In Portugal, an attempt by rights-holders to catalyse government action against peer-to-peer file-sharers and Internet downloading, appears to have back-fired. They tried to get the authorities to take action against file-sharers, but instead, they’ve got  an official  ruling that file-sharing - at least  for personal use -  is not illegal.

Read more: Portugese prosecutor says file-sharing is not illegal

As the Zapatero  government winds down and hands over to his rival Mariano Rajoy, the winner of the November 20 Spanish election, there is a little matter of copyright law to sort out. This is the so-called Ley Sinde ( Sinde’s law) which provided for blocking of websites deemed to infringe copyright.

Read more: Will Spain ditch its anti-downloading law?

The so-called ‘Centemero law’ – proposed recently in  Italy  and named after the MP who tabled it- would appear to put ISPs under a duty of care to filter for the purpose of enforcing copyright.  On the basis of an English translation,  the Italian proposal  would put ISPs under  an onerous obligation  which would radically alter the Italian implementation of the E-commerce directive ‘mere conduit’.  Indeed, it would reverse mere conduit. And it would be the most draconian, if unimplementable, copyright enforcement law in Europe.

Read more: Italy's Centemero law would give ISPs a duty to filter