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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?
. .
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.
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
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
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!
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?
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.
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.
And both have a leader you can't spell right as a foreigner and who is batshit insane. Essentially, Italy is Iran without oil but more corruption.
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.
You overestimate the smarts of the Italians and underestimate the amount of power Don Silvio wields over the media. Imagine Fox News (and affiliates) with a market share of about 95%. And now try to wrest the power from the Reps.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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"
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.
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)
One could argue that if I remove the unskipable ads in front of the movie I reduce their value to the seller. That's actually a bit of a problem, since the price of the product includes the fact that whoever bought that ad paid money for it and hence (allegedly) reduced the price for the consumer. Ok. But why can't I buy it, at "premium price" without ads? It's like watching a movie on free TV vs. watching it on pay TV. One is interrupted by ads, one isn't.
That it's not offered that way is the problem.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.