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Cultural Heritage Minister Rocco Buttiglione has praised the positive effects brought about by the anti-piracy law, which has led to a 30pct decrease in online piracy and counterfeiting offences. "If anything," Mr Buttiglione noted, "it's now a matter of enforcing existing norms better.
The music industry warned today that a new Italian law passed on Wednesday threatens music anti-piracy activity in Italy. It called on the Italian Senate to reject the law when it comes up for final approval next week. The new bill of law, known as the Ex-Cirielli Law, could end three quarters of all pending criminal anti-piracy trials before they have the chance to be taken to court. IFPI, representing the music recording industry worldwide, warns that the bill is inconsistent with international rules on enforcement of intellectual property and will put Italy out of line with other developed countries. Italy has one of the highest rates of piracy in Europe, at 25% of the total music market. The bill, approved by the Italian Lower Chamber, will shorten the period after which criminal cases pending trial are automatically dismissed. The change, from seven and a half to six years, will affect the majority of all pending criminal cases brought by the music industry which can take up to nine years to go to trial. Of 471 cases pending in 2004, 382 will be dismissed and similar figures are expected for 2005. IFPI Chairman and CEO John Kennedy said: "The Ex-Cirielli law deals a huge blow to the Italian music industry and to all IP industries in the country. This law totally undermines our ability to fight piracy in a nation with one of the highest rates of piracy in the developed world.
P2P Italian server administrator condemned for copyright infringementAs a result of the modification of the copyright law in Italy through Urbani Law, an administrator of an OpenNap server, « Soniknap5 » was condemned for illegal sharing of music files. The Italian Urbani law modified in March 2005, stipulates administrative penalties for those downloading copyrighted files from the Internet but penal sanctions for those sharing on the Internet with other users copyrighted files. According to the law, the condemned persons may pay penal fines as an alternative to imprisonment. As an alternative to two months and ten days of prison, the Italian administrator of OpenNap was fined to the payment of 3660 Euros for having shared music files to about 2500 users. This condemnation came as a result of a large international operation involving several Italian server administrators and users of P2P.
After a Court ruled that downloading films, music or software is not criminal if done for no profit, the Italian Vice Prime Minister said that the government will no longer turn a blind eye and declared that there will be a crackdown on sites hosted in the country.Overturning earlier convictions for illegal duplication against two students who set up a peer-to-peer network in 1994, January 2007 saw the top criminal court in Rome state that downloading films, music or software from the internet is not a crime if done for no profit. In the latest development, the Italian Vice Prime Minister Francesco Rutelli said that the government will no longer turn a blind eye to file-sharing and it will be taking significant steps to deal with the issue, including treating it as a criminal offense in the future.Rutelli declared “The practice of file-sharing is an abuse of intellectual property laws and of copyright protection that has been ignored because it is difficult to enforce. The freedom of Italian citizens will not be limited, but this illegal activity must be halted.”
