Spanish judge says P2P is the same as sharing a book

In 2005 Spanish authorities, rights collection society EGEDA and Columbia Tristar set out to shutdown a popular file-sharing forum named CVCDGO.com. The site did not host any illegal files it only pointed to the location of them in P2P networks.

The site, run by four people, was raided by the Spanish Intellectual Property Crime Squad, the four site operates were arrested and have been fighting a legal battle since.

After nearly 5 years of fighting the case in court the Provincial Court of Madrid has closed the case and found that no offenses have been committed. TorrentFreak says the court found that since the site didn't host any copyrighted files and no profit was generated directly from any infringements, the presence of advertising on the site did not constitute a crime.

Judges Ocariz, Gutierrez and Campillo said in their ruling, "..since ancient times there has been the loan or sale of books, movies, music and more. The difference now is mainly on the medium used – previously it was paper or analog media and now everything is in a digital format which allows a much faster exchange of a higher quality and also with global reach through the Internet."

The lawyer defending CVCDGO said, "The judges have taken a stand for freedom on the Internet." The judges decision in this case is final and cannot be appealed.