As 2012 began — and less than two months after winning control over the Spanish parliament — the right-leaning Partido Popular passed a controversial new anti-Internet-piracy law that will impose strict penalties on website owners who fail to remove copyrighted material from their sites.Sound familiar? The law, named after the former culture minister, Ángeles González-Sinde, gives the Spanish government nearly the same broad-ranging authority found in the equally controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) now wending its way through the U.S. Congress. Owners of the material can now complain to a government commission that can issue an order to block a website’s service.To read this IEEE Spectrum report in full, see:
spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/spain-declares-war-on-online-pirates