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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."
Can I still forward emails to Italy?
FP - I guess everyone else is deleting their Shared Folders :)
From the country that gave us the mafia.
I guess the fascists are back in power these days?
Perhaps someone can explain to this ignorant American exactly how the government can use publication in a newspaper as a punishment for a crime (whatever the crime may be). At least here in the US, we at least pretend to have freedom of the press.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
It's interesting that this would happen in Italy. From my understanding (I'm not an expert in this), Italy has had very relaxed laws about bootlegged music, especially live recordings. That's why so many concert CDs come from Italy.
Anyone care to comment on this or clear it up?
Cheers,
Vic
.. 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.
(Linked via the Drudge Report -- hopefully more articles like this will further add to the drumbeat of realization... by the public at large):
Single mom overwhelmed by recording industry suit
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
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...
And people complain that they are afraid of the viral nature of the GPL - this would really scare them!
The Italian parliament yesterday voted in favour of imposing jail sentences of up to three years on anyone caught uploading or downloading unauthorised copyright material to and from the Net.
People don't download pirated music, computers download pirated music. Everybody calm down, unless you're routing packets by hand, you're safe.
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.
Does that mean their government controls what is printed in the newspaper?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
from a country that chooses ,a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3034600.st m">its own version of Rupert Murdoch to be the supreme leader.
If they promise to confiscate my windows box and all my MS CD's
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
If the jail time and the fine won't deter the fileswappers, certainly the public humiliation in two national newspapers will!
...with a Prime Minister who makes his money from media companies. Those corrupt Italians! Imagine something like that happened in the US. If the President or Vice President stood to make money from invading Iraq, say, there'd be a hue and cry about it and they'd have no chance of getting away with it.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Finally!!!
Don't get me wrong, I think this is complete BS and wrong on soooooo many levels...
But it's nice to know that America isn't the biggest (or the only) a$$-hat when it comes to p2p. Up until now, we've looked draconian in our handling of such matters compared to other parts of the world.
This makes what the RIAA is doing look like a slap on the wrist. Hopefully they don't get any ideas.
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.
Google Cache has always operated in at least a slightly gray area legally, in that there's undoubtedly unauthorized copyrighted material available via the cache that authors wouldn't want there if they knew about it. Google obviously is on the up-and-up, and will remove content from cache when specifically requested to. However, with a minimum jail sentance of six months, anything questionable like this may be deemed to risky. Is it possible that Google cache (and anything similarly risky) may be disabled for the .IT section of the internet?
Now all we need to do is to find some areas where one of the officials who voted to pass this legislation violates this law themselves. Scrutinize everything the Italian government puts out to try and catch them posting material which is copyrighted. Time to make examples of them of how passing such a shitty law will come back to bite them in the ass.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Did you ever notice how almost any "silver" or manufactured bootleg CD comes from Italy? Their law (unless it's changed lately) is that as long as you pay the artist/publishing company something, it's legal to make any recording for sale.
This results in a lot of these bootlegging companies paying less than a cent per unit manufactured to the record companies for "compensation." This new law seems sort of extreme if they still allow this other behavior.
http://cassettefetish.com
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."
...needs someone to help them break this law, I am more than willing to assist.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
The fine isn't what deters me from speeding...
It's the insurance companies that do.
If I get caught speeding, sure, I have to pay a fine to the town / county. No biggie.
But then, I get "points" on my insurance. And while those points stay there, I have to pay a higher premium.
Frankly, getting jail time for P2P scares the crap out of me. I'm glad Im not in Italy.
I mean, paying the RIAA a few grand is bad, but getting tossed in the slammer would really suck. Besides the obvious suckiness, you'd probably lose your job, and then have to admit you're a fellon for your interviews.
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.
-Alex
are we bound to accept copyright laws from other countries? I know the US government tries to push their restrictions on less strict countries.
Does this mean that a US citizen could face extradition for copyright violation?
Oh yeah, I blame this squarely on the Italian PM, who I am pretty sure owns most of the media in the country.
P2P is a form of publishing. When you publish information, you really should play by the rules of the publishing industry.
You are correct in that the short blurb does not drawing a clean line on the difference between private communications and publishing. If Italy failed to draw this line then they have a flawed law.
It seems to me that the aim of such measures is to draw a distinction between private communications and publishing. Forwarding to an email to a friend is just communication. Forwarding an email to a mailing list or posting it online is a form of publishing.
calling P2P private communications to the world does not change the fact that it is a form of publishing.
This is the kind of lunatic laws you get when the recording industry lobbies government (hey, they got the cash!). Even in dear old Canada, where the courts protect our privacy through ISPs and uphold our right to freely copy media we own, the recording industry is lobbying government to change Canadian copyright law. If our government ratifies WIPO, as the industry is pushing them to do, we'll lose many of the media rights we enjoy (this will bring the DMCA into Canada). Please, visit our Digital Copyright Canada site, sign the Petition for Users' rights, and make digital freedom an election issue!
I think that world record industry should apapt instead of sue.
They must find a way to distribuite music easily and and cheaper. Music stores are getting obsolete, webshops like Amazon takes too long. How long does it take for downloading a whole CD?
Prices are too high. But downloads aren't fast enough. They must avoid people from downloading any kind of music by giving them reasons to do so.
Jailing your own customers aren't a good options. Nobody buys CDs in jail.
The solution is to lower price, I think that US$ 5/CD or US$ 0,25/track are good prices, low enough to avoid people for downloading music. In Brazil piracy is so evolved that you can buy a CD for US$ 2,00, and you can buy a CD on every corner. Many people prefer to low quality CDs because it's cheaper, easier and faster, there's always somebody selling pirated CDs.
That's the solution. Make downloading boring and time-consuming, so it's better to buy a CD (or tracks) then to download it from any P2P network.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
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
"it would be nice if Slashdot would at least pretend to be a news site every now and then instead of just trying to sell us ads by playing off of reactionary attitudes on this site."
Why? Your major and local media do the same thing on a daily basis. In that sense, Slashdot is as every bit a news organization as you pretend they're not.
Chuck
The article title is a little bit misleading, no? You can go to jail for transferring copyrighted files (I'm not saying this is cool), not for simply using P2P services.
Including information in a lawsuit is not a form of publishing. When you wish to expose wrong doing in the press, you can do so by writing your own copy with citations and references.
Since the web works by transferring content, and since in the EU all content is automatically granted copyright protection from the moment of inception: isn't the WWW now illegal in Italy?
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
The whole problem is that we've allowed corporations and other commercial entities to redefine what "illegally copy" means. I mean really, who was it that decided to give them this kind of Godlike power, without any associated responsibility or accountability??
Anyway, I think there's a way to fix it that would be simple and fair for everyone. We need to change the legal definition of what a copyright means. Simply put, a copyright should grant the creator of a work the sole ability to collect revenue based on any use of that work. That's it, that's what you get, and nothing more. You write a book, record a song, make a movie, and you're the only one allowed to make money from it.
If someone is doing something with your work but not cashing in, guess what? Tough beans. You don't get to pull out any bullshit about "lost profits", because all that does is make for more lawyers arguing what that means, and God knows we've got enough of those. You've been granted the right to be the only person in the country who can legally make money from any use of your work, and that's an immensely powerful right. Sorry, but you don't get to have that, AND make that money by sitting on your ass suing people.
Now likewise, if you ARE using someone's copyrighted work to make money, we're going to come down real hard on you. Money always leaves a trail. And the Justice Department will have more than enough bulldogs freed up from hunting fileswappers to chase you down. Not to mention that income has to be -reported-. Try avoiding that, and see how quick the IRS gets after you too. Changing the currently unbalanced copyright laws to be fair to all sides means there will be more serious enforcement.
Ok, I don't really know how great a solution this is and it was a quick explanation, but this being Slashdot I'm sure someone can add something to it.
(overheard outside a jail-cell)
Inmate 1: "So what are you in here for?"
Inmate 2: "I was the CEO of a large media conglomerate. I masterminded a scandal which cheated millions of people out of their retirement servings. So I've gotta serve three years here in the slammer. And you?"
Inmate 1: "My little brother used my computer to download Crossroads. He's always had a crush on Britney Spears. Of course it was my application of eMule and I had no way to prove it wasn't me. The judge was having a bad day and nailed me with three years.
Inmate 2: "Damn...."
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.
Italy's government is headed by its monopoly satellite media mogul, Silvio Berlusconi. Copyright infringement is henceforth a political crime. The WTO will shortly be synchronized with the Italian laws, then the US with the WTO, so the US will be offering these innovative government reforms soon enough.
--
make install -not war
Not when the vast majority of them are for pot,
Currently, just over 1/2 (54.7%-2002) in prison for all drug offenses, and declining from a high of 61.3% in 1994.
The BOP has lots of stats on this.
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.
While I haven't done the necessary research, it seems to me that in this age of harsh penalties for copyright violations, it should be possible to launch a very effective campaign against it by pointing out that the penalties are more harsh than many crimes of a greater magnitude.
For example,
"Thinking of copying your friend's CD? Think again. According to the policies of [insert pol's name], copying without permission is worse than [manslaugter | embezzlement | whatever fits].
Not long ago another law introduced a fixed 30 cents tax on *each* CD-R on the assumption it will be used to pirate music. All this tax money goes to SIAE, the italian RIAA
So if you're burning your downloaded MP3s to CDs you should be OK, right? After all, you did pay the RIAA for being able to do it.
Since this is Italy, I assume this law only really applies to downloading materials that come from companies that Berlusconi owns a controlling interest in.
Which, since this is Italy, is practically everything.
Speaking on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Italian P2P users, what are Italian jails like?
Are they sex torture rape factories like American prisons? Are they government profit centers like Mexican prisons (where you have to buy your own food)? If you download really big files and get the death penality, do they charge your family 50 cents like the Chinese do? Are they just 'work the zeks until they drop' slave-labor camps like the Soviet Gulags?
Come on, Italian politicians, you passed a law to put tens of thousands of your own young people in prison for activities that few civilized people consider to be a crime. Now that you have your 'law', what are you going to do with it?
So obviously the papers would be exempt.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Italy Approves Jail for P2P Users
At first glance I wondered if this headline meant that Italy approved a special, separate prison for P2P users. Which would be kinda cool in a way... the P2P jails would be the ones where prisoners are constantly trading single cigarettes and stolen pudding.
I've recently begun to wonder why patent and trademark infringement lawsuits are entirely handled in civil court, but copyright infringement has become a criminal matter. Why shouldn't copyright be handled strictly in civil court, just like patent and trademark?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Copyright infringement is illegal and generally bad. But P2P is neither illegal nor inherently bad. The headline equates them: that is bad.
But the punishment here (incarceration, inevitable loss of job and possibly male rape) hardly fits the crime. It will turn some geeks into "real" criminals - burglars, fraudsters and robbers - by the time they get out, you can guarantee that.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.