First of all, I know this isn't related to Macs or technology for that matter, but it's still quite funny. It seems that Italy has actually legalized music sharing. Now, any music that is not lossless quality can be legally shared across any P2P network. The Italian government said that it is for scientific or educational purposes, but it will make suing people who shared illegal music harder.

Full Story

Haha, brilliant, its about time some sensible laws were being set.

This is probably good news for Alessandro

I need to move back to Italy..

What we really need is to nuke the RIAA. It could be funny if the terrorist attack the RIAA and destroy all their business. same wish for the MPAA.

Music huh?

I think we'll see 4.38 GB versions of "Windows Vista Ultimate.mp3" on limewire.....

When this became known, I hardly noticed it, maybe because a further decree is necessary, which sets the criteria of educational and scientific usage. That might take quite long, also because our government has resigned.
But in any case, at least 60% of Italians pirate music, movies and software already and nobody seems to care.

Is it scientific to try an send a limewire tera of "music"? Or educational? I really need so GPS Maps and programs!

Hahaha... that's pretty good!

Pretty good find

And not just for him... me and loard_muad_dib too
Sherry haibara

it's all kinda misunderstood, yes, the law is going to be written to the "official journal", but it doesn't mean it's not editable anymore. after our government will be redesigned, i'm sure a decree will be asked to fix that big hole.
anyways, so far, IIRC the only big copyright infringement cases persecuted by law were catched just because they used university devices/servers, or because they where making "big" profit selling pirated material.

home p2p has been always tolerated. noone knocks your door without a big reason.

in any real big infringement, RIAA can walkaroud its limit(cannot obtain personal infos from some european countries) asking help to the local police, and let it monitor everything and persecute under local laws

and sherry, it's lord_muad_dib not _lib

Some months ago the parliament approved a "progetto di legge" wich is more or less a law in way of approval, that allowed 16 years old people to drive superfast motorbikes like suzuki gsx-r or honda cbr without any special license, thank God someone realized that and was modified. The italian Mps are idiots, they make sloppy laws. Our Ex-Minister of justice is being investigated actually, which gives you an idea of how ridicolous the situation is!

Woops, typo, sorry
Sherry Haibara

I don't think Italians are affected by this news anyway. As if they haven't been using P2P to do all sort of downloading but what stopped me in the article is the term degraded music. How can you define degraded ?
192kbps is not degraded or is it ? then on the same scale 320kbps is degraded but in the end who cares !!
I hope we can get P2P Italian pizza one day

Exactly my point.

That's the most important part, any law written can be changed.

No matter if p2p is legal or not.
The fact in Italy is that most of ISPs (about 80%) FILTER p2p with Cisco Engine.
An example: I was on a 1,2Mbit/s ADSL of a non-filtering ISP, downloading torrents from few seeders @ max download speed.
Now, with a residential ADSL @ 4Mbit/s, I got 10KB/s as medium download speed, reaching about 120KB/s for seconds on a "thousands-seeders" torrent.

For Italians: Wind - Eutelia - Libero and... tataaa...Fastweb filters p2p.

My solution for the problem? IRC (DCC)

PS: ehm, don't look at my sign, that's my work connection