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."

Comments

Re:At least the trains will run on time.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

No, not at all. It's just that some people believe when you steal something, you should expect some jait time.

If you can't do the time...

Re:Enforce it.

[YrWrstNtmr]

Let all those guys out of prison and tell me nothing has changed. Contrary to PC belief, most of them are in jail for criminal activities they actually did.

Re:Publishing v. private communications

[aardvarkjoe]

It's commonly believed on slashdot that copying copyrighted material and giving it to your friend is legal. It's also commonly believed that this is called "fair use." Both of these are misconceptions (the former may sometimes be true; the latter is wrong.) "Fair use" applies to duplicating a copyrighted work for comment, criticism, education, etc. -- burning a copy of the latest Britney CD is not covered.

If you're going to comment on copyright issues, do yourself a favor and read Title 17, Sec. 107 -- link. (In fact, it would do the slashdot crowd good to read the whole thing -- it's really not that long, and they might not come off sounding so stupid most of the time.)

This isn't intended as a flame towards you; it's just that since we see thousands of posts on slashdot every single day about copyright issues, we ought to at least understand a bit about copyright law.