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Court Decision

Supreme Court, Civil Chamber, An individual v Google Spain, 210/2016

Holding Google Spain SL liable for damages for failing to remove links to personal information after a “right to be forgotten” request by the claimant; damages were awarded following art. 19 of the Spanish Data Protection Law, which implements art. 23 of the Data Protection Directive (95/46) that orders Member States to “provide that any person who has suffered damage as a result of an unlawful processing operation or of any act incompatible with the national provisions adopted pursuant to this Directive is entitled to receive compensation from the controller for the damage suffered.”; the court rejected the defendant’s contention that Google Spain – the local subsidiary – is not the data controller and thus lacks standing; however, in other cases, another Chamber of the court concedes Google Spain’s lack of standing...
Paper/Research

Spain Study on blocking, filtering and take-down of illegal Internet content

(prepared by Swiss Institute of Comparative Law for Council of Europe)
This is one of series of country reports prepared for the Council of Europe in 2015. Other countries' reports, and responses from national governments, are available here. The studies undertake to present the laws and, in so far as information is easily available, the practices concerning the filtering, blocking and takedown of illegal content on the internet.
Legislation

Law No. 1/2015​, to amend the Spanish Criminal Code, March 30, 2015 (entering into force on July 1, 2015)

(1) widening the definition of copyright criminal offense so as to include any act of exploitation, and no longer limited to acts of reproduction, plagiarism, distribution and communication to the public; (2) when the conditions are met, the information service providers’ active facilitation to access or locate copyrighted works that are made unlawfully available on the internet will be considered a criminal offense (Article 151-152 modifing Article 270-271 of the Criminal Code).
Court Decision

Audiencia Provincial [Court of Appeals] of Castellón, Section 1, Criminal, Bajatetodo.com, 414/2014 (ES:APCS:2014:1098)

(1) The Criminal Court of Appeal of Castellón upheld a previous decision charging the webmaster of the website Bajatetodo.com with a eighteen-month prison term under Article 270 of the Spanish Criminal Code. The website used to provide links to a miscellaneous array of infringing materials available online. (2) The Court of Appeal applied the language of the new copyright reform (see above) by stressing that the webmaster went well beyond a mere passive neutral intermediary role by selecting, ordering and indexing the online resources to access the infringing materials. For this reason, the webmaster could not benefit of the linking safe harbour, specifically provided by the Spanish implementation of the eCommerce Directive. (3) Additionally, the Court of Appeal of Castellón made specific reference to the Svensson case...