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On 8 November 2011, the Basque Government approved a decree that regulates audiovisual communications services within the Basque Autonomous Community. It implements the New General Law of Audiovisual Communications approved by the Spanish Parliament in 2010 (see IRIS 2010-4/21), replacing all prior legislation for the Basque audiovisual sector. This new framework includes the liberalisation of audiovisual communication services, states that broadcasting licences will last for 15 years, instead of 10 years, and allows for more flexibility in their commercialisation after two years of being granted....

Spain’s new government has implemented the controversial Royal Decree based on the Intellectual Property final provision contained in the Ley de Economía Sostenible (Act for Economic Sustainability), informally known as Ley Sinde (Sinde Act), after former Minister of Culture Ángeles González-Sinde. The Sinde Act was passed by the Spanish parliament in February 2011, but opposition from the public kept the socialist government from implementing the law. The main aim of the law is to protect copyright owners, creators and other rightsholders against financial harm caused by illegal downloading. Under...

The Council of Ministers approved on 11 November 2011 a Royal Decree clearing the Regulation developing the Spanish General Law on Audiovisual Communications (see IRIS 2010-4/21) regarding television advertising and the provision of legal certainty to the sector. The new Regulation develops some elements of the abovementioned Spanish Law on TV advertising that were not sufficiently clear in the General Law, such as those related to the calculation of the 12 minutes of permitted advertising per hour or the maximum number of advertising breaks per programme. The new Regulation clearly defines the...

On 27 September 2011, the Provincial Court of Vizcaya sentenced the website managers of the web pages Fenixp2p and MP3-es to imprisonment and payment of a fine for the infringement of intellectual property rights. It is the first case that has convicted administrators of websites that actively link to content protected under copyright law in Spain. In common with many similar sites, FenixP2P.com and MP3-es.com carried no content of their own, but instead linked to other locations where content was hosted. Breaking a long run of operators being acquitted for similar activities, the Spanish court...

On 22 July 2009 the European Commission submitted a request to the Court of Justice to declare Spain to be in violation of the Television without Frontiers Directive (Directive 89/552/EEC). The Commission argued that the Kingdom of Spain has failed to fulfill its obligation under Article 3(2) of the TWF Directive to ensure within the framework of its legislation that television broadcasters under their jurisdiction comply with the provisions of the Directive. The Commission referred in particular to the incorrect and overly narrow interpretation by the Spanish authorities of the concept of ‘advertising...