Italian Gov't Gives Up Trying To Regulate Copyright Online

from the why-bother dept

Tue, May 8th 2012 12:30am — Mike Masnick

Apparently there's been a years-long effort in Italy to give the Italian Communication Authority (AGCOM) some regulatory authority to enforce copyrights online. And apparently there has been some fighting over this (mostly over AGCOM's competence in this field). However, according to The 1709 Blog, it appears that AGCOM is now giving up its goal of regulating copyright online:

Although AGCOM has showed its ability to reconcile the various rights and interests involved in copyright, it will not go ahead with its copyright regulation. This is because Italian Government has not yet adopted the proviso needed to clarify the nature and extension of AGCOM's competence to this end. Therefore, until this happens, AGCOM will not feel obliged to adopt its "well-balanced" regulation.

This, of course, does not mean that there is no online copyright in Italy. Just that it's not being regulated by AGCOM for the time being. Considering just how badly pretty much every attempt to regulate copyright has gone recently, perhaps this is a good thing.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: agcom, italy

11 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 8 May 2012 @ 12:44am

Spread the word
Use http://www.opera.com/

The stylish way to bypass censorship!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- F!, 8 May 2012 @ 3:01am
  
  Re: Spread the word
  Pardon my ignorance, but what does Opera do to bypass censorship? I've used Opera in the past and found it phoned home with no option to disable this 'feature'. Granted this isn't censorship, but still an unacceptable breach of privacy in a web browser (or any application) AFAIAC. Firefox doesn't phone home, and with the appropriate plugin can also easily bypass censorship. Actually censorship is easy to bypass no matter what browser is in use.
  
  BTW, WTF does this have to do with the article anyway?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - BeeAitch (profile), 8 May 2012 @ 3:54am
    
    Re: Re: Spread the word
    "BTW, WTF does this have to do with the article anyway?"
    
    Opera is an Italian word.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - F!, 8 May 2012 @ 4:47am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Spread the word
      ...ask a silly question.... ;)
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 May 2012 @ 12:49am

Should be 'what do you expect' department.
Most of Italy dodges tax.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 8 May 2012 @ 2:23am
  
  Re:
  Well they are not the only ones, most of the entertainment industry also dodges taxes.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 May 2012 @ 2:21am

See what happens when you don't have a mollusc in power.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Q�r Tharkasd�ttir, 8 May 2012 @ 2:31am

Not quite. While a jungle is basically a self-contained eco-system, Italian laws, decrees and regulations are not a jungle, but a humongous self-defeating mess, replete with deep gaps and contradictions as to when, how and whether they should or should not be applied. This is probably why Italy has more lawyers per inhabitant than most countries, all competing to make sense of a corpus of laws of 250,000 and counting. So no one can tell what AGCOM might do of its own volition or be coerced into doing at any time in the future.

This is also one of the many reasons that explains the growth, reflected in this last weekend's city council elections, of the so-called Five-Star Movement, the Italian version of the Fed-Up movements known elsewhere as Tahrir Square, the various Occupy, the Pirate parties, to name just a couple.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
BeeAitch (profile), 8 May 2012 @ 4:00am

Why is AGCOM ceasing to innovate?

Copyright trol... err lawyers around the world need to rally to save this sinking leec... err, comrad... err, frien.. err, ally. Yeah, that's the ticket: ally!

Vive La France, err, Italy!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 May 2012 @ 5:00am

the entertainment industries needn't worry about this though. the thick fuckers in the UK will (if they haven't already) be taking up the banner. with his friends in 'high entertainment industries positions', Cameron wont let them down. it will just be the people, as usual!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 May 2012 @ 6:04am

David Scameron, please take note.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]