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Government Piracy The Internet Your Rights Online

Italy Prepares '"One Strike" Anti-Piracy Law 219

Posted by samzenpus from the no-second-chances dept.
angry tapir writes "The Italian government is preparing an anti-piracy law that could ban Internet users from access after one alleged copyright infringement, a lawyer and an analyst warned. ISPs would be required to use filters against services that infringe copyright, trademark or patents under terms of the draft law. The proposed changes to Italy's e-commerce directive were drafted in July by members of parliament belonging to the Il Popolo della Libertà (PdL) party of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi."
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Italy Prepares '"One Strike" Anti-Piracy Law More

Italy Prepares '"One Strike" Anti-Piracy Law

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  • Filtering traffic eh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GeneralTurgidson ( 2464452 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @10:36PM (#37487422)
    So anything that gets by this amazing filter isnt considered piracy? Sweet.

  • In Other Words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cosm ( 1072588 ) <thecosm3@gma i l .com> on Thursday September 22, 2011 @10:36PM (#37487424)
    The Italian government is acting as the protector of corporate profits. What a white knight they are! Can there be a "One Strike" bad politician law so that after their first major fuck-up they get to go to federal PMIA prison for a minimum of 1 year? What's good for the goose is good for the gander!

    • Re:In Other Words (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @10:45PM (#37487474) Journal

      Well, more directly of Berlusconi's corporate profits. Why the Italians haven't drowned this guy in the Tiber is quite beyond me. A crook, a disgusting old letch, and on top of it a complete ass, who for all his vaunted business skills, is still overseeing the drive to keep Italy one of the "I"s in "PIIGS".

      • Re:In Other Words (Score:5, Informative)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Thursday September 22, 2011 @11:16PM (#37487664) Journal

        Why the Italians haven't drowned this guy in the Tiber is quite beyond me.

        I'm not so sure he can be drowned. Judging from the quality of the poontang he gets, he must be able to breathe through his ears.

        Either that or the women are just hookers, which is probably more likely.

        You would think that if the people of Italy didn't drown Berlusconi for the way he's run the country, at least they'd drown him for having sex with an underage girl. But after having spent years living and working in Italy, I'm comfortable saying that most Italians don't really believe women are fully human. Women in Italy are treated at least as badly as those in the most conservative muslim countries, albeit in a less obviously ugly way. And I say this as the son of Italian immigrants. As a people they've got a lot to recommend them, but respect for women is not part of it.

        Hell, just last year an Italian man was given a suspended sentence after being found guilty of murdering his wife because she had been "disrespectful".

      • Not that Italy has ever been one to embrace fascism, but between this, putting the geologists on trial for murder for failing to protect the earthquake, the likelihood of economic default, and the population dying off faster than it's being replaced ... what the heck is going on over there? Oh, and they bought Chrysler, of all things.

        • It's Italy. Nothing is going on over there... it's just Italy. This is the sort of stuff you should just expect coming from the Italian government. That's just... how they are. If you check your Big Book of European Stereotypes, dysfunctional government and bureaucracy will be listed under "Italy"

          • And that listing is unjust. You should look into Belgian politics if you want truly surreal things. Compare Italy to Belgium and they almost seem to have a sane government.

            • And that listing is unjust. You should look into Belgian politics if you want truly surreal things. Compare Italy to Belgium and they almost seem to have a sane government.

              Well, Italy has a government (loosely speaking). Belgium still does not.
              The question of sanity in government of either country is thus moot. Not that there's much evidence of sanity in Italy's government, anyway.

      • Well, more directly of Berlusconi's corporate profits. Why the Italians haven't drowned this guy in the Tiber is quite beyond me. A crook, a disgusting old letch, and on top of it a complete ass, who for all his vaunted business skills, is still overseeing the drive to keep Italy one of the "I"s in "PIIGS".

        He's an ass but what the hell is with this preening moralism getting modded up on /.? Who the fuck cares whether he's a prude or a pervert and, moreover, what's wrong with setting the example that the elderly can have just as active a sex life as anyone else (aside from the fact that we'd rather not visualize it)? He's a single man and I'm just as happy for him getting his jollies as anyone else on this planet.

        You gain little by injecting your sexual politics into it, as though we should be less likely to s

        • You mean showing disapproval of the Italian PM hiring underage hookers is "injecting my sexual politics"?

          • You mean showing disapproval of the Italian PM hiring underage hookers is "injecting my sexual politics"?

            Yeah, it is. You know why? Because it has absolutely nothing to do with his ability (or lack thereof) to be a functional Prime Minister of the government of Italy. It has nothing to do with his office whatsoever. Let me answer a question with a question then, would you rather elect a competent PM that slept around with underage hookers while pursuing sensible policies or a morally upright one that was incompetent and whose policies you opposed?

            Not that SB is competent or his policies sensible or that these

            • I'm trying to get this straight. He's violating Italian law (maybe even European law, considering the alleged origins of some of the girls), but that's okay? What you're saying is that the Italian Prime Minister is above the law.

              • No, I'm saying that whether or not he's breaking the law has fuckall to do with whether his actions as Prime Minister were any good. Banging hookers doesn't hurt Italy. It's doesn't help either -- it's entirely orthogonal to Italy in general.

                Qua a Prime Minister, we should judge his actions as Prime Minister. Qua a person, we should judge his personal actions. The two have nothing to do with each other.

                [ PS. He's enough of a terrible PM that this attack is not only stupid, it's gratuitous. ]

      • How many politicians are there that we can be proud of ? I'm French, so I'm accounted for ^^ The US have jumped from Clinton to Sonny Bush to Obama, the USSR have Putin, the Canada just recently lost half of theirs, Belgium seem to have lost all of them... I have nothing on Cameron and Merkel, but I'm not following very closely.

        Berlusconi is slightly worse than those, but not at lot.

        • And crucifixion is slightly worse than stoning. Your point being?

        • Belgium never had any to be proud of. The Belgian government is probably the most complex and incompetent government in the whole universe.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Teun ( 17872 )
            Yet the acting Belgian government since the last elections does run one of the best economies in the developed world.

            There seem to be advantages when a government is not allowed to tackle controversial issues :)

            • It only seems that way, Belgium is on the verge of economic breakdown.

              • It only seems that way, Belgium is on the verge of economic breakdown.

                The whole developed world is. In the US the basic problem is that they've been listening to Randian superhero fantasies for too long, and in Europe it's that the few sinking boats are chained to all the sound ones and thus take them with them. And simulatenously energy continues getting more and more expensive, climate change and associated extreme weather are hitting the big gear, Arab world is getting even more unstable, and various fr

                • Yup, add to that that Belgium is pretty much 2 countries rolled into one chained together even more where one is economically sound and another is a train wreck, but due to the chained nature the train wreck is inhibiting the sound part of the country to stay sound (the minority in this country has veto rights on all levels, not just federal).... It's an ugly mess :(

          • Belgium never had any to be proud of.

            They have a righteous Formula 1 [spa-francorchamps.be] track [wikipedia.org].

        • And we Hungarians know that Kafka was a realist writer.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

        Probably because the Italian media keeps telling the population what a nice guy Berlusconi is and how evil all the other politicians are.

      • A large percentage of Italians want to be like him. They want fast cars, plenty of hookers, a large bank account, a football team and enough connections to drown any sense of democracy in Tiber.

      • Why the Italians haven't drowned this guy in the Tiber is quite beyond me. A crook, a disgusting old letch, and on top of it a complete ass, who for all his vaunted business skills, is still overseeing the drive to keep Italy one of the "I"s in "PIIGS".

        Sounds like the history of Italy to me. Why the Italians haven't drowned almost every leader they've ever had is the big mystery. Why we don't do it in the USA is an even bigger one.

    • I hope you are thoroughly modded up, good sir.

      Whenever there's a double standard, it's always the rich that are on the better end. Why is it that you never see double standards benefit the un-rich? At the very best, the less fortunate can hope for temporary equality, but never an advantage.

  • Mamma Mia! (Score:3)

    by Master Moose ( 1243274 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @10:36PM (#37487428) Homepage

    Now I know many countries have proposed or implemented a 3 strike law (much like my own - NZ) mostly to cosy up to the US.

    How cosy does Italy want to be?

  • This will never fly (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bmo ( 77928 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @10:40PM (#37487446)

    But that's not the point of this bill.

    It's the industry proposing something just short of decapitation, versus the current situation that non-profit file sharing is explicitly legal.

    Somewhere in the middle is "compromise" where everyone loses except the rent-seeking gatekeepers of culture.

    "See, it wasn't as bad as what we wanted"

    --
    BMO

    • Re:This will never fly (Score:5, Informative)

      by mgiuca ( 1040724 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @11:20PM (#37487690)

      "See, it wasn't as bad as what we wanted"

      This technique is so common that there's a name for it: The Door-in-the-face technique [wikipedia.org].

      The persuader attempts to convince someone to comply with a request by first making an extremely large request that the respondent will obviously turn down, with a metaphorical slamming of a door in the persuader's face. The respondent is then more likely to accede to a second, more reasonable request than if this second request were made without the first, extreme request. ... A reference point construal may explain this phenomenon, as the initial bad offer sets a reference point from which the second offer looks like an improvement.

      • This tactic is so ubiquitous even kids know about it.

        "If you want a puppy, ask for a horse."

      • I'm sure this would work well against people who think that something being slightly better than something else means that it is good.

        • I'm sure this would work well against people who think that something being slightly better than something else means that it is good.

          Unfortunately, that describes the vast majority of people. See: Lesser of Two Evils.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What compromise ?

      "I want to be able to down load music legally".... that happened
      "I only want 1 track not the whole album" .... that happened
      "Its too expensive".... and yet in real terms music has never been cheaper
      "We only want to audit the music" .... if that were true then 8bit, mono, 22KHz sampled music would suffice, however it all seems to be the highest quality

      The truth is there is only 1 compromise that would be acceptable, all music must be free, and the musicians should get a "real job" if they

      • You make some good points, though it was probably smart to post anon. We have gotten most everything we ever asked for.

        And while it might not be a popular opinion, I take no issue with people selling music. I do think the trillion dollar suits, and various other obscene reactions against anyone that shares songs, are totally absurd.

      • Re:This will never fly (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday September 23, 2011 @02:27AM (#37488404)

        I want to use the music I buy on the medium I choose.
        I want to archive and store it where and how I please.
        I want to watch a movie without hours of ads for movies I don't give half a shit about.
        I want to store those movies on my (media) server hard drive instead of discs, which are prone to break and which I'd have to find first of all in the mess of my apartment.
        I want to play the games I buy without having to have a connection to the internet if it is not required for the game to work.
        I want to use software without handing in everything but my shoe size about me before it allows me to use it.
        I want to record and time shift shows off TV the way I see fit and I expect the ads to be skipable. That technology was already very available on Betamax.

        need I go on?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          And if they don't want to sell on those conditions, have you justified downloading it off TPB or using AnyDVD or a nocd crack? Don't get me wrong, I see plenty wrong with what the MAFIAA is doing. But capitalism is supposed to be about voluntary transactions, where the seller has just as much right to not sell as the buyer has to not buy. And that the terms of the sale are binding, neither party can just unilaterally decide that I don't like them so I'll just break or ignore those conditions. Don't get me w

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Cwix ( 1671282 )

            They want to sell me the same movie multiple times, one for my tv, one for my computer, one for my phone.

            I do not wish to buy it multiple times. The MPAA should consider themselves lucky when someone buys one copy and puts it on other devices, instead of just getting it from the pirate bay.

            The cost is almost negligible to distribute the movie/music online. The price of the product should reflect that. It does not.

            I refuse to consume their wares because of this greedy attitude of theirs.

          • And if they don't want to sell on those conditions, have you justified downloading it off TPB or using AnyDVD or a nocd crack?

            That would likely depend on who you ask.

          • But capitalism is supposed to be about voluntary transactions, where the seller has just as much right to not sell as the buyer has to not buy.

            True, but you're ignoring the other side of capitalism: that everyone has the right to act and to use their own property in any manner which does not harm others, i.e. which does not prevent them from continuing to use their own property as is has been used in the past, subject to the same condition. Copyright enforcement is decidedly in violation of this rule, and thus anti-capitalistic.

            Copying information in your possession is something you already had the right to do. Copyright takes this right away invo

          • A hypothetical related problem is, if I could had a futuristic Any Material Copier and just pointed at something you had and pushed the button, cloning it for myself with my resources.

            Would I be stealing?

            I'm not saying I'd go out and distribute the object and sell it, I'm saying I'd just use the own EXACT copy I created with my device.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:This will never fly (Score:5, Insightful)

        by maxwell demon ( 590494 ) on Friday September 23, 2011 @02:56AM (#37488500) Journal

        "I want to not get punished for things I haven't even done just because someone claims I did it."
        How's that for a start?

        There's a reason why due process exists. This type of law is a punishment without a court being involved. It is not necessary to be proven guilty. It suffices that someone claims you are. That's what's bad about it. That's several orders of magnitude more important than any question of copyright. It's about the foundation of the rule of law. Due process. No punishment without conviction. That's what this is about. Therefore it's also completely irrelevant here what you think about downloading of music. I'd be against this type of law even if it were about murder, despite the fact that I definitely do not think murder should be legalized.

        Again, this is not about the legality of music download. This is about the foundation of the rule of law.

      • Compromise? There should be no compromises about people's rights.

        I don't give a crap about music or movies and I don't want the copyright industry to bypass the judiciary system, to violate my privacy, to impose expensive and problematic filtering systems that *I* am going to pay whether I pirate music or not, to extort a fraction of my money every time I buy a blank medium because I *might* copy some music, or every time I pay my university fees because I *might* copy some book.

        In particular, I don't wa

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        The truth is there is only 1 compromise that would be acceptable, all music must be free, and the musicians should get a "real job" if they want to earn money because as soon as the music becomes free then live concerts will be considered a "rip off" as "the quality is not as good", "they did not play the songs I like","its too expensive".... etc.

        I don't think people will ever start to diss live music. It's more a practical matter of whether the music you want to hear is played at a concert or music festival near you and if you happen to be available that weekend. With the Internet you can have a "long tail" of followers all over the world, but not many enough in one place to make a concert worthwhile. And assuming your kind of music is the kind you'd want to go to a concert for, maybe it's more for the romantic dinner or having the blues. And that

      • and the musicians should get a "real job" if they want to earn money

        For most musicians, that's the way things are right now. Just like it was back in the ancient days before the internet. Have you ever tried playing music? You'll be lucky if you can recoup the cost of your instrument. (If your instrument is the penny whistle or the spoons, then you might have a shot.)

      • "Its too expensive".... and yet in real terms music has never been cheaper

        I'd love to know where you buy your music from. I haven't seen a price change in albums since CDs first came out.

  • I wonder what kind of offense it takes for the Italian govt to take down your water or electric service. Pasta is taking over their brains it seems.

  • seeing how board trademarks and patent are just cut off all of Italy to save time.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It's a bit hard to see how they filter out patent infringements, but doing so probably violates someones patent!

  • Doesn't Berlusconi own an italian media empire? Could this be a way to further solidify that power?

  • Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:4)

    by jspenguin1 ( 883588 ) <jspenguin@gmail.com> on Thursday September 22, 2011 @10:58PM (#37487576) Homepage

    If this passes, every single MP that votes for this will suddenly find hundreds of copyright complaints against them...

  • It's ironic that the very openness of Internet that made it so popular itself is being challenged. This type of Draconian law has the potential to snowball into a much bigger piece of sh*t where content provider and producers can twist the law to gain all sort of mileage. It also doesn't behoove well for the sophisticated search engines. Heck..providing anything other than a link to the actual content might become illegal altogether. The case of Belgian newspapers going after Google news is not going to be
  • I hope this passes, so I can pull up a comfy chair with some popcorn and watch the fallout.

  • So Youtube will be blocked in Italy? (Score:3)

    by Jackie_Chan_Fan ( 730745 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @11:08PM (#37487622)

    So Youtube will be blocked in Italy?

    Frankly this is just dumb. The internet is full of all kinds of copyright infringement. Even the giant corporations like AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc are all benefiting from the free exchange, linking, and displaying of other people's media/content without any contract.

    Just go to huffingtonpost and see how many articles they link to, that they didnt write. Go to Youtube, and view all of the videos that violate copyright,

    The entire internet is based on sharing content.

    • Hmmmmmm.......

      File a complaint about copyright violations against every single US company that has some kind of (internet) presence in Italy. There are copyrighted pictures, text passages, layouts and whatnot without the proper paperwork been done on pretty much every page, all you have to do is find it.

      And then, let the US do the dirty work with da Don. Why get your hands dirty?

  • The 1980s called. (Score:3)

    by scottbomb ( 1290580 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @11:10PM (#37487632) Journal

    They have this technology called a dial-up BBS the Italians might be interested in. I see a market for the development of high-speed dial-up modems and a resurrection for land-line telephones.

  • I'm predicting a massive surge in encrypted traffic to/from italy.

  • Silvio Berlusconi (Score:3)

    by Seraphim_72 ( 622457 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @11:28PM (#37487720)

    Il Duce [wikipedia.org] reborn.

  • This is the same government that is trying to send Italian geologists to prison because they can't predict earthquakes when, in fact, NO geologist on the planet can reliably predict when an earthquake will occur, even if they were given a latitude of several years, much less a particular day.

    Now, they want to transform their government into a cabal, in which corporations make the rules to minimize their own liability and maximize the liability of their customers and of their profits.

    These actions can only b

    • They are on trial for stating that it was SAFE despite numerious warnings. The claim is that because people where told it was safe, they returned to their houses to sleep inside and died. Those that didn't listen to the scientists saying it was safe stayed outside for the night and were safe.

      The scientist in question could have said, "We don't know, there are a lot of shocks, they might be the lead in fora big one, they might not". Then people would have chosen the safe options and slept outside and not hav

  • Ban Cisco from the Internet ? (Score:4, Informative)

    by bug1 ( 96678 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @11:29PM (#37487728)

    Cisco violated the GPL with Linksys.

    Lets see Italy ban Cisco from using the internet.

    What, the law only applies to individuals violating for personal use, its ok for companies to violating copyright for financial reasons. I get it now,

    MAFIAA is strong in Italy

  • BRILLIANT! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sasayaki ( 1096761 ) on Thursday September 22, 2011 @11:40PM (#37487812)

    I wholeheartedly support this "One Strike" law. As the first barrage in the torrent (heh!) of complaints, let me fire this one off:

    http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-steals-code-violates-linkware-license/ [torrentfreak.com]

    I demand 100% complete disconnection of the MPAA, including subsidaries, partent companies, any company where any member of the MPAA (or subsidaries, parent companies, etc) is a shareholder in whole or in part, from ALL Italian users. They cannot connect to ANY Italian IP address, on pain of defying a court order (or whatever the punishment is for evading the 'one strike' law).

    Any "evidence" gathered against Italian internet users is null and void because in order to gather that evidence they had broken the "one strike" rule in Italy. And, of course, the MPAA would never download something they didn't actually own the rights to, therefore committing copyright infringement themselves, right? Never? ...

    Oh wait, the laws don't apply to those who make them? The MPAA is allowed to commit the worst kind of copyright infringement -- claiming you created something you didn't, and then using it for commercial purposes and making a bunch of money with it -- and that doesn't count as a strike? Because they are immune to their own law?

    Oh damn.

    Well, it was a nice thought anyway.

  • This will fail spectacularly. I anticipate Italy being completely off the internet in a few weeks once this goes into effect.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • That's the most important economic problem the country has right now.

    People illegally downloading Berlusconi's songs.

  • Won't fly. Considering how often they go on a strike, what will you do with them next week?

  • Why do every new law regulating copyright allow attacking your internet connection?
    If I start copying CD's or DVD's, I can loose my email access?
    I know most of their searches happen online and on p2p networks, but the laws don't differentiate and the reactions are simply illogical.

  • What difference does it make, anyway, whether it's three strikes or one strike, if a "strike" is just an unproven allegation?

  • I'm sure that these will be the first to be quickly brought down on one strike. Libraries, universities, book stores... basically every public place that provides "free WiFi" will be cut off.

    I just don't see that working well at all.

  • Gee, wouldn't it be terrible if someone were to start hacking into bureaucrat's computers, download copyrighted material, which resulted in those same bureaucrats getting kicked off the internet?

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