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Italy Prepares '"One Strike" Anti-Piracy Law
angry tapir writes "The Italian government is preparing an anti-piracy law that could ban Internet users from access after one alleged copyright infringement, a lawyer and an analyst warned. ISPs would be required to use filters against services that infringe copyright, trademark or patents under terms of the draft law. The proposed changes to Italy's e-commerce directive were drafted in July by members of parliament belonging to the Il Popolo della Libertà (PdL) party of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi."
What will this mean for eztv.it?
What could we expect from a government endorsed by the heirs of Mussolini's Fascist Party?
So anything that gets by this amazing filter isnt considered piracy? Sweet.
The Italian government is acting as the protector of corporate profits. What a white knight they are! Can there be a "One Strike" bad politician law so that after their first major fuck-up they get to go to federal PMIA prison for a minimum of 1 year? What's good for the goose is good for the gander!
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Now I know many countries have proposed or implemented a 3 strike law (much like my own - NZ) mostly to cosy up to the US.
How cosy does Italy want to be?
. .
News at 11
But that's not the point of this bill.
It's the industry proposing something just short of decapitation, versus the current situation that non-profit file sharing is explicitly legal.
Somewhere in the middle is "compromise" where everyone loses except the rent-seeking gatekeepers of culture.
"See, it wasn't as bad as what we wanted"
--
BMO
I wonder what kind of offense it takes for the Italian govt to take down your water or electric service. Pasta is taking over their brains it seems.
is that two noodles pm or two noodles am?
rewriting history since 2109
I hope you are thoroughly modded up, good sir.
Whenever there's a double standard, it's always the rich that are on the better end. Why is it that you never see double standards benefit the un-rich? At the very best, the less fortunate can hope for temporary equality, but never an advantage.
seeing how board trademarks and patent are just cut off all of Italy to save time.
This would be the proverbial sh*t hitting the fan, but it's a magic fan that doesn't throw the stuff back on the rich, political or famous figures, only the common folk. The first-mentioned group will just have all charges dropped behind the scenes automatically, with no mention to the public at all, while the common folk will lose Internet access even for minor stuff.
It's a bit hard to see how they filter out patent infringements, but doing so probably violates someones patent!
A three-strike law should be sufficient for movies and video games. A one-strike law is for something else... trade secrets perhaps. They say the law is also on a "fast track".
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
!list
...because the major record labels and movie studies have NEVER engaged in copyright infringement... ever.
I'm SURE that this law would allow for the instantaneous shutdown of, say, the Recording Industry Association site if they are accused of copyright infringement.
Doesn't Berlusconi own an italian media empire? Could this be a way to further solidify that power?
What?
If this passes, every single MP that votes for this will suddenly find hundreds of copyright complaints against them...
It's ironic that the very openness of Internet that made it so popular itself is being challenged. This type of Draconian law has the potential to snowball into a much bigger piece of sh*t where content provider and producers can twist the law to gain all sort of mileage. It also doesn't behoove well for the sophisticated search engines. Heck..providing anything other than a link to the actual content might become illegal altogether. The case of Belgian newspapers going after Google news is not going to be one of case.
I hope this passes, so I can pull up a comfy chair with some popcorn and watch the fallout.
So Youtube will be blocked in Italy?
Frankly this is just dumb. The internet is full of all kinds of copyright infringement. Even the giant corporations like AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc are all benefiting from the free exchange, linking, and displaying of other people's media/content without any contract.
Just go to huffingtonpost and see how many articles they link to, that they didnt write. Go to Youtube, and view all of the videos that violate copyright,
The entire internet is based on sharing content.
They have this technology called a dial-up BBS the Italians might be interested in. I see a market for the development of high-speed dial-up modems and a resurrection for land-line telephones.
I'm predicting a massive surge in encrypted traffic to/from italy.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Il Duce reborn.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
This is the same government that is trying to send Italian geologists to prison because they can't predict earthquakes when, in fact, NO geologist on the planet can reliably predict when an earthquake will occur, even if they were given a latitude of several years, much less a particular day.
Now, they want to transform their government into a cabal, in which corporations make the rules to minimize their own liability and maximize the liability of their customers and of their profits.
These actions can only be explained by assuming that the Italian politicians are totally corrupt, which is a pretty good assumption there and here in America. Can we be far behind?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Cisco violated the GPL with Linksys.
Lets see Italy ban Cisco from using the internet.
What, the law only applies to individuals violating for personal use, its ok for companies to violating copyright for financial reasons. I get it now,
MAFIAA is strong in Italy
This has very little to do with fighting piracy, that is just the excuse. Berlusconi has managed to retain power for two reasons: firstly, because he has been able to pass laws effectively protecting him from the Italian legal system; and secondly because between his personal media empire, and influence over the Italian state media, he has substantial capabilites to affect what information the Italian populace has access to. Note also that this reach extends overseas, as the Italian government provides significant financial support to many italian-expatriate news organizations in other countries (which it can then threaten to withdraw). While it is true he does not fully control all the news sources in Italy, he has narrowed the field down enough that his constituency can effectively be dissuaded from paying attention to them much the way Fox News in the U.S.A. employs charges of bias and spin to keep their viewers from thinking about, or exposing themselves to, other points of view.
A free and open internet is a threat to his powerbase in that it allows stories about scandals and corruption to be written and published by people who are not dependant on him for their jobs or funding. If this passes, it may well be taken advantage of by the copyright industry, but the main application will be shutting down, filtering out and otherwise censoring news reports the government isn't happy with. Italian bloggers who criticise Berlusconi will be cut off from the internet, sites that provide unfriendly italian-language coverage based in other countries will be filtered out - they'll never fully stop the flow of information, but if they can slow it down enough it will be too little to erode the ignorance in certain segments of the voting population on which their power rests.
Italy uses a 24 hour clock so I'd say AM
I wholeheartedly support this "One Strike" law. As the first barrage in the torrent (heh!) of complaints, let me fire this one off:
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-steals-code-violates-linkware-license/
I demand 100% complete disconnection of the MPAA, including subsidaries, partent companies, any company where any member of the MPAA (or subsidaries, parent companies, etc) is a shareholder in whole or in part, from ALL Italian users. They cannot connect to ANY Italian IP address, on pain of defying a court order (or whatever the punishment is for evading the 'one strike' law).
Any "evidence" gathered against Italian internet users is null and void because in order to gather that evidence they had broken the "one strike" rule in Italy. And, of course, the MPAA would never download something they didn't actually own the rights to, therefore committing copyright infringement themselves, right? Never? ...
Oh wait, the laws don't apply to those who make them? The MPAA is allowed to commit the worst kind of copyright infringement -- claiming you created something you didn't, and then using it for commercial purposes and making a bunch of money with it -- and that doesn't count as a strike? Because they are immune to their own law?
Oh damn.
Well, it was a nice thought anyway.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
I once used three strikes too, but one is a much better heuristic. I estimate that it is sufficient in around 80% (with probability 99%) to 90% (with probability 30%) of all cases.
An example would be me entering an IRC channel and asserting my dominance. If the subjects do not submit and defer to me on that first pitch, odds are they will not be joining my harem of yes-men according to the above likelihoods, and termination will commence according to the GIFT and DOS principles.
The Italians were the first to get it right, and have known since the beginning of time, how to get paid for a transaction, without actually having to do physical labor. Insert idea into society, collect, rinse, repeat.
This will fail spectacularly. I anticipate Italy being completely off the internet in a few weeks once this goes into effect.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
> required to use filters against services that infringe copyright, trademark or patents under terms of the draft law
Oh well, kernel.org is already down, so that at least takes care of people trying to illegally distribute the patent encumbered linux. They just need to put a filter in to stop microsoft.com, apple.com, samsung.com and google.com.
this will be completely ignored by the users, the ISPs and the police. They're probably going to use it to shut down a few political blogs and then it'll go into the giant heap of unenforced laws.
Whaddya gonna do?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I think it's plausible that the MPAA/RIAA or their local cutouts simply gave some of Berlusconi's cronies some big brown envelopes to introduce and fast-track this legislation. Given what we've seen of Mr Bunga Bunga in the past, nothing is surprising anymore.
There's no keeping a good old corrupt rent-seeker down, is there?
I support this comment and/or service.
This is obviously a job for Benito. Why even wait for the first strike? Are the Italians getting soft? Do it Cheney Style; preemptively destroy them, and their children too. If they happen to be children - or teenagers - educate them: "Fascist education is moral, physical, social, and military: it aims to create a complete and harmoniously developed human, a fascist one according to our views" -Benny
Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made. - Otto von Bismarck
Of course there's an Italian chapter of the Pirate Party. Perhaps they can, motivated by the success in Berlin, start to oppose these measures in parliament and start promoting true digital age copyright reform.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Of course the Prime Minister will exclude p0rn from the bill.
ZERO STRIKES!
Get EVERY consumer BEFORE they Violate any Copyrights!
DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN!
who hold international tourist on murder charges based on a "gut feeling" while siting satanic cults as a default? ... really I get Italy and Iran mixed up all the fucking time cause they are both completely lacking in common sense and the slightest bit of reason.
The Il Popolo della Libertà (PdL) party of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Is dust in the next election guaranteed if this goes through.
accusations are almost never true.
So exactly which services *automatically* infringe copyright? For example, I use peer to peer networks (P2P) to download linux distributions. Everything within the distribution is Free Software covered under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and by its very nature is allowed to be redistributed. I bring this particular technology up because there are many (lawyers, judges, groups) who decry its use as "all bad" when it isn't. Its like saying all cars are bad because some people drink, then drive, and then kill other people. Any attempt to 'convict by association' is clearly using the idea that there exists someone within a set who is doing something illegal, so lets convict everyone within that set. Mathematically, logically, and legally this is non sequitur. Existential quantifiers are not the same as universal quantifiers. You might think Italians might know Latin, especially Italian Lawyers. Perhaps not though. Machiavelli showed how politicians operate, and likewise the MPAA/RIAA and their local cohorts. Draconian laws are their stock in trade. There are no services that infringe.
Earlier I was reading about how it appears a few film torrents originated
from the SFI (Swedish Film Institute) - search BoingBoing.net for story.
I don't know if Sweden has a one (or three) strikes law, but what happens
if it happens to the Italian equivalent? Would they get cut off?
This brings a whole new meaning to the term "wardriving." It could literally mean taking people's Internet connections down from the comfort of your car...
Until it is possible to do everything online that you can do offline, piracy should be fully legal. I listen mostly international music that cannot be bought legally in europe as there is no rights for distribution or single shop that sells the music I listen so how come it can be illegal to download if you can't buy original ? Another thing is that where I live the native language is catalan language ( between 7 and 10 millions of people, 8th largest language inside europe ) but doesn't exist even single DVD that has catalan language so why should I pay a single euro for DVD that doesn't even bother to put language that I use ? Most local artits puts their CD:s for free to download and you pay because you want and ofcourse when you go to concert ( pay for work and not so much for promotion material ). In europe we say that there are no borders, but for me is illegal to watch TV from my country when I live inside another european country. Before countries creates laws maybe they should first garantee that rights of users are fully respected and make a way that there would be legal way to offer services to people. If everything is illegal and impossible, it is impossible to create services that anyone would pay.
Unlikely. Nobody works at 11am in Italy. Either they're not in yet or at lunch break.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's the most important economic problem the country has right now.
People illegally downloading Berlusconi's songs.
In other news: Mediaset* looses a further 6.98% on the Milan Stock Market making it a -54,93% steady drop in the last 12 months
http://it.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=MS.MI#symbol=ms.mi;range=1y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=;
*a Silvio Berlusconi media company
Won't fly. Considering how often they go on a strike, what will you do with them next week?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Condidering the prime minister's legal difficulties and court history, it might make more sense to introduce a one-strike tax fraud law.
Seriously though - one strike with or without judicial review is a seriously bad idea, but any system of punishment WITHOUT decisions by a judge after due process and not followed by judicial review is a slippery slope leading to abolition of democracy and freedom
This allows italys facist dictator (he is) to block any pesky revolutions or some such that might pop up.
They are on trial for stating that it was SAFE despite numerious warnings. The claim is that because people where told it was safe, they returned to their houses to sleep inside and died. Those that didn't listen to the scientists saying it was safe stayed outside for the night and were safe.
The scientist in question could have said, "We don't know, there are a lot of shocks, they might be the lead in fora big one, they might not". Then people would have chosen the safe options and slept outside and not have died.
The real case is in finding out WHY the lead scientist was so willing to say it was SAFE, which is MAKING A PREDICTION, when you claim no prediction can be made.
This case is NOT about scientist being unable to make a prediction, the case is why they made a prediction they now claim they couldn't make.
And if you look more into the case, the scientists might have had other motives then the welfare of the people when they made the claim it was SAFE.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And the rest is government run and he's the head of the government. What else would they say?
Conflict of interest anyone?
....unless you pay certain people off beforehand, right Silvio?
Yes, he has, and I'll tell you why: the copyright breech is a civil tort based on the idea that the copyright owner has lost money. NOTHING about how the person breeching copyright has gained, just what the owner lost.
In the case where no deal can be made, there is no loss, since there was no possibility of sale.
In other realms this situation would be an abuse of Monopoly and therefore an anti-trust suit.
And a Thai geologist was threatened with Jail because he warned of the earthquake that caused a Tsunami.
I'm Italian and I'm comfortably saying that you know NOTHING about italian culture. Women in Italy are considered in THE SAME way of the rest of Europe. No more, no less. I don't know why you feel the need to shoot all these BS, you clearly don't understand ANYTHING about Italy. And using a crazy person as a proof for what you're saying is just idiotic. Mad people are all over the world.
"Women in Italy are treated at least as badly as those in the most conservative muslim countries". Ahahahah. This guy must be retarted. Italy treats women a lot better than american treats black people. This says a lot.
A large percentage of Italians want to be like him. They want fast cars, plenty of hookers, a large bank account, a football team and enough connections to drown any sense of democracy in Tiber.
i though tor traffic gets blocked
Why do every new law regulating copyright allow attacking your internet connection?
If I start copying CD's or DVD's, I can loose my email access?
I know most of their searches happen online and on p2p networks, but the laws don't differentiate and the reactions are simply illogical.
Again, ignorance is far easier to achieve than real information. In this specific case, the ban you're talking about originates from an amendment, not contained in the original text. Curious thing, that amendment was proposed (and, unfortunately, approved) by Gianpiero d'Alia, member of the left party Italia dei Valori. So watch your tongue next time, Italy isn't just Berlusconi, there are hundreds of other politicians who are leading Italy into a black abyss. As long as they see Internet as a danger instead of a resource, this kind of thing will be likely to happen again.
This is the amendment I was talking about
http://www.senato.it/japp/bgt/showdoc/frame.jsp?tipodoc=Emend&leg=16&id=392701&idoggetto=413875
uhm, what? i'm italian and that's wrong, sorry.
It says "alleged" after all. What if someone makes a claim against a stock photo thrown up on a government or corporate website?
What difference does it make, anyway, whether it's three strikes or one strike, if a "strike" is just an unproven allegation?
Let them do this. Streaming of football matches may get blocked to a certain amount and people will start caring about all this "freedom" thing. You know, here the majority of people just don't give a fuck, but don't touch their weekly football match or something like this. Here the system is just fucked up, I cannot name a single politician who actually cares about Italy: it's only a game of having a seat, privileges and an income. Berlusconi is the best (worst) example fo this.
The fact is that from the birth of the Italian Republic there has been a slow process of taking rights away so people are kind of used to being fucked in the ass. Time is coming to start a social revolution but we have to hit the bottom for people to notice the state of things.
P.S.: Ever wondered what's the meaning of "Popolo delle Libertà" (Berlusconi's party)? Literally translated that would be "people of freedom".
"I'm selling these fine leather jackets"
With enough litigation, we can make the Internet go away, and the world will be a better place for it.
Change is scary, and anything that might empower the unwashed masses is outright evil.
I'm sure that these will be the first to be quickly brought down on one strike. Libraries, universities, book stores... basically every public place that provides "free WiFi" will be cut off.
I just don't see that working well at all.
Something witty.
I dont think this is a time for Italy to be rash and go out on a limb and do something like this. This will only create more infrastructure/and service costs for their government, also it will take people off the net and so money away from companies who provide internet related services. Can italy really afford another revenue drop?
Gee, wouldn't it be terrible if someone were to start hacking into bureaucrat's computers, download copyrighted material, which resulted in those same bureaucrats getting kicked off the internet?
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
So you take a legitimate subscriber give him the boot. Stage 1) Person looking for alternate isp Stage 2) If unsuccessful > very pissed off person that would do anything to get back into the 21st century Stage 3) Person find Bob, Bob is computer literate and wants to make some money. Stage 4) ISP wondering why they lost 50% of their subscribers and yet the load on their hardware had risen by 200% People try to go legit but can you really control the internet content you get 100% of the time? ex 1)Neighbor kid reads up on how to crack wireless networks > kid finds some Hollywood copyright porn > Neighbors get the boot > Wife kills husband > Wife Sentenced 50 years to life ex 2)A new virus is developed especially for the Italians > Virus downloads at least 3 Hollywood copyright porn titles and keeps it in a hidden directory > Virus spreads very slowly but progressively picking up speed > By 2020 half of Italy's women jailed for murder > Due to lack of females men move out of country > Italy bankrupt
What a wonderful crime-free world we live in where we can be blissfully disconcerned with hardened crimes and finally crack down on lesser offenses like copyright infringement.
Yep, sounds exactly like "Il Popolo della Libertà" (The People of Freedom)
This law can be broken by issuing a mere 60 million some computer generated accusations.
criticizing the leader of another country. You fucking losers would vote in another Bush if you could.
a qwhile back i heard that italy or greeze or something was a test, a test to see if corperations could run an entire country. i dismissed this as foil hat wearing alex jones listening hoopla. well, maybe they were right....