The US bullies Spain into drastic new Internet laws

The long arm of US would be world domination is now being felt even amongst it's allies.
The newspaper El Pasi (the counrtry) one of Spains most respected tabloids is in possesion of 115 wikileaks cables from the Madrid US embassy between 2004 and 2010.

One of the cable's from 2004 states that Spain internet and anti piracy regulation is a mixture of first and third world.
The US then threatend to put Spain on it's "special 301 list", unless it clamped down downloading.

Special 301 refers to a priority watch list of countries with lax anti-piracy laws that allow easy unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material, such as music and movies.
Countries on the list could be hit by trade sanctions.

US BULLIES SPAIN INTO NEW ANTI PIRACY LAWS

They're calling the new law the "ley de sinde", after Angeles Sinde the Spanish minister for culture, and its causing an outcry here in Spain.
Basically its a government appointed hit squad that will have the power to shut down ANY web site, blog or internet page that allows free downloading of movies, music etc etc
Angeles Sinde said in a statement, "it's nothing to do with freedom of speech, nobody opens a bar to sell wine or coca cola they've just stolen do they"..

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One of the cable's from 2004 states that Spain internet and anti piracy regulation is a mixture of first and third world. The US then threatend to put Spain on it's "special 301 list", unless it clamped down downloading. Special 301 refers to a priority watch list of countries with lax anti-piracy laws that allow easy unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material, such as music and movies. Countries on the list could be hit by trade sanctions.

This could also ban the uses of youtube people posting there music and fans do upload the music on youtube even on remixes, AMV AnimeFanVideos, other.


These bills are a step forward to a dictatorship of the internet and in fair of a cooperate greed companies, by the american government.

Great thread.

Think its time the world tell the u.s to get stuffed and stop meddling.. Worldwide boycott would do the trick nicely...

reply to post by andy1972


The last time I checked, Spain is a free, sovereign nation (albeit EU), no?

So as an American, why didn't Spain just ignore the US, and do the proper thing for its citizenship?

The only way to stop a "bully" is to stand up to him/her/them!

Originally posted by sonjah1
reply to post by andy1972

 

The last time I checked, Spain is a free, sovereign nation (albeit EU), no?

Yes, it's a kingdom, we have a king and we have a government (truely incompetant) pubically elected.

So as an American, why didn't Spain just ignore the US, and do the proper thing for its citizenship?

Read the thread. The US leaned on Spain to implement new tougher anti piracay laws by threatening to put them on the "special 301" list of countries that are fairly lax or dont have internet control and you can download freely. Countries on that list can face sanctions from the US.

Sony, Warner etc lean on their people in the senate who in turn push motions through the house protecting the interests of the big companies who are loosing money because "joe" in the street is downloading the new U2 album and not buying it for 25 euros.
This is the corporates strongarming the US government into protecting their financial investment's worldwide.

The only way to stop a "bully" is to stand up to him/her/them!

Yeah..then the bully (the real bully being Sony etc etc ) say's something like -
"Fine, you dont wanna stop piracy in your country...Well from now on we (Sony) will take our product's out of your economy,close our factories in Spain. Your economy will suffer, but the money we dont spend in Spain we will use to balance what we loose in piracy. Thank you. Good night."
The corporates pressurise everyone else in the music industry into doing the same and the economy suffers.

Now do you understand.