The National Court ordered on Friday, March 22nd to block Telegram as a precautionary measure in response to a complaint from Mediaset, Antena 3, Movistar, and Egeda, who accuse the messaging system of hosting copyrighted content without permission.
The decision to block the Russian messaging service was adopted by Judge Pedraz after the messaging system’s administrators failed to respond to the judge’s requests.
On Saturday, March 23rd, the platform remained active in Spain, but expert sources assured that in the next few hours, no later than two days, Telegram would cease to be operational in Spain. For this, Spanish telecommunication companies had to comply with the judge’s order.
Update March 25: As Cadena Ser explains, the judge of the Audiencia Nacional who ordered the blocking of the app, Santiago Pedraz, has now decided to suspend his order pending an analysis from the police on the characteristics of Telegram as well as on the impact that this measure may have on users.
This way, Telegram has been spared from a blockade that seemed inevitable this very Friday, when the order was given. After a weekend full of accusations and petitions, the Russian app has been spared the blackout… for the time being.
“Today the more than 8.5 million users in Spain who use Telegram for our privacy can be congratulated. Judge Pedraz has recognized his mistake and admitted that it was an “excessive and not proportional” measure. A measure, by the way, unpublished in Europe, and that would not have prevented anything. Since Telegram was created to bypass censorship and any possible blocking. And so, today we must celebrate this small battle against the use of copyright as a censorship weapon.” – Cristian Gonzalez, Head of Content at Softonic
As explained in ElDiario, Telegram has around 8.5 million users in Spain, approximately 18% of the population, according to the Household Panel published by the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC).
Messages in the application are end-to-end encrypted, so only the sender and receiver have access to the content. For this reason, it is the second most used messaging application in the world, especially in environments where spying and persecution are feared.
Open groups and broadcast channels allow users to exchange messages and files of all kinds publicly. The messaging platform has been removed from app stores or taken down by court orders in the past for allowing the exchange of illegal content. A few years ago, it disappeared from the Apple App Store due to a case of child pornography and Brazil suspended the service for not cooperating in an investigation against neo-Nazi groups.
The use of this application by various illegal or extremist organizations is well known: for example, ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Moscow attack this Friday on their Telegram channel. That is why it is so curious that, in the end, the only thing that judges take seriously is copyright infringement.
