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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?
I guess the fascists are back in power these days?
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.
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.
...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.
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.
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."
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.
All of the Italian media is under direct government control, mostly because it is controlled by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who owns all the media. Criticism of the government, and criticism of Berlusconi in particular, by the media, is not tolerated.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
-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!
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
How, exactly does one "follow the songs" once they're downloaded? The only thing that comes to mind is that the RIAA must be offering the files for download. Then, when little Cassandra downloads the song, the RIAA has her IP, and can browse what she has on offer.
IANAL, but isn't that a form of entrapment? And isn't that
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
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.
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.
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
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
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