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Court Decision

Judgment of the Criminal Court #4 of Murcia, June 21 2019 (ES:JP:2019:30) (SeriesYonkis)

This is a criminal copyright case against the webmasters of a well-known Spanish website called SeriesYonkis, which, until 2014, used to provide links to unauthorized copies of TV series and movies hosted elsewhere (mainly in Megavideo and Megaupload). The links were supposedly uploaded to seriesyonkis by its users. Surprising as it may be in 2019 (particularly after GS Media and Ziggo), the discussion was about whether the activity constituted an act of communication to the public, as required by the language of the Criminal Code. At the time of the activities, the majority of the Spanish rulings in similar cases had found that this kind of acts did not amount to a communication to the public – though there had been also some rulings holding the opposite. SeriesYonkis discontinued the provision of links right when the...
Court Decision

Audiencia Nacional, Administrative Chamber, Google Inc v Spanish Data Protection Authority, May 11, 2017 (ES:AN:2017:2433)

The Spanish Data Protection Authority (AEDP) issued a decision ordering Google Inc to delist a search result pointing to negative comments about the professional conduct of a medical doctor; Google Inc appealed the decision to the Audiencia Nacional (AN); the AN found that the public interest should prevail so that potential patients of that doctor may know about the experiences and opinions of former patients; therefore, the AN reversed the AEDP decision]. [See more info, in Spanish, here.
Court Decision

Juzgado Mercantil No 2 of La Coruña, Mediaproducción v Roja Directa, 247/2016,

(ES:JMC:2016:4325)
Holding the owner of the website RojaDirecta liable of copyright infringement; the site would offer links to streams of sports events; the court found the site was engaging in an unauthorized communication to the public, taking into account the criteria set by the CJEU in Svensson and GS Media; exemptions from liability did not apply as the site was considered non neutral, and hence a publisher rather than a mere intermediary. More info, in Spanish, can be found here.
Court Decision

Supreme Court, Criminal Chamber, Youkioske.com, 920/2016

Holding two webmasters of a website liable for criminal copyright infringement; the website would offer links to access, via streaming, scanned full versions of newspapers, magazines and books; the files were hosted somewhere else; the court found that the site was engaging in a communication to the public according to the criteria set out by the CJEU in Svensson; there was “new public” as the website allowed access to the contents of the print edition without the need of buying it; the Supreme Court upheld the first instance ruling handed down by the Audiencia Nacional.
Administrative Decision

Procedimiento Sancionador PS/00149/2016. Resolución R/02232/2016

In this administrative proceeding within the Spanish DPA (AEPD - Agencia Española de Protección de Datos), Google was fined in 150,000 Euros for communicating webmasters about the delisting of content based on data protection requests (Right to be Forgotten requests, based on the European and Spanish rights to cancellation and opposition). Building upon the guidelines issued by the Article 29 Working Party, the agency decided that a search engine does not have the legal obligation to inform webmasters and that the communication could render the request to be delisted inefficient, by allowing, among other things, the publisher to change the URL delisted or to create lists of URLs subject to de-indexed. When considering that Google would only inform that a URL was delisted based on the European data protection...
Court Decision

Supreme Court, Civil Chamber, IU Colmenar Viejo, 297/2016

Holding the owner of a website – a political party’s local association – liable for third party defamatory comments posted to a website’s forum; the defendant carried out a moderation of the forum, but failed to prevent the obviously defamatory messages from being posted, while other comments favorable to the complainant were rejected; the appellate court was right in finding that the defendant had actual knowledge of the illegal content; the court cites the ECtHR case Delfi v Estonia.