Derecho de Internet

The Provincial Court of Madrid ruled last 11th September 2008 that websites offering eDonkey links to p2p downloads are not criminally responsible for their activity as long as they do not host the files.

The first resolution that declared criminal non-liability for these websites in Spain was resolved by a court in Barcelona in july 2003, analyzing ajoderse.com website case. It was followed by a sentence dated 22nd December 2005 by the Provincial Court of Barcelona that stated a not guilty resolution for todocaratulas.es website. Another two resolutions by first instance courts in Spain (indicedonkey.com and elitedivx.com) in March and April 2008 resolved analogous cases in identical way.

Private prosecutors in these proceedings are the recording industry, the software company Microsoft, Promusicae (the local member of IFPI) and the Spanish collecting agencies for authors and producers, respectively SGAE and EGEDA.

Promusicae President, Mr. Guisasola, in newspaper declarations last 19th September to El País, has mentioned their will to appeal the resolution in civil jurisdiction, which is not appropriate as the Provincial Court of Madrid resolution is firm. Other declarations of Mr. Guisasola try to create confusion as if per this last resolution linking to child pornography would be legalized. Spanish Law is clear in this respect: while linking to child pornographic sites is a crime, it is not a crime to link to content that has not been declared illegal by a previous resolution.

The last Provincial Court resolution does not enter into argumentations about commercial use of the websites. The alleged crime against intellectual property needs two requisites: public communication of the works and commercial use. As there is no public communication, the resolution has declared it is not necessary to study its economical requisite.

Similar cases are pending in different courts along Spain, and we believe they will be resolved in the same way as the cases of sharemula.com, ajoderse.com, todocaratulas.es, indicedonkey.com and elitedivx.com destiny.

All written paperwork (available under a Creative Commons Attribution license) filed by the defendants of sharemula.com and resolutions applicable are at public disposal for all lawyers in a Subversion (no pun intended) repository at http://derecho-internet.org/proyectos/procedimientos-libres/.