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Italian parliament to legalize music sharing?

updated 04:00 pm EST, Fri February 1, 2008

Italian parliament and P2P

The Italian parliament may be on the verge of legalizing peer-to-peer music sharing, local paper La Repubblica reports. Already approved by both houses of the legislature, a new law allows open sharing of any images and music on the Internet, so long as the material is degraded and used solely in non-profit scientific or educational contexts. The problem, says Italian lawyer Andrea Monti, is that "degraded" has specific connotations which could include any form of MP3, given that the format is by definition affected by compression, even if listeners cannot tell.

Under the wording of the law, no copyright licensing is needed, nor do people have to obtain any permissions, Monti claims. As a result peer-to-peer sharing could run unchecked in Italy, because there may be virtually no way to determine the circumstances under which a track was downloaded. For corporations eager to control intellectual property, the one relief may a forth coming ministerial decree, which is set to determine the exact limits of the law's meaning.

 
Previous Comments

Romulus and Remus

02/01, 04:20pm reply

Really? Romulus and Remus to illustrate a story from Italy? At least Photoshop some headphones on them.

trenchcoat77

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Joined: Aug 2003

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founders of Rome?

02/01, 04:56pm reply

http://www.newser.com/story/12171.html

I do like the earbuds/headphones idea though. :D

Flying Meat

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Joined: Jan 2007

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news true, title wrong..

02/02, 09:14am reply

First of all there's no parliament anymore inItaly in these days: the government has fallen and they can only do "ordinary administration".. That law was a proposal, and as a such was being discussed and the one evidenced here was one (of many) burocratic terms "misunderstandable".. That's all!

ERG

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Joined: May 2003

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