They are already here. Last Friday the first resolution of the executive commission in charge of applying the Sinde Law has arrived. And it arrives as expected, with sharp orders to withdraw links . The first page to be forced to do so was Bajui.com , and all because of a song by Luz Casal: “a bouquet of roses”. A link to the album by a singer from Coruña has been the first denounced.
The interpretation of the law to request this withdrawal is somewhat twisted . The owner of this page, Juan José Coronel, had already won several lawsuits in court, however this time he was not reported, so he cannot present allegations. The resolution requires you to remove the links from your page within 72 hours, under penalty of fine. However, he does not accuse him of anything directly, thus closing the possibility of appealing.
This is the path that the Ministry of Culture has chosen to enforce the law. However, the lawyer for the page, David Bravo, sees many inconsistencies in practice. "This measure is impossible to comply with," Bravo declared to the call from tuexperto.com . He explains that the measure obliges the administrators of the page not only to remove the links, but to ensure that they are not uploaded again. In this way, the portal could be fined if any user decides to upload the link again even in a comment.
“This measure leads to self-censorship of the pages. With this procedure, the only measure that can be taken is to close ”, affirms Bravo. And is that the person in charge of the page could face penalties of between 150,000 and 600,000 euros if the fatal link reappears on his website.
This application of the law could force a multitude of websites to carry out an exhaustive surveillance of the content shared by their users . Pages such as Google or Wikipedia could be permanently fined for linking to protected content , although it seems that the recipients of the measure will be the popular link pages, and not the all-powerful Internet ones.
The Sinde-Wert Act has been surrounded by controversy since its approval. The groups of Internet users have positioned themselves against it, understanding that it violates the fundamental rights of Internet users . However, the law has moved on, and this is only the first of many actions.
A couple of months ago we learned that more than 300 complaints had already been registered, most of them against linked pages such as cinetube, seriesyonkis or Bajui itself . The latter has suffered the first measure, but it is foreseeable that from now on many more will begin to receive notifications. Internet user associations have already announced that they are going to fight this law , along with the affected pages. The development of events in the coming months will allow us to know what the future of downloads will be in Spain.