In a massive effort to try and eliminate online piracy, the Spanish government has just passed strict laws stating that owners of websites that link to or distribute copyrighted material will face a prison term of up to six years.

It’s set to come into play at the beginning of 2014, following on from news that Spain has been one of the world’s worst culprits in terms of the quantity of digital piracy.

Funnily enough though, the hard-line approach will only impact on sites that profit through their business, and similarly peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms and search engines are exempt from the rules and won’t face legal action. Also, users who access the sites won’t be charged.

Do you think it will work?