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Italy Approves Jail for P2P Users
funkdid writes "Italy has made transferring content via the Internet without the permission of the copyright holder a criminal offence.Those found guilty of the unauthorised distribution of copyright material now face a fine of between 154 and 1032 ($185-1240), a jail sentence of between six months and three years, the confiscation of their hardware and software, and the revelation of their misdeeds in Italy's two national newspapers, La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera."
I guess the fascists are back in power these days?
.. but this is insane by any standard. Only the most extreme economic offenses should be punishable by imprisonment. Fines and compensation can do for the rest.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
I think speeding is a lot worse than sharing files. whats the fine for speeding in italy? i bet its a lot less than $1000 and 6 months in prison. extreme penalties will only drive the shares underground it wont stop them.
sorry 'bout the mess...
How long, with computerized production bringing music and movie making power to the desktop like never before and laws like this popping up, will it be before we see free or even Open Source movies.
I can foresee a possible future with Creative Commons, the GPL, the Free Documentation License, and the BSD license influencing the licensing of droves of hobbyist movies and music. I'm talking much, much more than we see now. Maybe the music and movie companies see this coming. Maybe they want to kill p2p not only because their own work is distributed royalty-free across it, but also because with the software to make competitive products getting better and p2p being a great distribution method, they're afraid of losing market share to upstarts.
Think of how scared SCO and MS are of Linux.
Ever since Berlusconi is prime minister.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
The Prime Minister of Italy got his job in large part because he controls something like 90% of the media there.
I could imagine that along with his general right wing Agenda, Prime Minister Silvio Whats-his-name might want to protect the interests of media companies. Or rather, the media company, since he is the only one.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. -- Abraham Lincoln
/. after all), then I'd go looking for an intelligent, like-minded DA (or whatever the Italian equivalent is) and have him start arresting people left and right for the slightest violation, as long as it meets the letter of the law.
If this law is really so draconian as the discription implies (this is
I guarantee we'd here the angry screams all the way to N. America and it would be dropped pretty darn fast, I'll bet.
as stupid as this new "law" is, but for this one:
and the revelation of their misdeeds in Italy's two national newspapers, La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera.
they should be kicked out of the european union instantly. i mean, sorry, but this is a punishment from the middle age.
beer as in "free beer"
... if consumers were getting a fair shake in the first place. The music industry can sell me an overpriced album without showing me what is in it, but I don't get a satisfaction guaranteed return policy. Therefore, the industry has no economic incentive to strive to make better content.
Level the playing field before punishing consumers for being the only competitor this industry has.
"Derp de derp."
I'm worried about how the international community is going to react to this law; I could easily see the XXAA's performing "research studies" that show that this form of legislation is effective and desirable, and should be used elsewhere.
As I see it, one of the most effective ways to counter this is to use once again raise the technological bar of P2P technologies. A system where the user does not know or control what content is stored on their PC (a la Freenet) would eliminate the ability of the legal system to charge an individual for distribution. In order for this to occur, anonymous software systems need to be made more effective and easier to use for the average user.
I'm sure many people will suggest that I just want to make sure things are easy to steal. The honest answer is that I don't; the same technology used to ensure illicit communications are caught could just as easily be used against legal but undesirable communications. The increased availability of raw information has revolutionized our society (just look at the Abu Gharaib scandal; that could not have happened a decade ago), and any attempts to restrict that movement must be opposed or countered.
now companies will copyright information about their wrong doings.
and when people "publish" it in an expose, they get to go to jail.
watch...it'll happen.
Newspapers, TV, radio, film it isn't at all surprising that he thinks copyright infringment should be considered a criminal act rather than a civil one.
Oh, and he's being prosecuted for attempting to bribe a judge. He had a law passed which would give him immunity from prosecution while he was in office. It has since been overturned.
Did I forget to mention that he's the Prime Minister of Italy?
Deleted
Where do we draw lines between manslaughter and murder?
There are no perfectly clean lines in life. Trying to demand that we have perfectly clean laws before we can exist is absurd. To a large extent, everything depends on intent.
If I dropped a piano from a fifth floor window and if falls on a passerby, that is manslaughter. If I wait for the ex to walk by, aim and cut the cord...it is murder. The difference between the two has very little to do with either the shape of the piano or the laws of gravity. The difference is intent, and we need courts to decide on intent. Generally intent is clear. Pointing a gun at a person and pulling a trigger is generally a good sign of intent of murder (but it could just mean stupidity). Under cooking eggs benedict and causing a person to die from food poisoning is more indicative of manslaughter, but if the courts find out I purposefully cultured salmonella for the eggs...then I am a murderer.
Emailing copies of an ebook to friends (so they won't have to pay for the book), there is clear intent on doing the copyright holder wrong.
I think speeding is a lot worse than sharing files
This is because you don't see the big picture. Speeding just kills or injures a few people now and then. File sharing, however, prevents the very rich from continuing to become a lot richer, which is clearly a much more evil offense.
Well it sure does come off like a troll. How about you try "My 14 yr old didn't know that was illegal since all of her friends do it too, but since what you're asking for is only ALL OF THE MONEY I'LL MAKE IN THE NEXT 22 YEARS, will you take cash?" How the FUCK can they claim that a few pop songs have done damages to them of over HALF A FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS? This is beyond gross stupidity. Either pay us your next two months worth of salary or we'll take you to court for half a million, and good luck with the lawyer bills. As for your bad analogy, when's the last time YOU got a half a million dollar speeding ticket? You never have? Do you suppose that's because the punishment is supposed to fit the crime?
do not read this line twice.
This country is used to monumentally bad laws.
I am not talking just abour principle: it's the logic that just fails victim to ignorance, superficiality, and sloppiness. It gets worse if you add Catholic and Marxist ideological fixations.
Plus, we have about 120,000 laws on the books - Germany has about 5,000. The result is a quagmire, with lots of laws not being enforced until someone in the judiciary, in some police force, or an enterprising lawyer for some slighted private interest wakes up one morning in the rigth mood.
According to the new decree, if a piece of freely distributable material, dl'ed from any server anywhere, is copyrighted but not accompanied by an authorization to download, you are in techical violation.
So, a copyrighted and GPL'ed piece of software is OK, but not if the GPL is not included.
On the other hand, for a violation to arise, two other confusingly described conditions are needed:
act must be carried out:
* for "non-personal use" of the material
* to obtain profit (intent, not result)
So, technically,
-if you dl a piece of GPL'ed software without the GPL, or a freely distributable proprietary SW without a notice allowing you to do so, AND you do so because you need it for work, it may be a violation
- if you get a GPL-less copy of nmap with the intent to crack something, but not to gain from it, it's legal.
It usually takes several years before the courts and the various ministries involved unravel the mess.
Don't be putting down the mafia like that. This is much worse.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein