This is a criminal copyright case against the webmasters of a well-known Spanish website called SeriesYonkis, which, until 2014, used to provide links to unauthorized copies of TV series and movies hosted elsewhere (mainly in Megavideo and Megaupload). The links were supposedly uploaded to seriesyonkis by its users.
Surprising as it may be in 2019 (particularly after GS Media and Ziggo), the discussion was about whether the activity constituted an act of communication to the public, as required by the language of the Criminal Code. At the time of the activities, the majority of the Spanish rulings in similar cases had found that this kind of acts did not amount to a communication to the public – though there had been also some rulings holding the opposite. SeriesYonkis discontinued the provision of links right when the Court of Justice of the European Union issued the Svensson judgment, which held that hyperlinking is an act of communication (though in that case it was not deemed to be a communication “to the public”). The SeriesYonkis court concluded that, for the purposes of Criminal Law, Svensson and its progeny cannot be applied retroactively to the time of the facts subject to trial. Therefore, the defendants were acquitted from all charges. The bottom line of the court’s argument is that the activity did not fall under the relevant provision of the Criminal Code at the time of the facts. This was further underpinned by the fact that, in 2015, the Criminal Code was amended to include a new provision focusing specifically on the described activity, which the court saw as a confirmation that it was not previously included as a criminal offense. The case is currently under appeal.