Feb 03
Italian Parliament Mistakenly Legalizes Some P2P Music Sharing?
Feb 03, `08 –This Slashdot article reports on a new Italian copyright law, in which the Italian parliament may have mistakenly legalized sharing music over P2P networks.
The new copyright law, passed by both houses of parliament, would allow Italians to freely share music over the Internet as long as it is free of charge, at low resolution or “degraded,” for scientific or educational use, and only when such use is not for profit.
Excerpts of the Slashdot article:
According to Italian lawyer Andrea Monti, an expert on copyright and Internet law, the new Italian copyright law would authorize users to publish and freely share copyrighted music (p2p included). As Monti says in the interview, those who wrote it didn’t realize that the word “degraded” is technical, with a very precise meaning, which includes MP3s, which are compressed with an algorithm that ensures a quality loss. The La Repubblica.it article in Italian, and Google translation is here. More at Slashdot.