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.

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.

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.

$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?

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