Draft Bill

Spanish Bloggers Fear Being Censored

Madrid (Spain), February 2007 - The Spanish Internet community is enflamed by a draft bill: Ley de Impulso de la Sociedad de la Información (the Law of "Impulse of the Information Society") proposes to allow the regional governments to close websites viewed as objectionable without a court order.




The "Law of Impulse" seeks to correct the existing law for the information society, but critics fear that those modifications might be misused as a means of censorship by the Spanish justice authorities and other agencies. One modification, which at first glance appears quite innocuous, is viewed with particular suspicion: whereas the current law states that a "competent authority" is allowed to close websites, the modified version speaks of a "competent organ of justice or administration".

Activists on the Net are now afraid that regional governments could misuse the vague phrase to close any website they deem inappropriate. This, however, would contradict the Spanish basic constitutional law that requires a court order to prohibit the publication of an informational medium. Critics insist that a website, in principle, is an informational medium and has to be treated as one. In Spain, the strongly developed aversion to censorship is a legacy of the Franco dictatorship.