Spain rejects US-authored copyright laws

By J. DeVoy

Julian Assange may have dealt a blow to the international fight against content piracy.  Cables released by Wikileaks reveal that a copyright bill pending before the Spanish house of representatives was authored by the United States, with significant influence from Hollywood studios.  The proposed legislation would have outlawed the operation of file-sharing sites and services within the country.  But, alas, it is no more.

From BoingBoing:

While they might have been willing to vote for the new copyright law if they could at least pretend to have written it, Spain’s legislators balked at enacting legislation that had been incontrovertibly conjured up by powerful foreign corporations against the interest of Spain’s own citizens.

It is unsurprising that US interests are trying to affect the laws of smaller, less wealthy and less powerful nations.  It’s what we’ve always done, more or less, though the last 50 years of private sector tampering in foreign affairs have focused more on Latin America than continental Europe.  While the entertainment industry is American-dominated at this point, maybe in a few years Bollywood will be able to add some fuel to the fight and give America’s companies a less suspicious pass-through for these efforts.