Ares Connect

Spanish site cvcdgo.com has struck an impressive blow for all people interesting in filesharing. It has beaten a case brought against it by Egeda – an audiovisual collection society – and Columbia Tristar. This is an appeal, and represents the second time the case has been dismissed by the courts. The first dismissal was in May 2009, when a Madrid court said that site did not store content, and that it linked to many diverse files that were shared all over the world.

This is quite different to the attitude taken by Swedish, UK and US courts of recent times, where even Google has been accused of exactly the same thing. The problem for legislators here is the international nature of the Internet. If you’re a Swedish filsharing company that wants to engage in activities that might be considered illegal in your home country, then just move operations to Spain. With some clever lawyer tricks and an appropriately placed server, you probably won’t have to actually move out of the country.

So, laws will remain easy to get around. That much is clear. What is not clear is how other countries are going to respond to these laws. Interesting.

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