14 DAY TRIAL // A Spanish court of appeals has ruled that sites which merely link to other pages hosting pirated content do not violate any of the country's laws.
The ruling came in a copyright infringement case between the Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) and a website called index-web.com that dates back to 2009.
The website won the first legal battle in May 2010, with the court clearing it of any wrongdoing. However, SGAE lodged an appeal hoping to reverse the ruling.
The Barcelona Court of Appeal which previously fined elrincondejesus.com with 3,587 euro for infringing the rights of SGAE in a similar case, changed its mind.
The panel of judges decided that linking to material on P2P networks or websites that host copyrighting works illegally, is not an offense under Spanish law.
According to index-web.com's lawyers this is the first ruling of its kind in Spain and will be used as a legal precedent in similar cases in the future.
They also hope it will help elrincondejesus.com get its fine reversed. The website has already logged an appeal with the Supreme Court.
Like index-web.com, elrincondejesus.com won in the lower court, but SGAE appealed the ruling. The Barcelona Court of Appeal then fined the website because it linked to infringing content hosted on RapidShare.
However, even if it won the fight in its country, index-web.com might face problems from abroad. Earlier this year, the US Department of Justice seized a domain name called rojadirecta.com which belongs to a Spanish company for similar reasons.
Rojadirecta.com houses a large community of sport fans and regularly published links to sporting streams hosted on other websites. US authorities claim that because those third-party sites are streaming the events illegally, rojadirecta.com is also guilty of copyright infringement.