Italy Implements EU Copyright Directive

Rozzo writes "On 29 April 2003 in Italy will be effective a new law modeled from DMCA, called EUCD, under European Community directives, which seems a very bad thing :-( Italy will tax also every music or video recording support (cdr, dvdr, videotapes...) often doubling it's actual street price. it's a tribute of 0.33$ for each hour of music recordable on a cdr, 1$ every 4.7Gb on recordable dvd... TV, radios and medias quite didn't mention this new law to the public ... fearing a mass disapproval as happened in Finland. Read more about it (in English) here. You can check the status of the EUCD threatening law. Starting 29 April 2003 that new law and tributes will be applied, and the masses will know about it and (perhaps...;-) react. Here's an Open Letter to the Italian 'culture commission'."

Comments

yay

[fredrikj]

Italy will tax also every music or video recording support (cdr, dvdr, videotapes...) often doubling it's actual street price. it's a tribute of 0.33$ for each hour of music recordable on a cdr, 1$ every 4.7Gb on recordable dvd...

And despite consumers having paid extra money for the stuff, "unauthorized" copying will be as illegal as ever, in fact yet easier to pursue thanks to the EUCD, and made impossible in many cases due to technology restrictions. Sigh.

Re:yay

[Chasing Amy]

Exactly. You know, I wouldn't mind paying an extra tax on recordable music and video media, if that tax entitled me to make and use noncommercial copies of RIAA and MPAA member content. But it doesn't, so...WTF? What a rip-off. The consumer gets cornholed yet again...

It's not so scary as it seems...

[Przepla]

The directive
itself has in fact many exceptions:

(33) The exclusive right of reproduction should be subject to an exception to allow certain acts of temporary reproduction, which are transient or incidental reproductions, forming an integral and essential part of a technological process and carried out for the sole purpose of enabling either efficient transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary, or a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made.
(34) Member States should be given the option of providing for certain exceptions or limitations for cases such as educational and scientific purposes, for the benefit of public institutions such as libraries and archives, for purposes of news reporting, for quotations, for use by people with disabilities, for public security uses and for uses in administrative and judicial proceedings.
(38) Member States should be allowed to provide for an exception or limitation to the reproduction right for certain types of reproduction of audio, visual and audio-visual material for private use , accompanied by fair compensation [...]

(40) Member States may provide for an exception or limitation for the benefit of certain non-profit making establishments, such as publicly accessible libraries and equivalent institutions, as well as archives.

Article 2.
2. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the reproduction right provided for in Article 2 in the following cases:
(a) in respect of reproductions on paper or any similar medium, effected by the use of any kind of photographic technique or by some other process having similar effects, with the exception of sheet music, provided that the rightholders receive fair compensation;
(b) in respect of reproductions on any medium made by a natural person for private use and for ends that are neither directly nor indirectly commercial, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation which takes account of the application or non-application of technological measures referred to in Article 6 to the work or subject-matter concerned;
[...]
(n) use by communication or making available, for the purpose of research or private study, to individual members of the public by dedicated terminals on the premises of establishments referred to in paragraph 2(c) of works and other subject-matter not subject to purchase or licensing terms which are contained in their collections;

Of course, as always, when EU directive is being concerned -- real law is actually an implementation of it by national legislatures. If such implementation will be good or bad is another matter.

We should support them

[Anonymous Coward]

If the EU is so eager to follow the laws of the US despite all the obvious flaws, then the US should give them some starter tips as a gesture of goodwill. Someone send them a fat guy to sue the fast food companies.

The Obvious Question

[Mister Proper]

TV, radios and medias quite didn't mention this new law to the public ... fearing a mass disapproval as happened in Finland.

Are we talking about all TV, radio and other media, or only those of Berlusconi?

Re:From the same country that imprisoned Galileo .

[Anonymous Coward]

So what does that say about the US then?

What, 99, or 100%?

[twilight30]

I'm afraid you miss the point.
Berlusconi owns the three major private networks here. As Prime Minister, he also controls the three public national networks.

While this might seem like a loss of consumer rights, in actual fact things are a bit more nuanced than that. Italy has since 1992 attempted to bring its policies more in line with those of other EU nations, basically because those other countries have for several decades looked askance at its high debt, rampant corruption, and woefully inefficient bureaucracy.

This is not to say that I like the idea, I don't. But the fact remains that Italy does these things not to gouge the customer so much as to slowly make the country a bit less wasteful and less beyond the rule of law. It's tortuously snail-like, mostly window-dressing, and frustrating, but you have to start somewhere. Nevertheless, the fact that it's Berlusconi, world-class fraud, behind this latest move, does not make it any less necessary.

Moreover, 'mass disapproval' is massively overstating things (forgive the pun). Highspeed Internet in my area is practically non-existent. The nearest library is over fifteen kilometres from here. Unlike most other parts of Europe, the South of Italy is patchy as to consumerist development. On the other hand, where I am, you can get first-run movies on DVD, usually within a day of official release. Pirated, of course, but no less quality. Everybody does it. I've only met one person in the last year who actually bought a CD at a store (not including me, that is, and that was on a trip to Milan), everything else music-wise is pirated. Hell, I was offered Visual Studio Enterprise (version 6, but still) for *5 Euro* not too long ago. At Christmas I was offered a copy of Oracle.

This price increase will crimp budgets. Marginally. It will not stop piracy. At all.

Re:What, 99, or 100%?

[ianezz]

What really scares me is the bottomline message (from this and other recent measures): people obeying the law always end in paying also for people not obeying the law. In other words: if you obey the law, you are a (paying) moron.

Morals aside, someone please tell me a reason why one should choose to obey the law at all with such premises. People are lawful mainly because they know it's a good way to protect their long-term interests (economical, health and peace). Take away this and people should be lawful just because... they fear the police?

Because 'acca` gnisuno e` fesso (here, nobody is a moron).

Re:What, 99, or 100%?

[twilight30]

Someone once suggested that la Mafia, la Camorra e la 'Ndrangheta were reasonable responses in a place where the law was not seen to work -- in other words, when civil society does not exist, and the rule of law weak, 'employing' private 'law enforcement' in order to ensure you got results was a natural response (unfortunately, I can't locate the specific person who said this).

Despite the pessimism -- which is understandable, I share it -- isn't it true that some progress has been made over the last few years?

Your suggestion of an amoral law-abiding social norm actually does exist already -- I've seen first-hand in Japan, and would guess it's probably also present in Singapore. I won't say it's perfect, or that I agree with every aspect (chewing gum's a crime?) in either place, but the norm/more exists -- and it works, for the most part.

Re:What, 99, or 100%?

[ianezz]

Your suggestion of an amoral law-abiding social norm actually does exist already

Perhaphs you misunderstood me, or I'm misunderstanding you: mine is not a suggestion, but I was stating a fact: people choose to obey law because it serves best their long-term interests, and not because they fear the police.

If in order to punish those who were not obeying the law, also the ones obeying the law are punished... well, it's like saying "you fool!" to those who obeyed the law in the first place, and this is the thing I can't tolerate in the first place.

Re:What, 99, or 100%?

[twilight30]

it's like saying "you fool!" to those who obeyed the law in the first place, and this is the thing I can't tolerate in the first place

Not trying to be cheeky, but how do you (I/we/la società italiana) change it? Vote for La Lega, or l'Ulivo? Try to get the bureaucracy to change? I'm not trying to trivialise what you say, but you're pointing to civil society questions, and these are by definition not so easily resolved.

The trouble is, people don't have a real incentive to change, at least not quickly or overnight. If all the laws were changed at a stroke, doing so would not address the problem of enforcement.

As much as I can't stand Berlusconi, and think he's a crook, I don't have a pat answer to resolving things. Although in thinking about it, one thing that would help would be for the government to stop issuing retroactive amnesties for violators: penalising the law-abiding is, I agree, a shameful thing, and it's been ongoing for far too long in Italy.

cd-r's hold how many hours?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can fit 8 hours of decent quality mp3s on them. more in ogg. recordable dvds would need to be taxed about 20 euros each for that...

Re:cd-r's hold how many hours?

[evalhalla]

There are different taxes for media "devoted to music" and "that can be used for music", only the firsts are taxed on a time basis, while the others are taxed based on size.

The silly consequence of this is that we have music CD-R and data CD-R, identical in everything except price.

Re:cd-r's hold how many hours?

[Rozzo]

I know that taxing some 0,35$ for each hour of music recordable is a nonsense (because is not considering any possible compression adopted or just the quality of the sound).. yet it is the way they wrote this law. The purpose (in Italy it is an usual practice) is to be explicitly "unclear, non-specific, obscure, obfuscated".. so the law will be ready to be later bended to benefit major corporations, or to be a sharp tool to shave friends and cut-throat enemies... In italy (sadly) laws are usually very "hard" on punishments, yet usually systematically not applied... until someone "with power" (politicians, economic lobbies...) need to damage someone else. This is the core of a weak democracy. I'm sorry to admit it. 'cause I live it as citizen. Bending and creating "ad hoc"-new-laws to save "friends" is actually the national sport... ;-) furthermore.. the italian interpretation of the european directive is much more restrictive than what lined-up in the same directive. What upsets me is : 1) people in the streets still is unaware of what is happening 'cause of systematic disinformation. 2) the new tribute is a sort af anti-piracy law which will increase profits of pirates and labels. People using cd roms for legal purposes will pay for the crimes of someone else. (I work with graphics, and "waste" many cdr everyday for backup and to send my work to the print-labs, for example). it is my datas, created by me, for my own use. Imagine also people videotaping their cat's birthday. they will have to pay a tribute for someone else who will find now even more convenient to pirate cdroms and dvd which will increase as usual their price, once the market will no more be "anchored" to honest prices by piracy. Silvio Berlusconi (more info about him here) has been elected as italian prime minister after an ad-campaign hammering everywhere those very same words "less taxes for everybody". Now after his election his answer is "everybody pays for (piracy) crimes committed by someone else"... that's the same as saying "give a month of jail to everybody, so statistically justice will be done!". New antipiracy laws will let prices raise and piracy will be more convenient to pirates, while honest use of mass memories will be taxed and paid by honest people. what a strange country we live in ;-) Here is the text of this new law ( in italian, sorry). Here is a website with interesting parts of it commented (italian again, sorry). Other comments on the new law, in italian .

Re:From the same country that imprisoned Galileo .

[GnarlyNome]

Although it is bad at least in this country we can dump the bad actors every four years of course if you think in terms of the great unwashed masses then you are screwed.

$16 per cdr?

[Alsee]

0.33$ for each hour of music recordable on a cdr

If I record my music at 32 kilobits per second that works out what, $16 per cdr?

-