Push grows to blacklist Spain over digital pirating

Spain is one of 33 countries blacklisted by the IIPA in its 2013 annual report, including usual suspects like China, Russia, and India. But the IIPA has also recommended that the US government include countries like Italy, Canada, Israel, and Brazil on the 301 list that will be released in April. Ukraine was the worst offender last year, according to IIPA.

Spain's rate of piracy is increasing and reached 74 percent for the film industry, costing 1.4 billion euros, according to IIPA. More than 90 percent of downloaded music and 44 percent of software is pirated and illegally downloaded video games have “completely overtaken” the legitimate ones.

The pressure is not just coming from IIPA. On Jan. 22, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy agreed to a private meeting with former US Senator Chris Dodd, who is the chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, to discuss Spain’s antipiracy progress. Days later, the US ambassador to Spain also criticized Spain’s track record.

Under Spanish law, downloading unlicensed content is not illegal, but distributing it is. The new codes were supposed to make it easier to target peer-to-peer websites, a favorite source for online piracy. But these have “produced remarkably few results in the fight against online piracy,” the IIPA said.

In 2012, IIPA members filed 87 complaints after the codes went into effect, of which only 16 were initiated into cases, and none resulted in a blocked website. The lengthy process is not a “deterrent” to piracy, the IIPA said. Many sites are legally shielded because they don’t technically distribute copyright content, instead they simply act as middlemen linking uploaders to downloaders.

The entertainment industry wants the government to criminalize downloading pirated content, and it has recommended several ways to streamline forcefully shutting down websites and prosecuting their owners. However, European privacy laws and the need to harmonize them, coupled with the worsening economic and political Spanish crisis, limits how much the government can do.

“We realize we need to make [our laws] more effective,” the Culture Ministry source says. “But it’s a new process that needs more time to improve. You can’t expect this to change in one year of one administration.”

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