The Platform for Freedom of Information (PLI), which has already tried to stop the transposition of the Copyright Directive (also known as the Iceta Law through a Royal Decree Law “due to the threat it represents to freedom of information and expression on the Internet “, has alerted today to an article that, according to this body, could be considered unconstitutional.
Article 73.4 of the Royal Decree Law establishes that content sharing platforms, service providers, will always be responsible in any public communication of copryright infringements, unless they show, among other things, that they have made every effort to prevent that content from being on their network and that, in any case, they have acted expeditiously to erase it.
For Carlos Sánchez Almeida, legal director of the PLI, the problem with this article is that “immediately afterwards, in Article 73.5 We are told about the even criminal responsibility that these platforms have, and one thing does not square with another from the constitutional point of view ”. Specifically, the seriousness of this, according to this platform is that “it is intended to apply the reversal of the burden of proof in criminal proceedings.”
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Right to the presumption of innocence in the Constitution
Article 24 of the Constitution guarantees the right to the presumption of innocence and also guarantees the right not to testify against oneself, not to plead guilty. This states that the accused cannot be compelled to provide evidence of his guilt, of their criminal responsibility. With the aforementioned article of the Iceta Law, the PLI considers that “this is what the law curiously intends.”
This complaint from the PLI joins other criticisms of the Royal Decree Law that the Platform has raised. This body has denounced that there had been no transparency in its drafting and that there had not been dialogue either, as it had not been processed through parliament.
In addition, the PLI denounced that the Royal Decree “had exceeded the provisions of the directive” since, they say that it was not only possible to massively withdraw Internet content by content holders in front of the platforms of content sharing such as Google, Twitter or Facebook, “but You can also censor live streaming in the event that copyright is infringed through it “.
The member of this body warns that “from the PLI we are going to continue demanding that the different parliamentary groups vote against the validation of this royal decree.” as Ordinary Law, so that other parliamentary groups can present proposals and amendments.
The Platform for Freedom of Information (PLI) was born in November by a group of organizations and people from the legal field, journalism and social movements that they felt concerned “about the threats to the rights of freedom of information and expression in Spain” in the face of laws that at that time had been imposed by the government of Mariano Rajoy, such as the Draft Organic Law on Protection of Citizen Security (known as Gag Law) or the reform of the Intellectual Property Law.