What was or was not considered legal in the world of downloads has taken many rounds in our country. We are sure that those responsible for ‘Elitedivx’ can attest to this. And is that 14 and a half years after their arrest in 2007, they have finally been acquitted by the Murcia Provincial Court.
After a slow judicial process, those responsible are acquitted of all charges. According to the newspaper Público, the Provincial Court of Murcia applied the regulations prior to the reform of the Penal Code of 2015, since it was the one in force at the time of the complaint.
An event prior to the reform of the Penal Code of 2015
Although from the agency “they understand” the appeal of many of the Hollywood companies that carried out at the time such as Disney, Columbia Tristar, 20th Century-Fox, and many others, they mention that the defendants had at that time “conviction of legality”. And it is true, since the website only published links where it was possible to download movies and other content, something totally legal at that time. If the activity of the page were resumed by those responsible today, the result would probably have been different.
This arrest was not the only one carried out by the Police during that month of March 2007. And it is that During that operation, those responsible for 21 similar websites were arrested, that is, those who shared P2P links to download free movies and music.
This is the photo of shame: 2007, macro-mobbed against the web pages of links to P2P downloads (“pirates”, they said). Almost all the cases have been shelved after years and years of lawsuits. Giants against small, David against Goliath (source: EFE). pic.twitter.com/sSuqTGSq0O
– pabloromero (@pabloromero) November 11, 2021
The announcement of these arrests was made by the then Director General of the Police, Joan Mesquida (now deceased), and the one who was then the Minister of Culture, Carmen Calvo. In the photo to which they refer from the Public newspaper, they appear the same mentioned together with some national artists. Although the intention of the announcement was to have media coverage, time ended up clearing the doubts that what they did was nonsense.
The eternal fight against downloads
Elitedivx is a case similar to that of many who suffered the slowness of the judicial processes to end up with the same solution: acquittal. One of the most notorious was that of the popular website ‘Series Yonkis’, who were also acquitted of all charges in 2019 when they also tried facts prior to the reform of the Penal Code of 2015.
As many other cases were archived, one of them precisely due to the death of the person in charge of the ‘DIVX Premiere’ website. The work of many of the lawyers with experience in this type of case, such as Carlos Sánchez Almeida or David Bravo, helped the defendants get acquitted. Quoting precisely Sánchez Almeida in relation to the case of ‘Series Yonkis’:
“You cannot judge the past with the eyes of the present. The principle of legality requires that no one can be convicted if their conduct is not previously defined in the penal code. The penal code did not change until July 1, 2015, for therefore we consider that any web of links that is limited to posting links to works protected by intellectual property without previously uploading them would not be criminal and in all pending cases there should be an acquittal “.
Via | Public