Downloaders defy Spain's attempts to protect copyrights (Feature)

By Sinikka Tarvainen Apr 23, 2010, 2:06 GMT

Madrid - Why buy a DVD if you can download a movie from your computer at a click of the mouse? Why pay for music, video games or books if you can get them for free online?

Such practices threaten the livelihood of artists and undermine the world of culture, says the Spanish government, which has prepared legislation allowing judges to close websites violating copyrights.

'Mozart lived in poverty because he had no copyright' to the music he composed, said Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, a former movie director.

Critics, however, see the expected 'anti-downloading law' as a vain attempt to stem an irresistible tide.

'The entire concept of copyright needs to be redefined,' Javier de la Cueva, a lawyer specialized in internet copyright cases, said in an interview with the German Press Agency dpa.

Spain is known as one of the Western countries most tolerant of the so-called cultural piracy.

The sales of CDs and DVDs have plummeted for years while undocumented immigrants can be seen offering pirated copies of them at street corners or subway stations.

Internet downloading has now increased piracy to the point that some movie studios are considering abandoning the Spanish market, according to media reports.

Even the Spanish book industry lost 150 million euros (200 million dollars) in earnings in 2009 because of digital pirates, who targeted especially manuals and academic books.

The United States has placed Spain on its black list of countries that are the most lenient towards internet pirates.

De la Cueva, however, said there were no serious studies showing that Spaniards downloaded more cultural products than people in other countries.

In Brazil, for instance, piracy is common among the country's 40 million internet users, Deputy Culture Minister Alfredo Manevy admitted.

Studies creating alarm about piracy were often biased in favour of the interests of the entertainment industry, de la Cueva said.

That industry generates about 3 per cent of Spain's gross domestic product (GDP), according to some estimates.

Spain's so-called anti-downloading law, which still needs to be approved by parliament, sparked a protest campaign by internet users accusing the government of exercising censorship and violating the freedom of expression.

The protests made the government tone down the law, which will only target money-making websites offering access to cultural products.

The law will allow judges to close such websites after a government commission first launches an administrative procedure to investigate them.

The websites that could be targeted by the law now number about 200.

The copyright lobby Coalicion de Creadores says such websites have total publicity earnings of up to 50,000 euros monthly, but de la Cueva says their income is usually not very high.

He quotes the case of one typical operator of such a website, who earns about 700 euros a month.

Parliament is expected to approve the law, but de la Cueva says it is so deficiently constructed that it will have no effect whatsoever.

People offering cultural products on the web are technically not transmitting them, but only supplying links giving access to them, which is not forbidden by the new law.

'As soon as the government starts applying the law, it will be challenged in courts, which will side with the website operators,' de la Cueva believes.

So far, lawyers representing the operators have won practically every one of their court cases, he explains.

Closing websites will only encourage internet users to seek more anonymous ways of downloading movies or music, such as virtual private networks, de la Cueva said.

The planned law is more lax than comparable legislation in France, Britain and the United States.

Critics, however, see all such laws as somewhat desperate last- ditch attempts by copyright-holding entertainment companies to protect their commercial interests.

Downloading affects the income of the companies rather than that of artists, who only get a fraction of the money that their art makes, de la Cueva said.

Several Spanish opposition parties have requested a liberalization of the country's copyright market, which is dominated by some half a dozen copyright societies.

Political and media powers are losing their control over the flow of information, since anyone can create a blog or release a movie or a book on the internet, de la Cueva observed.