Spain: Detentions in operation against file-sharing
01 March 2006
A nationwide police operation against file-sharing in defence of intellectual property rights in late March 2006 resulted in the detention and the questioning of 15 people who were later released. A request was made from the police to the judicial authorities for the blocking of 17 websites deemed responsible of allowing the illegal exchange of files by providing access to websites from which films, music, games and IT applications could be downloaded. The arrests took place in ten different cities as a result of investigations that began in October 2005 after complaints were submitted to the Spanish police's Technological Investigations Brigade by organisations working for the defence of intellectual property rights, including the
Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), whose campaign against the illegal copying of music and literature has been particularly belligerent.
The arrested individuals were administrators or persons in charge of websites that provided access, through links, to file-sharing programmes such as Emule, Bittorent, Edonkey and Azureus. They are accused of drawing economic benefits from illegally providing free and open access to the possibility of downloading published works that are subject to intellectual property, as police consider that this attracted advertising revenue and helped to develop other commercial activities through the websites in question due to the large number of users these services attracted.
Víctor Domingo, president of the
Asociación de Internautas (Association of Internet Users), noted that file-sharing is not a crime in itself, unless it is done for financial gain, and described the attitude of the police as "worrying", and the operation as a "sinister kind of marketing in favour of the theses of the associations of authors and editors". He stressed that the websites in question merely provided links to file-sharing websites or networks without "trafficking" their content, and argued that the police acted "irresponsibly", considering that the same function of providing links is also carried out by leading search engines, such as Google.
On 12 April, Telecinco television news services revealed that the police press release on 8 April 2006 was published over ten days after the event, coinciding with an operation to combat child pornography, as well as citing one of the accused. He claimed that the circumstances of this delay were "suspicious" and that the operation sought to "frighten people". On 4 May, the
Asociación de Internautas reported that some of the websites remained active and that in one case, a judge had already dismissed the request for a website to be blocked over a week before the police press statement was issued, on 29 March.
El País, 8.4.06; Informativos Telecinco, 12.4.06, available at:
http://www.informativos.telecinco.es/detenidos/operacion-policial/descargas-ilegales-internet/dn_23619.htm ; Police press statement concerning the detentions, 8.4.06, available at: http://www.policia.es/prensa/060408_1.htm; Asociación de Internautas considera "preocupante" la actitud de la policía, EFE, 8.4.06; http://www.internautas.org/p2p/html/3587.html ; Asociación de Internautas, 4.5.06, ,a href="http://www.internautas.org/p2p/html/3647.html">http://www.internautas.org/p2p/html/3647.html ; for further information, see: http://www.internautas.org/p2p/