Ares Connect

Despite being a legal act in Spanish Law, a non-profit blog has been taken down by WordPress following a complaint from the Spanish Reproduction Rights Centre, CEDRO. The blog owner used his blog to report on Amazon Kindle news and apparently made the mistake of posting a link to an unauthorized Spanish copy of Ken Follet’s e-book, Fall of Giants, which the publisher had failed to translate into a Spanish Kindle version, although they had said it was ok for people to convert other e-versions.

CEDRO saw the link and made a complaint to the blog owner, but instead of contacting him directly via his publicly available email address, they posted a “comment” instead. When the blog owner failed to react, CEDRO issued a DMCA notice to WordPress, who immediately reacted by taking down the blog.

The blog owner is not surprisingly very upset about this turn of events as he fails to see he has done anything wrong. If CEDRO had contacted him in a proper manner, he would have removed the link, but instead they overreacted and his blog has been blocked. And to add insult to injury, the link did not even function!

WordPress have removed a non-profit blog after a ludicrous chain of events that began with the blog owner linking to a site where an unauthorized e-book was being hosted. The blog focuses on Amazon Kindle news and the blog post was about the unavailability of a Spanish Kindle version of Ken Follet’s Fall of Giants. Ricardo, owner of the blog, had reported that the book’s publishers did not mind people converting other e-formats of the book, so he posted a link to a converted copy.

Unfortunately for Ricardo, posting the link brought him to the attention of CEDRO—the Spanish Reproduction Rights Centre and they asked him to remove the link. Which is where the story begins to get a little silly, for instead of emailing him the request, they posted a “comment” on the blog. Not surprisingly, Ricardo did not take the comment seriously and the link remained. As a result, CEDRO took their complaint to the next level and contacted WordPress directly with a valid DMCA notice.

What makes this so crazy is that Spanish Law says linking to copyright protected works is legal as long as no profit was being made (which it wasn’t), therefore CEDRO are quite clearly in the wrong. Even more ludicrously, the link did not even work!

In a further effort by rights holders to stop illegal file sharing, Hollywood backed anti piracy outfit VAP is trying to force Internet Service Provider UPC to block its customer’s access to a movie-streaming portal, Kino.to. If VAP succeeds in its battle, this could pave the way for further blockades against notorious file sharing sites.

UPC has a branch in Ireland and this recently hit the headlines when the Irish music industry tried to force the ISP to introduce the 3 strikes rule against alleged file sharers. However, they are not the ISP to face increasing pressure from the music and movie industry seeking to stop people accessing websites where they can download and share music and video files.

Internet Service Providers in Austria were also approached by VAP in an attempt to encourage further anti piracy co-operation, but they refused on the basis that they felt the attempt to block access had no legitimate grounds. As far as they were concerned, the music and movie industry should be looking at ways to maximise their income via new and innovative business models instead of costly court cases against file sharers.

Whether the music and movie industry takes any notice remains to be seen.

An anti piracy outlet backed by Hollywood is trying to force a major Internet Service Provider to block access to a highly popular movie streaming portal. VAP is hoping that by forcing UPC to block Kino.to site, other site blockades will soon follow.

UPC has already gained notoriety for refusing to toe the line in Ireland over the 3 strikes debacle stirred up by the Irish Music Industry, but they are not the first ISP to be put under increasing pressure from the movie and music industry giants seeking to censor access to file sharing websites.

VAP has also approached a number of other ISPs in an attempt to block access to Kino.to, but along with UPC, Internet Service Providers Austria were also not terribly interested in the proposal. As far as they were concerned, ISPs are only carriers of information and therefore the request has no legal grounds. And as the ISPs correctly pointed out, rights holders would do better to spend their time thinking up more innovative business models to generate income than chasing file sharers through the courts.

However, VAP remains undeterred and has already announced its determination to force ISPs to do its bidding.