Spain was previously exceptionally lenient on Internet users publishing links to copyrighted content, but now the country seems to be well on its way to cracking down on the issue. The amendments to Spain’s penal code (approved a few days ago) say that operators of the websites offering links to copyrighted content without the owners’ permission may face jail sentences of up to 6 years. In the meantime, for individual users and people operating P2P software, the outlook is much better.

Last year it was revealed that the US had threatened to put Spain on a trade blacklist because of its poor legislation fighting digital piracy. A few months later, the country responded by introducing the Sinde Law, supposed to offer greater protections for rights owners. However, no infringing site was ever shut down under that law.

Today the country is making another attempt. Under new legislation, admins of file-sharing services (which up until now have been able to operate freely) might face a harsh new reality. According to the amendments, owners and administrators of file-sharing websites linking to illegal content hosted elsewhere and making indirect profit from their activity may face jail sentences of up to 6 years.

The good news is that while Spain has announced a crackdown in one area, it leaves flexibility for others, especially against basic search engines and regular users. The authorities promised to take no action against regular users, neutral search engines, or peer-to-peer software allowing the sharing of content.

Nevertheless, the questions are already being raised over the new legislation. The matter is that in order to show that a file-sharing website admin has committed a crime it will be necessary to prove there has been a significant breach of intellectual property rights. However, it is unclear what this actually means. In Spain it is commonplace to purchase counterfeit DVD on the streets, youth unemployment has reached 56%, and people believe the government has got its priorities wrong.

After the Cabinet has approved the amendments, it will head it over to Parliament for debate. It is still unclear whether the government would really follow through with its threats against local websites or whether the population would respond by spending more money on copyrighted content.