Anti-piracy law is approved by the government

SPAIN (Agencies) Called colloquially Ley Sinde (after Culture Minister Ángeles González-Sinde, photo), the law is aimed at putting a stop to online (and offline) piracy of copyright rights. Spain is near the top of a list of countries that are considered the very worst in lax copyright infringement and protection laws. These include Russia, China, India and Romania. Among the major points of the law, which has provoked online and street demonstrations against it, mainly from we-won't-pay Internet surfers and downloaders, is the fact that websites offering free copyrighted downloads can be closed down or blocked for a maximum of ten days (see below). Another salient point is the creation of an administrative Commission with arbitration and mediation functions, which would come into play after private (and presumably corporate) complaints.>

To close down or block a website will require a court order, which will allow a maximum of 24 hours to accept or reject a petition. If it is accepted, the sites are obliged to give information about the identification of who is behind them. That's where th Commisssion comes in, asking for the removal of the illegal content within 48 hours. After that, a new court order must be obtained to close or block thesite, always supposing agreemnt has not otherwise been reached.

These and other measures are a watered down version of the original, considerably more stringent law as intended by the Minister.

The Senate also introduced a clause in the Ley Sinde that commits the goverment to modify the special tax (called a canon in Spain) that is presently applied to the retail purchase of such items as CDs, pen drives and other computer-related technology that enable piracy. The canon was declared illegal by the European Union.