Spanish culture minister moves to calm fears over new anti-Internet piracy bill

Spanish minister defends Internet piracy bill

MADRID — Many Spanish Internet users are furious over a government proposal that could lead to the shutting down of Web sites offering peer-to-peer file sharing of music and films without a court order. A meeting Thursday between their representatives and the culture minister failed to calm them down.

Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde insists the legislation — to be brought into effect in 2010 if approved by Parliament — will not target individual Internet users who download material and in no case would anyone’s Internet connection be cut off.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the proposed legislation would not threaten freedom of expression.

Speaking after talks with 14 bloggers and Web site directors, Sinde said the bill is directed against Web sites that illegally offer the possibility of downloading copyright-protected material.

Zapatero said Spain, like many other nations around the world, had to find a means of safeguarding the intellectual property of the country’s creative sectors.

“If we don’t, we run the risk losing it, of being left without intellectual power and creativity,” Zapatero said at a news conference.

Under the bill, an intellectual property commission would investigate complaints about Web sites offering the possibility of P2P downloading, and if they are deemed to be making money from other people’s work they could be closed.

“It’s like a shop that sells goods stolen from the manufacturer’s warehouse,” said Sinde.

She stressed that if the commission found that in any way the Web site owners’ basic rights were likely to be affected by such a closure, a judge would have to handle the case.

But while industry groups see the anti-piracy proposal unveiled this week as insufficient, opponents of the bill accused the minister of playing Big Brother and trying to establish a “culture police” that would curtail civil liberties.

“The page with most links to copyright-protected content is Google. Are we going to close Google without a judicial order?” asked Victor Domingo, president of the Spanish Association of Internet Users.

Zapatero later said it was not his government’s intention to shut down any Web site.

Spanish National Television and Radio, whose Web site director Rosalia Lloret was at the meeting, said “the meeting concluded without any progress and showed the vast differences of opinion between both sides.”

Hundreds of entertainment industry employees, including several musicians, staged a noisy protest outside the ministry Tuesday to demand tougher legislation. Simultaneously, opponents posted a manifesto slamming the bill on the Internet, and it was picked up by tens of thousand of Web sites.

“The Internet must function freely and without political interference spurred by interested sectors trying to perpetuate an obsolete business model and to prevent human knowledge from continuing to be free,” the manifesto said.

Downloading copyrighted material is illegal in Spain but not a criminal offense, and courts consistently throw out cases on grounds that it is an infringement only if used for commercial profit.

This stance has infuriated music companies and also the U.S. government and that country’s powerful entertainment lobby.

Spain’s plans are more moderate those of some other European countries. Britain recently announced it planned to follow France’s lead to cut off Internet access to people who download illegally.

Spanish record label association Promusicae says the industry in Spain lost $1.6 billion in revenue in 2007 and 2008 because of piracy. Promusicae says the industry’s work force has declined by 70 percent over the last few years.