[Spain] Anarchist website condemned to pay 6000 € to rock-star celebrity

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Friday September 28, 2007 15:21

by alasbarricadas - alasbarricadas

One of the main anarchist websites in spanish language, alasbarricadas.org, will have to pay 6,000 euro to a rock-star, Ramoncin, for some anonymous comments in one of their public forums. Those comments were considered as ‘ofensive’ to the artist ‘honour’.

One of the main anarchist websites in spanish language, alasbarricadas.org, will have to pay 6,000 euro to a rock-star, Ramoncin, for some anonymous comments in one of their public forums. Those comments were considered as ‘ofensive’ to the artist ‘honour’.
The trial took place in Madrid, the 12th of September. The judge found the website guilty of having discredited this mediatic celebrity. Apparently in Spain it is more important the ‘honour’ than the freedom of speech and press.

However, behind this case it is the artist and musics asociation SGAE, [similar to RIAA in the states o BPI in the UK]. This organisation wants to control internet contents by making webmasters responsible for all the contents of their websites, blogs and forums.

Ramoncin has been one of the SGAE main speakers for the last years, when SGAE began its crusade against software, music and video piracy, p2p networks, taking money from pubs, discos, cafes or even hairdressers for having a TV in their locals or taking 10% of the money in benefit shows and concerts when everybody else is working for free.

Solidarity with alasbarricadas.org
http://www.alasbarricadas.org/sgae/?page_id=7

Comments (1 of 1)

to the effing Barricades! the principle of Pop reduces to the same as Burma the same as AIDS drugs

by @

Fri Sep 28, 2007 16:05

The conceited wanker in question is but one more entertainer strutting the stage of Metalica hoping for the glorious accolades & wealth of Paris Hilton without putting in the hard work.
readers will remember Metalica the rock band are the most prominent defenders of performance rights & royalties in the USA. It's difficult to grow your hair & it's difficult to play power chords on the guitar, that's why it's the most universal instrument & everyone looks down on the uillean pipes, or violin or pipe organ. Is it bollox.

There are alternatives which can be explored e.g. http://www.jamendo.com/en/ which is a creative commons supporting sharing site. Naturally never an opportunity should be lost to remind readers of the pirate bay, who incidently just added their "Free Burma" banner today http://thepiratebay.org/ to get stuff off piratebay (which has nothing to do with levying a tax from hairdressers or free gigs but everything to do with the many fronted war which is the struggle for sharing ideas & information) you'll need a torrent thing- azureus will do - http://meanwhile.com/?domain=azuerus.org

Make no mistake! the struggle for freedom of information is the 21st century equivalent of the struggle for dictionaries was in the early years of the Enlightenment. You may take the ability to understand another individuals choice of word, or translate their language once read as a simple by-product of literacy. IT is not., blood was spilt to enable the transfer of ideas and ideologies from one tongue to another. You might think an encyclopedia was a dinky way of pushing hire-purchase, using up shelfspace on middle class shelves & completely superceded (or undermined) by today's wikipedia. If so, you forget the medieval & renaissance completely. If so, you have no idea of how jealously guarded to the point of death & torture knowledge was. So now, most are aware of the role of open software, of its essential role in the pushing the barricades in our war further down that highstreet of capitalist domination. But there are many in that sphere on that root who feel music as "art" ought not be involved in the "copyleft" or "creative commons" or "open source" movement. I for one disagree.
Look at the wanker who called himself "the king of fried chicken" at the start of his career as you may see in this youtube vidhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YTidKohuJU you could use this opensoft media package to take it home with you- http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

He wants to brush all that under the carpet now, airbrush it out of history out of his commercial retail profile, out of reality. I don't see him as an artist anymore than I can think Tracy Emin listing her shags inside a tent could be considered an artist, no matter what commercial law, or advertising agent turned collector, or concert venue, or TV program, or Late Late Show host, or Art Gallery champion their ego.

Information wants to be free. It wants to be free so people like Ko Htike can tell you hour by hour what is happening in Burma http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/

Information wants to be free so children in Africa & Asia may look forward to decent medicine their countries can make except for one thing - paying the patent percentage to some little old lady who owns shares in the USA or Wicklow.

Dossier on this case from BCN (((i))) features page in castellano if it's yellow it's a link -

http://barcelona.indymedia.org/feature/display/317856/i...x.php