The admin of three file-sharing websites was given more than a year and a half in prison by a court in Valencia for linking to unauthorized digital content
The sites in question were Peliculas Online, ver cine gratis, estrenos, series, descarga directa, Divx online.info, estrenosonline.es and www.seriesonlines.es, and the charges that led to the conviction pointed to making movies and other copyright protected files available for streaming over the internet without consent from the rights owners.

While a few years back, Spain seemed to be very tolerant towards non-commercial illegal file-sharing, over the past year its measures against online piracy have toughened considerably.

The case followed a complaint by EGEDA (an organization that manages the rights of audiovisual producers), and the lobby group was quite satisfied with the court’s sentence against the admin – one year, seven months and 15 days of jail, along with a period of 21 months of inactivity.

“The importance of the sentence lies in that it supports the idea that providing links to protected works constitutes an unauthorized act of public communication and that responsibility is not exonerated once the accused is made aware of the illicit procedure, regardless of whether the links were provided by the administrator of third parties.” (EGEDA)