Trapped in Urbani's wire
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Itally Passes String "Anti-Piracy" Measure (from IMC Itally)
On May 18th, the Italian Senate approved the Urbani Act This is a new regulation on intellectual property and piracy repression, aiming to punish free information flow and clearly made up to imitate American fellows. From now on, every "creative work" released through the Internet or any other electronic network should be accompanied by a virtual license ("a virtual button") of the Italian Association of Editors and Authors (SIAE), certifying its compliance with the copyright laws and informing about the penalty for breaking such an act.
The rule applies to every intellectual work "inserted on the net": webpages, shared files, e-mail…: and what about text messages? Infringing the Urbani Act is a crime. Downloading even a single mp3 with the purpose of "taking advantage" from it (the act purposely employs such a blurry and wide formula, the former act read "market purposes") is now punished by the seizure of all hardware and media, a fine of up to 1500 euro and 4 years in prison.In addition, the Urbani Act increases taxes on hardware support and devices such as cd, dvd and cd-dvd burners, a racket run by the SIAE. The only good news is that internet service providers will not be forced to pass personal data of their users to authorities, as it was initially proposed.
The approval of the act did not meet any strong opposition from the left-wing parties. Only associations for digital rights (the Green party, AsSoLi and the Linux Users Group) organized a demonstration in front of the Senate on the day of the approval of the act.
The Urbani act, like many other norms of this kind, is based on an unrealistic vision of Internet communication and not even Urbani himself will be able to put the "virtual button" on his e-mail. As a matter of fact, it will impossible to effectively enforce such an act, since too much information should be processed. Therefore, the Urbani Act will only result in the prosecution of a few unlucky people which, in Urbani's sick mind, will hopefully intimidate everyone else.
A strike by ADSL users is going to happen on May 25th from 9 -12pm (Italian time).
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