Spanish P2P Man Gets Six Months In Jail

A Spanish man has been given six months in jail for operating what's judged to be an illegal file-sharing site.

Until a few days ago, cases in Spain involving peer-to-peer file-sharing had gone unpunished, since no profit motive could be proved. But can it be a coincidence that the first jailing of someone behind a file-sharing site occurs just as a new culture minister, Ángeles Gónzalez-Sinde, former president of the Cinema Academy and an avowed opponent of file-sharing, takes office?

The convicted man, Adrián Gómez Llorente, 22, received a six-month jail term and a fine of around $6,500, for violating intellectual property laws because he profited from his site, www.infopsp.com, according to Billboard. He offered links to other sites where movies and video games could be downloaded, and benefited from advertising on the site.

The judge’s ruling said that Gómez "put at the disposal of [Internet] users means to obtain illicit copies of works protected by authors rights… obtaining a pirated copy in their computers without the consent of the [work's] title holder."

Gómez admitted having three other sites where material could be downloaded, as well as receiving income from premium text messages. Users registered on his main site accepted in the terms and conditions the sale of their details to third parties.

Prior to this case, another involving BitTorrent tracker sites had been halted as courts ruled that providing links did not violate intellectual property laws.