The Aula Magna at UIC Barcelona yesterday hosted the second edition of the Piracy Laboratory, organised jointly by a company called Red Points, and the Faculty of Law.  

The Minister for Culture, Santi Vila, gave the closing speech.  Vila underlines the importance of the fact that all the affected agents must be united in the fight for the protection of data and author’s rights. The Minister also said that  “In the government we must set up campaigns to raise awareness of the need to protect culture”.  Vila explained that this awareness is even more necessary when technological production today makes access to culture so much easier.  

Elvira Tejada de la Fuente, Special Coordinating Prosecutor for IT Crime, gave an overview from a legal perspective in the afternoon session. Tejada de la Fuente also analysed some of the new issues being worked on while writing up article 270 and nexts based on the reform of 2015 and the interpretation of the said precept in Newsletter 8/2015 from the General State Fiscal Office.

The defence of internet content, intellectual property rights, author’s rights and cultural VAT were some of the issues that were discussed during the debate.  In the first round there were eight minutes per speaker, and each of the eleven speakers described their experiences in their field as experts in this area. The invited speakers were from highly different fields, and included:  Samuel Molina “Fukuy”, a YouTuber and videogame creator; José Manuel Tourné, General Director of the Spanish Antipiracy Federation; Josep Jover, a lawyer and former candidate for the Piracy Party; Jorge Navarro, a criminal lawyer and partner in Molins & Silva, Criminal Defence; David Maeztu, a lawyer specialising in internet law, intellectual property rights and technology and a partner in Abanlex; Montserrat Nebrera, a professor of Constitutional Law at UIC Barcelona; David Escamilla, a journalist at RNE; Víctor Domingo, President of the Spanish Association of Internet Users; David López, CEO of Producciones Vikingas; Manuel Martínez Ribas, Managing Director of ID Law Partners Brugueras, and Josep Coll, Founder of Red Points Anti-Piracy Solutions. 

Questions arose during the debate about gratuitousness on the internet, the awareness of citizens in relation to artist-created material, the term “piracy” and how the huge spread of this type of crime has had an impact on digitalisation.  Everyone agreed that greater education and awareness of author’s rights and intellectual property rights is necessary.  

José Ramón Agustina, a professor from UIC Barcelona and Director of the Master's Degree in Cybercrime, stated that the university is organising and hosting “events such as this one with the aim of raising awareness in society in relation to author’s rights and bringing back their original value to the field of culture, and protecting cyberspace from piracy and other cybercrimes which attack the rights of both individuals and companies”.  

Josep Coll, Founder of Red Points, placed a strong emphasis on the need to protect premium content in the business world, in the field of intellectual property rights and entertainment and cultural industries.  Coll demonstrated his optimism based on the solutions that already exist in the market for data protection, particularly because “this premium content can be used as a bargaining chip to ensure people remain with a specific company providing you with internet services, therefore the need to protect it arises, so it a value for the end consumer, who cannot get it for free”.  

The event brought together more than two hundred people from the fields of law, communication, culture and internet security.