Andre Yoskowitz
20 Sep 2008 16:33
A Spanish court has ruled that it is infact legal for a site to provide links to P2P downloads as long as they are not offering the files themselves and not working for "commercial gain."
The Provincial Court of Madrid ruled in favor of Sharemula.com, a site whose sole purpose was to index eDonkey links to movies, games and music. eDonkey links are very similar to that of .torrent files, which do not contain any copyrighted material themselves but lead to such files.
The site went under investigation in 2006 by the Federación Antipiratería and later 15 people were arrested in connection with the site.
The case was even thrown out after being heard last year because the judge ruled the administrators of the site were not doing anything illegal and did not make a cent from the index. The media industry, including Columbia, Disney Company Iberia, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner, Universal, Paramount, Sony and MGM, appealed the decision however but have now lost again, and this decision can not be appealed.
“The hearing confirms the position of the defense that linking to P2P networks does not constitute a criminal offense,” added David Bravo, a lawyer for the defense.
This decision should be welcomed by the administrators of Mininova and the Pirate Bay who have upcoming similar cases.