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Deutsch: Italienischer Minister als File-Sharer

The Italian Minister of Internal Affairs Roberto Maroni has recently expressed his disapproval of three-striles solutions for file-sharers and admitted he was one of the people that downloaded music from the Internet, free of charge. He had already made a similar statement in 2006.

Maroni, a musician himself, confesed to Panorama magazine that he was doing this as "a provocation, because I believe that the solution is not the French one to cut the Internet connection of those illegally downloading music. The solution is to create a site where the youth may download music for which the copyrights are guaranteed by one or more sponsors".

The minister believes the French three-strikes sistem is a disproportionate measure which does not function. In his opinion, since the Hadopi law was adopted in France, the amount of illegal downloading has increased. He believes that downloading music for free is not a crime and people should be able to do it. He insisted that getting music by this method was not like stealing from the supermarket as the music industry had suggested. What people are doing is getting a copy of what someone else has placed on a network.

"It is as if the owner of this computer where I'm going to take the music from did a copy of a CD he bought and gave it to me, something that normally happens when we buy a CD and make copies for our friends," he stated.

Obviously, FIMI, the Italian branch of the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), reacted to Maroni's statements: "A few million music tracks legally downloaded for free, over a billion click-free videos on Youtube by officers of Italian artists, more than 90% of individual files sold at less than one euro from dozens of platforms. The Minister should consider the risk to jobs and loss of revenues to the state because of digital piracy," stated FIMI.

Maroni's position comes following a document recently issued by AGCOM, the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority, which clearly reveals that illegal downloading does not produce the economic damage claimed by the music industry. Moreover, the paper shows that political repression and surveillance are anti-constitutional, unnecessary and harmful. The authority suggests there should be a balance between the remuneration of authors and the people's right to culture and knowledge and advocates for an extended collective licensing.

AGCOM offers some solutions and believes that a dialogue with the market should be started in order to promote a culture of access to legal digital content, to find business models that would ensure fair remuneration for all industry players as well as access to the widest possible content for users. Appropriate measures should be found to prevent and combat illegal actions. The measures applied presently are inconsistent with the law related to privacy, right of access to the Internet and the principle of net neutrality.

Maroni, the minister is a pirate (only in Italian, 9.04.2010)
http://punto-informatico.it:80/2852520/PI/News/maroni-ministro-un-pira...

And Maroni downloads music from the web (only in Italian, 9.04.2010)
http://www.ilgiornale.it/interni/e_maroni_scarica_musica_web/09-04-201...

Maroni: Downloading mp3 is not a crime (only in Italian, 10.04.2010)
http://www.lastampa.it/_web/cmstp/tmplrubriche/tecnologia/grubrica.asp...

AGCOM report on "piracy": better to legalize than repress (only in Italian, 16.02.2010)
http://blog.tntvillage.scambioetico.org/?p=5359

IFPI Upset As Italian Minister Admits He's A File-Sharer (13.04.2010)
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-upset-as-italian-minister-admits-hes-a-fi...