Is Inquisition Back?

Julio Alonso, the man behind of the leading Spanish blog network Weblogs SL, was given a €9,000 fine and additional legal costs for comments users posted on his personal blog.

SGAE (the General Society of Authors and Publishers), a Spanish version of the RIAA was more than incensed due to a post (that ultimately resulted in the present court case) made four years ago whose title read SGAE=Thieves and sued Alonso. In 2004 the post entered the top of the Spanish version of Google for the term “ladrones” which translates as “thieves”.

According to The Inquisitr, the court considered that the post inspired other 22 comments posted by readers subsequently, comments which greatly affected the image of SGAE. Fortunately, Alonso can still request an appeal hoping for a better sentence.

You cannot help but wonder – is this even happening, I mean, is it in accordance with the European law? Besides, who will risk making similar comments on a blog in Spain?

Julio, you have our support, amigo!