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On 1 August 2012, an amendment to the Audiovisual Act 7/2010 was adopted by the Spanish parliament, introducing a new legal framework for regional public service broadcasters, which aims at allowing regional public service broadcasters greater flexibility in the provision of their audiovisual media services. It also modifies the regulation of protection of minors. According to this amendment, the Autonomous Communities may opt for direct or indirect management of their public service broadcasters through various models including public-private partnership. If an Autonomous Community chooses not...

On 22 June 2012 the Spanish Supreme Court issued a ruling in favor of EGEDA, a collecting society managing the intellectual property rights of audiovisual producers. EGEDA filed a lawsuit against the company Freephone Axarquia, and its sole administrator, for not paying the amounts corresponding to the private copying levy. The judgment of the Supreme Court recalls that fair compensation for private copying, contained in the EU Directive 2001/29/CE, is an autonomous concept of European Union law which must be interpreted uniformly in all the member states that have established a private copying...

On 21 June 2012, in a reasoned opinion, the European Commission asked Spain to stop the restrictions on the distribution of non-Spanish movies. The Commission considers that the Catalan law on Cinema (see IRIS 2009-5/21 and IRIS 2011-10/14) is incompatible with Articles 56 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (rules on the free movement of services). In application of Article 18 of the Catalan law, films distributed in Catalonia must be distributed with a Catalan version (either dubbed or sub-titled). Only Spanish movies delivered in Castilian are exempted from this obligation....

On 20 April 2012 the Council of Ministers approved a Royal Decree-Law that modifies the administration regime of the national public service broadcaster, Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española (CRTVE), which has been in place since changes were introduced by Law 17/2006 (see IRIS 2005-9/16 and IRIS 2006-6/19). The Law stated that the Corporation had to be ruled by a Board of Management composed of twelve members from among whom the President would be chosen. These designations were for six years and subject to obtaining a two-thirds majority in a parliamentary appointment process. The current...

On 29 May 2012, the Supreme Court issued a first decision on the appeal filed by the Asociación de Internautas (Association of Web Users) concerning the legality of the so-called Sinde Act (see IRIS 2012-4/22, IRIS 2012-2/18, IRIS 2011-3/17 and IRIS 2011-2/23). The “Sinde Act” is actually a modification of the Spanish Intellectual Property Act which aims at speeding up the procedure for blocking or closing down websites which provide illegal access to copyrighted content. It creates a Commission on Intellectual Property at the Ministry of Culture in charge a.o. of safeguarding intellectual property...