Spain won't disconnect illegal file sharers Spain doesn't plan on unplugging internet users accused of illegal file-sharing, despite strong government support for "three-strikes" disconnection laws in the UK and France. Culture Minister, Angeles González-Sinde, told the morning television news program, TVE Breakfast, Thursday the Spanish government "is not considering …
.... is that in Spain there's a "Digital Canon", which is a tax applied to all and every digital device even remotely capable of storing anything close to stolen intellectual property. This canon is directly paid to the biggest intellectual property lobbyist in the country (the SGAE) which is supposedly distributing it among their members as a compensation for piracy losses.
The sad reality is SGAE is very closely connected with the government, but completely disconnected from the artistic community as a whole, providing substantial income for a few big name artists but very little to the ones outside of the top 10 lists.
The "Digital Canon" is charged for everything from a USB pen drive to a video camera (yes, your home video camera) and of course for blank CDs, DVDs, set top recorder, desktop and laptop hard disk and everything you can think of. And is generating enormous income for the SGAE without the need for any of its members to sell, produce, or even create, any kind of content at all.
Note that this "Digital Canon" tax has been successfully challenged in courts already, but given our crappy judicial system, only people motivated by idealism or lawyers by profession are willing to endure the process to get their canon refunded for each and every item they can prove NOT being used for piracy (which are, by the way, the vast majority of the storage that is being used)
Who would want to kill that? Of course, any law like the "three strikes" one will create the social demand to supress the "Digital Canon" If that happens, the money flow to the SGAE will stop. And that could meant that those few selected artists will have to, gasp, create some content that people wants to pay for instead of their usual fast food music and movies.
Get that? They are not making it in the name of freedom or anything else. The SGAE is just protecting their revenue stream, one that allows them to live forever in a culturally stagnated world.
Cheers from Spain.
he really has no clue? the 3 strike rule will only push P2P back underground, P2P, copyright infringment, piracy what ever you want to call it has been around alot longer than torrents and napster and if things get too strict ill just load up backtrack and find a router within range to crack
The eye's are open the mouth flaps on occasion, but the brain (much as in the proposal) has been disconnected long ago eh Mandelson?
We have many methods available to us for sharing data on the internet, and un-encrypted Peer to Peer is the least of them. The new policy will drive uptake of encrypted technologies that will make the current technology seem like a picnic by comparison. Detectable by volume only, once a stream is encrypted I wonder pray what will come next?
Can we expect an ill-informed attempt to outlaw possession of P2P software much like the rather laughable 'hacker-tools' fiasco? Will there be a clampdown on the cipher strengths available to ordinary people? Where will this go next, for I see no solution in the current adopted path.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the media industry has one option only, license new digital distribution channels or fall. No one cried for the door-to-door ice sales man when the refrigerator became affordable, obsolescence is alive and well.
...is if someone gets disconnected from the net for file-sharing, how likely is it going to be that this person will ever buy anything from the record companies again? Now add to this that these are paying customers of the record industry, by all accounts, and you have more trouble for them...
19.99 a month web server in non euorpean country (or espanol) - check
bit torrent client with an option for socks proxy (any client) - check
tunnel all bit torrent traffic through said web server via ssh tunnel (takes seconds to set up) - check
use tracker with ssl enabled (most of the good ones already do) - check
now that wasnt hard was it, doesnt take a hardened criminal or terrorist to figure this out.
would'nt the government prefer that i paid that 19.99 a month into some kind of pot for all the copyright holders? no, they would rather behave like children and call me a criminal and loose the money.
i dont care if it's the artists or the foreign isp that gets my 19.99 a month - it's up to the government to act responsibly and find a sensible way of collecting it.
you have to wonder if they really are as inept as these articles makes them appear of if that have a hidden agenda. i'm still not prepared to believe that our government are as technically backward as they appear. After all they could just hire a consultant to poo poo their new idea's.
Ok, let me get this straight....there is a tax on all devices that can store media (CD/DVD, etc) regardless of how I choose to use it because I MAY use them to store copyrighted content. So if I choose to place copyrghted content on a DVD, then I am performing a legal activity and am being taxed on it.
...but wait...they they are also telling me that copying that content is illegal. But it must be legal becasue they are taxing me on it. They can't have it both ways. "Well, it is illegal, but until we have a way to stop it we want to make as much money off it as possible." AND they are making law abiders pay a fee because they COULD use it that way?
Nice logic.
Well, sir, if I am going to pay a fee for doing it, I ight as well go ahead and get my money's worth.
How does that logic work for you?
Yes, you've got the contradiction. File sharing is legal in Spain as long as it's not for profit purposes. That is, the SGAE realized that they could not prosecute file sharing, so they convinced government to create a tax for storage media. This tax is neither fair (everyone pays it whether they use the storage for storing intellectual property or not) nor fairly distributed among the artists.
The tax has created for them a revenue source that does not depend at all on artists actually producing anything of value, is more linked to the sales volume of storage media. But they still are trying to discourage sharing, as they perceive that they could make even more money if they could actually make people to pay again for the content that supposedly is already being paid for by the tax.
Get it? They don't want to disconnect file sharers because they would lose all the revenues from the tax, which are way above what they could get by actually selling the content. But they are still willing to get the money from anyone willing to pay for content. And one of the best ways to convince someone to pay for something he/she can legally get for free is with shadowy and obscure threats of disconnection.....
Repeat with me, sharing files without profiting is legal in Spain, sharing files without profiting is legal in Spain..
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