Italian Parliament To Mistakenly Legalize MP3 P2P 223
plainwhitetoast recommends an article in La Repubblica.it — in Italian, Google translation here. 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). The new law, already approved by both legislative houses, indeed says that one is allowed to publish freely, through the Internet, free of charge, images and music at low resolution or "degraded," for scientific or educational use, and only when such use is not for profit. 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 law will be effective after the appropriate decree of the ministry, and will probably have an impact on pending p2p judicial cases.
Re:Calling all OiNK ex-admins! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Meaning of words (Score:4, Informative)
Not when you can accomplish the same thing without violating copyrights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound/list [wikipedia.org]
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000012.shtml [digitalpreservation.gov]
http://www.id3.org/mp3Frame [id3.org]
http://www.dv.co.yu/mpgscript/mpeghdr.htm [dv.co.yu]
Lost in translation... (Score:5, Informative)
The important caveat is that although the lawyer (Monti) says that this was a mistake, it will not pose too many problems while it gets fixed. He says that while in the mean time, the law be enforced in such a way that only websites that belong to scientific or academic institutions will be allowed to host these mp3s and it will not even cover websites from professors or scientists even if for scientific or teaching purposes. This was said despite the fact that the Italian law allows anyone to make a website that accomplishes the same things (teach or do research or whatever). Monti said that it will be easier to regulate it in this fashion while the bill gets changed.
The previous example cited was kind of butchered from the translation as well. It said that in 2000 another mistake in the use of technical jargon created a law that legalized all pirated satellite TV decoder cards. Although the law was eventually changed, all charges had to be dropped on current pirates of said cards in the mean time.
They expect the same to happen while they fix this new mishap.
Being Italian myself and seeing the current state of the government (what government) I'm not entirely sure that this didn't happen on purpose to allow current charges to be dropped and so on and so forth...Call me paranoid, but if you've lived in Italy as a citizen, then you'll know what I mean.
My two euros.
Re:Calling all OiNK ex-admins! (Score:3, Informative)
Whether i read an mp3 from my ipod, my cd player or from a hard drive it's the same mp3, the only difference will be the decoder used.
Re:Calling all OiNK ex-admins! (Score:3, Informative)
It is however possible to capture the 'warmer' sound on CD.
Its got nothing to do with data rates.
Its the physical medium and the processing it goes through.
Re:Calling all OiNK ex-admins! (Score:1, Informative)
Make no mistake, people mistake dirt crackles and heat warping of the record as warmth.
Re:Is it retroactive? (Score:2, Informative)
But if with a new law something that was illegal becomes legal, then in pending judicial cases defendants are acquitted because "the fact isn't offence anymore".
Re:Calling all OiNK ex-admins! (Score:5, Informative)
If you do a double blind test with the direct signal from the turntable compared to the same through 16bit 44.1KHz digital ad/da conversion, people cannot tell the difference. In any properly set up and level matched trial. Ever.
The problem is that the vinyl believers cannot accept this, and either will not try it, or do not have the facilities to do a proper test themselves.
Re:Calling all OiNK ex-admins! (Score:2, Informative)
16bit is better than human hearing can resolve. 24bit is enough so that the Brownian motion of air molecules randomly hitting your ear drums becomes higher than the noise floor of the recording. Though admittedly, your heartbeat, the sound of the blood flowing round your body and the background hiss of your nervous system means you will never hear them.
Go in an anechoic chamber one day and you will be surprised how noisy your ears are.
Not that any real 24bit converters actually exist. Perhaps some of the cryogenic cooled ones can do 22 bits on a good day. (Real 22bit, not "Z-Weighted, perceptually adjusted to make the product sheet look good" bits)
Re:Calling all OiNK ex-admins! (Score:3, Informative)