Sites that link to illegal files are legal in Spain

Anybody here a fan of “music blogs”? Yeah, those websites that post links to file sharing websites like Mega Upload or Rapidshare for people to download music illegally for free. No you don’t have to answer the question, but in the future it looks like we’ll be seeing a lot more of those sites – provided those webmasters decide to host them in Spain. According to the latest reports online, these linking sites are apparently legal in Spain, according to the latest ruling by a Spanish court regarding copyright infringement.

According to the Spanish law, sites that link to websites aren’t illegal, whereas the sites that host the illegal material themselves are illegal. The music rights group, Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE) found out the hard way when they tried to sue a website that contained links to such websites.

This looks like a major win for the file sharing community and a heavy blow to the music and film industry, but there’s no telling if the European Union will be intervening (its laws can be used to bring such sites down in Spain) or if Spain will be passing new laws to make the sites illegal. We’ll just have to see how this plays out.

George Wong
Categories: Web
Tags: illegal, law, spain