Spain is one of the countries with a highest rate of p2p download per citizen, a country with a very strong support for copyleft and yet it is one of the countries with a stronger copyright industry lobbying. Free culture activists all around Spain have recently played hard against new coming laws and State founded propaganda. This guerrilla war was followed by the most important Spanish newspapers [1,2,3]. Yesterday a group of hacktivists decided to download copyrighted material in public, telling police in advance, to show, against governmental propaganda, that p2p downloads are legal in Spain.
Proved: downloading files from p2p networks is legal
We have shown it once more: downloading copyrighted files from a p2p network is legal in Spain as long as it isn't done for profit. However, the Ministry of Culture of the current PSOE administration (the spanish "socialist" party in power), an ally of the lobbies from the cultural industry has opened an unprecedented process of regulation and control of the net in Spain (aiming to lead the European Union in 2010). This plan to end up with the free access to culture we now enjoy is accompanied by a millionaire propaganda campaign paid by all the citizens. The campaign explicitly equates downloading with robbery and declares it a crime. This is what we came to refute by downloading copyrighted material publicly from a p2p network, in from of the of the Spanish Socialist Party's headquarters. Ten days ago, we sent a certified burofax to the Chief of the Unit of Cybernetic Crime (Jefe de la Unidad de Delitos Telemáticos). Police was present and we were not arrested, therefore downloading copyrighted works through p2p networks is NOT a crime.
In addition, to counterstrike the State founded propaganda, we have taken the governmental campaign and made an exact copy of it, faking the original content with free-culture supportive one. After a call for google-bombing the fake website, in less than 48 hours, we managed to position our website as first position in Google, forcing the Spanish government to advertise their website in Google. As a result we have forced important declarations from the Culture Minister confessing new-coming internet regulation laws.
Sharing is good. p2p networks make free the culture that the industry kidnaps
Sharing is a legitimate activity and it is good for creativity, innovation and culture. We have downloaded works that would be forgotten by now, were not for p2p networks. Works that may not be bought in our country because the companies that “possess” their copyrights consider them not profitable and allow them to fall into oblivion. Current copyright law forbids us to access any cultural work until 70 years have passed since the death of the author, and so we may find some works kidnapped for more than a century just for the sake of a commercial interest.
Si eres legal
