Spain Blocked Archive.today Without a Court Order

Spanish users trying to open the web-archiving service Archive.today now most often land on a government page bearing a bold headline: «YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS AN ILLEGAL SITE.» The order to block several of the service's domains and its mirrors was issued by the Second Section of the Intellectual Property Commission, which is part of the country's Ministry of Culture.

Blocking Without a Court

What sets this case apart is that restricting access did not require a court ruling. A complaint, the commission itself, and a well-oiled administrative procedure built for speed were enough. Formally, the grounds were a resolution by that same Second Section, which accuses Archive.today of «unlawfully facilitating access to content protected by intellectual property rights.»

An Accusation Aimed at the User

Notably, the text of the block page is addressed not so much to the site's owners as to those who simply tried to open it. Visitors are told that, by going to the site, they are «aiding illegal and criminal activity,» while also putting at risk «their own safety and the security of their data and devices.» In other words, in the ministry's telling, an attempt to peek into a web archive becomes complicity.

Archive.today is a popular tool for saving copies of web pages: people use it to capture a site's contents at a particular moment, to get around paywalls, or simply to preserve material that might disappear. It is precisely this functionality that makes it a convenient target for claims by rights holders.

The case fits into a broader trend: decisions to restrict access to websites in Spain are increasingly made through administrative rather than judicial channels. The Intellectual Property Commission gains the ability to block resources quickly, bypassing lengthy proceedings—convenient for fighting piracy, but raising questions when the restriction catches a tool used, among others, by journalists and researchers to preserve publicly available information.

Источник: Hacker News