An online fire is burning in Europe. It was set by what appears to be a designed campaign to transform the European intellectual property regime, towards a more restrictive set of rules directly affecting the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and information. We're seeing its implementation in Sweden, France, Italy, UK or at the EU level in Brussels.

This fire is not fed by oxygen, but by bits. Thousands of people are responding to this attack on online rights with the force given to them by the Internet. La Quadrature du Net, a French network movement led by the energetic Jérémie Zimmerman (@j_zim ), has managed to rally the resistance in France and Brussels to curb the most aggressive intentions of a spoiled oligopolistic cultural industry.

Last week, it was the turn of Spain, and the fire burned faster than ever. A small amendment of the 2002 Law regulating information society services, sneaked at the end of a law meant to change the country's economic model (Law for a Sustainable Economy), escaped its opaque corner in the legal text to become the spark that set off an unstoppable chain of reactions that went up to the Spanish Prime Minister. This is a chronicle of the events.

Stories always have a past. And this one is not an exception. For this one, we may go back to 2006. David Bravo, a popular Spanish young lawyer specialised in intellectual property and new technologies, explains in his blog the connection between what happened last week and a well-publicised police operation against piracy, which ended up with the judge's absolution of the detainees, and the promoter of the case, the SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, General Society of Authors and Editors), condemned to pay the legal costs and fined for undue legal action. It is the frustration of the "creative industries" from losing all court cases against online sites, that brings them to focus on a different strategy: to lobby the government to introduce a new legislation giving more powers to non-judicial bodies to act against these perfectly legal activities - for this it has formed the Coalition of creators and content industries, also known as The Coalition (Coalicion de creadores e industrias de contenidos – La Coalición).

This is what brings the Spanish government to include this final provision in the Law for a Sustainable Economy (Ley de Economía Sostenible (LES)) modifying the law regulating online services. On Friday 27 November, the government approved the draft law that aims to transform the Spanish economy into one based on technology, innovation, education and environment. In it, it included the controversial amendment.

On the later hours of Monday, 30 November, the 200-pages proposal is published online.

The next day, Tuesday, 1 December, the Spanish newspaper El País publishes an article by Ramón Muñoz, one of its journalists, mentioning for the first time that the LES includes a modification to the 2002 Law regulating online services and electronic commerce (Ley de servicios de la sociedad de la información y de comercio electrónico), containing the creation in the Ministry of Culture of a new Intellectual Property Commission (Comisión de propiedad intelectual), and the possibility of shutting off sites "infringing intellectual property rights."

In the morning of the same day, a group of artists demonstrates in front of the Ministry of Industry in support of a manifesto signed by 2,500 artists and other people in the "cultural industries" in support of tougher measures of protection of intellectual property and asking, among other things, for a ban on p2p networks. One of the most outspoken among the artists, the popular singer Luís Eduardo Aute, said on the radio, moments after the demonstration had finished, that if nothing changes "in five years this ends. There will be no more songs or music."

In the evening, a group of (still not fully identified) "journalists, bloggers, users, profesionales and Internet creators" (among them Sonia Blanco, Error500, Enrique Dans, Alt1040, Ignacio Escolar and Mangas Verdes) start writing on Google Wave a manifesto in defence of online rights.

On Wednesday, 2 December, while the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, is in the Spanish Parliament (Congreso de los Diputados) presenting the LES...

...the manifesto (original in Spanish) is published at 9 am, and spreads virally on Twitter (with the hashtag #manifiesto), blogs, forums and popular sites. In less than 2 hours, Google shows more than 1,000 hits referring to it, and, according to some sources, in 6 hours, 50,000 blogs reproduce or support the manifesto, including Cory Doctorow in BoingBoing and Gizmodo. A Facebook group is created (at this moment counting more than 180,000 members!), and a wiki page is set up.

In the afternoon, some opposition parties declare their opposition to the law (http://www.publico.es/ciencias/274993/gobierno/p/p), and the Minister of Culture calls some of the "proponents" (or supposedly proponents) of the manifesto to a meeting the next morning.

On Thursday, 3 December, the Ministry of Culture meets a group of 14 people from the "Internet". The meeting is twittered, photographed and even (the beginning) video-recorded!

The 6 people from the Ministry present at the meeting explained that the final provision is:

- not targeting internet users;
- not targeting link sites (a la pirate bay);
- not targeting blogs, aggregators, etc. that contain potentially-infringing content;
- targeting sites and other online services that infringe intellectual property rights and get monetary profit from direct payments from users.

and in the process to close down the Intellectual Property Commission (and administative body) will:

- act only in cases of blatant violation of rights;
- ask ISP to remove the infringing content;
- send the case to a judge to close down / block the site.

The "Internet people" are not satisfied with these official explanations, and leave the meeting after two hours of tense discussion. They demand the removal of the provision altogether.

In the afternoon, the Prime Minister (ZP) meets with its cabinet and high-ranking socialists. After that meeting, in a press conference with the President of the European Parliament, he says that:

"We will not close anything on the Net, no website or blog. If something needs to be clarified in the draft bill from the wording point of view, it will be [...] However, this should not stop us [...] from considering a pending issue we need to resolve, the protection of intellectual property. Intellectual property needs to be protected, otherwise it will disappear and we won't have intellectual creation anymore."

In the meantime, demonstrations are organized through Facebook and Twitter for Friday evening.

On Friday, 4 December, many news papers carry articles about the new law, the manifesto, the meeting and ZP/government reaction. Some with editorials against the manifesto.

In the evening, even if the demonstrations are not authorized, some people decide to "go for a walk".

Plaza del Rey, Madrid | Image: fotonazos

Plaza del Rey, Madrid | Image: fotonazos

On Sunday, 6 December, Spain celebrates the 31st anniversary of the Spanish Constitutional referendum. Many blogs reproduce article 20 of the Constitution protecting freedom of expression:

Article 20
The following rights are recognized and protected:
a) To freely express and disseminate thoughts, ideas and opinions by word, writing or any other means of reproduction.
[…]
2. The exercise of these rights can not be restricted by any form of censorship.

* the title of this blog emerged in Twitter from an original tweet from Micah Sifry referring to my first blog post on the topic as "Very cool story of how 1000s of Spaniards rallied in defence of online rights"