That's also why they are still battling internet radio and satellite radio, because they can't control those beasts.
Copyright nowadays is indeed about control, mind you, not artist, but control over what we can hear. The Big Labels don't give a damn about artists.
Copyright is a stick, much like patent law. The one who has the biggest portfolio wins. Or the one who has the biggest budget for its legal team wins. It sickens me.
The apologists need to realize, that that is the order that many so-called pirates are fighting against. Sure some do it just for the free ride... others do it, to prove a point. You don't need total control over your works in order to profit from it. Let go one aspect, and you'll win so much more, rather than litigate and raise a lot of bad blood.
But they don't see the sea-change. Or don't want to see it. They fear the power of the Internet. They don't understand or don't want to understand that it doesn't need to be a bad thing. That if you play your cards right, you can profit from filesharing.
Case in point: the leak of the movie Wolverine.
Bad, awful movie, crappy leak too, but it was a bigger box-office hit than movies that didn't leak out before its premiere release.
We can't prove it was because of the leak, much the same way that the apologists can't prove that a single download is a lost sale. But it's peculiar. The movie leaked, many people saw it for free, and still the movie made a lot of money.
I need to stop ranting. :/ bad for my health.
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Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
Hear, Hear!
I can deal with the existence of copyright, but it needs to be pruned back. I think that taking it back to the days of:
- Creators registering to have copyright apply.
- A much shorter term of monopoly (20 years with room for a 10 year extension by request).
- Strong and clear third party protections and fair-use rules. Something that would actually allow content to be used for academic and cultural discussion without a blizzard of paperwork and fear of lawsuits.
That would be fine by me.
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Re: cue for many copyright apologists to come here and talk about:
Mike may not have, but I certainly have. I fully support the total abolishment of both copyrights and patents.
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Unfortunately, copyright length will never be shortened. All I have to do is look at the past 40 years to see the truth in that statement.
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Thank you
First they fought the cassette tape, then the cd, then the movie companies got in the fray with the dvd, now it's the internet. The only time I can remember that they had a lock on the content was with the Singles/Albums and 8 track tapes.
If I had 1/1000th of the money they have wasted fighting this, I would never have to work again. What if they had invested this capital into the economy or developing new musical technologies? What a concept. Corporations actually improving our lives.
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Book Lending
All that means is that book lending should be illegal too. How can you expect authors to keep writing books if people can just borrow them instead of buying them?
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Copyright...
With the speed of development, deployment and change, not to mention low cost of duplication, transmission, etc., copyrights should be more 3 years and patents should be for 1 year.
Anything else goes completely against the founding fathers wishes and makes the system abhorant.
Copyright/patent is not for making money, it's not for monopolizing and abusing... it's for PROMOTING the arts and sciences.
It does neither. It is broken. It is evil. It needs to be destroyed in it's current form.
Freeing the facts and ideas promotes progress, not locking them up.
But sadly, lazy americans with their entitlement philosophy have created this juggernaught of idea oppression.
As th Darek's so eloquently put it... "Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!"
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I like this line of reasoning
If my friend had bought the ebook rather than the paper back I wouldn't be able to barrow it right now. At some point there will have to be a day of reckoning. What will libraries do, and how can you truly stop people from doing what they do naturally and have for centuries? File sharing isn't much different from a mass library system. Sharing is what we do. And if something cannot be shared, thus having the shared experience, then its value is greatly diminished. The MPAA and RIAA doesn't realize that if their wet dream is realized (no more file sharing) that their content will cease to be as valuable. If they successfully change human behavior I'd be that their bottom line would actually be doing worse. How would I know if I like the latest album of Lady Gaga (not that I listen to her) if I can't hear it first. How will I know if I like an author if I couldn't sample his work first? It puts the past few decades of fighting by the *AAs into a self defeating battle and they don't even know it.
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Re: I like this line of reasoning
Think about when we were caveman. Suppose I have fire and you have a nice huge piece of mammoth meat. Mammoth meat tastes like crap when raw. Also there are risks of poisoning. You want fire to cook and I want meat. We could go the obvious path and fight for them, but the risk is too high since we could get both killed.
But what about if we shared? I could give you fire and teach you to make fire and you could give me meat and teach me how to hunt. See? We both gained something from this where, otherwise, we would both end up losing.
There is always more benefit in sharing. NOT sharing should be the crime.
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Re: Re: I like this line of reasoning
Technically that's not sharing; it's barter, which is a form of payment. So while I understand what you're trying to say, you've done a poor job of making your point, and someone like TAM will use this argument against you. Sorry to put a turd in your punch bowl.
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Re: I like this line of reasoning
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