In the greatest promotion since Willy Wonka flooded the world with delicious Wonka bars and hid 5 golden tickets, Mitsubishi recently swapped chocolate bars for virtual parts, and hid the pieces of a car across multiple Bittorrent sites in a bizarre Spanish promotion.
Although we had an inkling in our story as to the reasons why Mitsubishi had chosen to make the promotion only open to Spanish residents, the latest IIPA Special report 301 adds a bit of clarity to the state of all things downloadable in Spain.
In fact, you only need to read the two line executive summary of the report to know that the big copyright lobbyists in Washington DC aren't too happy with the way Spain's ultra-friendly and ultra-casual downloading laws are giving copyright owners the old heave-ho. In other words, Spain has donated Bittorrent to the people and the US wants action taken on the matter.
Incidentally, the IIPA are part of the same alliance that brought action against the PirateBay website in the recent court hearing.
According to the report, Spain has stopped policing all use of Bittorrent and 'illegal links' websites, perhaps in favour of more pressing topics, such as real detective work and policing of more serious crime.
The report concludes that Spain should be added to an international watchlist of copyright offenders. In much the same way the US holds certain countries on a terrorism watch list, the scourge of getting music and movies off the Web has now achieved its own written creed.
Though, you have to give the corporate bigwigs at Mitsubishi's Japanese headquarters some credit. When Mitsubishi chose a place to host their strategic Bittorrent promotion, they definitely chose the right country with the 'right 'laws to run it in.
It doesn't hurt that Spain is also hosting an international car show in Barcelona, which gives Mitsubishi an huge platform from which to show how the power of Bittorrent can be used for good and not evil.
Until someone works out a more effective way to sell music and movies quickly and effectively without the usual hangups like slow speeds, the downloading issue isn't going away anytime soon, in Spain or elsewhere.