Spain last night killed a controversial anti-P2P bill that would have made it easier to shut down websites that link to infringing content. The move was a blow to the ruling Socialist government, but it may be of even bigger concern to the US, which pushed, threatened, and cajoled Spain to clamp down on downloading. And Wikileaks can take a share of the credit for the defeat.
Known as the "Sinde law" (ley Sinde) after Spain's current culture minister, the bill was actually an amendment to a much broader economic rescue package known as the Sustainable Economy Bill. The Sinde law would have set up a new government committee that could draw up lists of sites which largely link to infringing content. These sites would then go to a Madrid court, which would have four days to rule on whether they should be fully or partially blocked.
Spain has become notorious among rightsholders for its levels of online piracy. International music trade group IFPI said earlier this year that Spain "has one of the highest rates of illegal file-sharing in Europe" and that "sales by local artists in the top 50 have fallen by an estimated 65 percent between 2004 and 2009."
That's of real concern to local Spanish artists, but it's also a big deal to Hollywood and the US music industry, which together supply plenty of the pirated fare. They've leaned on the US government, which has in turn leaned on Spain—and hard.
I've got a little list
Thanks to Wikileaks, we now have access to some of the cables sent from the US Embassy in Spain, and they show just how the US gets things done in other countries. Spanish daily El Pais reported on these cables at length and made them front-page news in Spain; for English-speaking readers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a helpful summary.
In essence, the US demanded that Spain take government action to curb file-sharing, or the US would put Spain on its annual "Special 301" intellectual property watchlist. In 2008, the US Embassy in Spain sent this cable back to Washington:
We propose to tell the new government that Spain will appear on the Watch List if it does not do three things by October 2008. First, issue a [Government of Spain] announcement stating that internet piracy is illegal, and that the copyright levy system does not compensate creators for copyrighted material acquired through peer-to-peer file sharing. Second, amend the 2006 “circular” that is widely interpreted in Spain as saying that peer-to-peer file sharing is legal. Third, announce that the GoS will adopt measures along the lines of the French and/or UK proposals aimed at curbing Internet piracy by the summer of 2009.
The background here: Spain's levy system on blank media, like that in many other countries, is widely perceived to be a payment to artists that allows for unlimited downloading, even though it was designed far more narrowly. Spanish prosecutors have also suggested that, while P2P remains illegal, it is essentially decriminalized. And the "UK" and "French" proposals involve graduated response mechanisms that, in France's case, could lead to Internet disconnections.
Spain didn't play ball, so the US went ahead and put Spain on its Section 301 Watchlist. The 2010 version of this list (PDF), which puts Spain right between Romania and Tajikistan, says:
The United States remains concerned about particularly significant Internet piracy in Spain, and strongly urges prompt and effective action to address the issue. The Spanish government has not amended portions of a 2006 Prosecutor General Circular that appears to decriminalize illegal peer-to-peer file sharing of infringing materials, contributing to a public misperception in Spain that such activity is lawful. Spain’s existing legal and regulatory framework has not led to cooperation between Internet service providers (ISPs) and rights holders to reduce online piracy. On the contrary, rights holders in Spain report an inability to obtain information necessary to prosecute online IPR infringers, further reducing their ability to seek appropriate remedies. Spain’s legal system also generally does not result in criminal penalties for intellectual property infringement.
The US was heartened, however, by the Sinde law, which "would allow a committee based in the Ministry of Culture to request that an ISP block access to infringing materials hosted online."
But the Sinde law has had trouble in Parliament, and yesterday it broke down altogether when the Socialists couldn't muster up any additional support. The Sustainable Economy Bill, to which it would have been attached, will now proceed from the lower to the upper house without the Sinde amendment.
One lawmaker told El Pais yesterday that the Sinde law was a "response to pressure from the US film industry lobby, as Wikileaks has revealed."
Original rendering courtesy of Shutterstock
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