Sharing is Good

A group of activists is planning to download a song from the internet
in front of the building of the SGAE (the spanish association of
authors and editors, well known for its campaigns against file sharing
in P2P networks). The action will take place on the forth-coming
monday.

The act of sharing music and culture in the internet is NOT illegal
under Spanish law, something that has already been demonstrated with
clear facts. P2P sharing is practised by more than 2 million citizens
in Spain and it is the base of the new ways of cultural evolution made
possible by the new technologies. To demonstrate that sharing culture
is an easy, legitimate and legal act a group of activists will gather
this monday (7th November) at 11:00 am in front of the building of the
SGAE in Bilbao (Street "Gran Vía" No 29, Bilbao is a city in the
Basque Country, in Spain) to a perform live download to a laptop of
the song "Get on Your Knees" of Teddy Bautista, the
president of the SGAE. Three burofaxes have been sent to the
government delegation, to the police and to the SGAE itself,
explaining the action and requesting for the due legal action in the
case of law breakage. This initiative rises from the campaign CompartirEsBueno.Net (Sharing Is Good), and other
internet user groups and activists that
fight for the universal access to the culture and the copyleft.

Lately we are suffering a quite aggressive media campaign from the Spanish ministries of Justice
and culture, and two Spanish TV channels, (Antena 3 and Tele 5) to try to make us believe that sharing is
illegal. In that campaign the P2P networks are deliberatley related with the gangs that sell music illegally or
even the terrorism. For that reason, and in the context
of the preparatory meeting of the world summit of the information society, this
action aims to present to the public the campaign Compartir Es
Bueno (Sharing Is Good). That campaign defends the free flow of
the copyleft knowledge, culture and technics, against the digital gap
built by the monopolies of propietary software, the patents over the
technological development and the technologies and laws of digital
control that try to degrade the cultural commons of the humanity: the
internet and the techno-scientific knowledge."