15 March 2008

Private

Privacy laws are big in Italy. Basically, no one can monitor anything you do because it would be a violation of your privacy.

In the news yesterday was a case where a music label identified thousands of people who had downloaded their music (without permission). The record company got its lawyer to send a letter to every person who had downloaded their tracks asking for payments of 300 euro for the files in order to avoid a lawsuit being brought against them. In response the Italian downloaders got their own lawyer and retaliated saying that their privacy had been violated. The outcome was that the downloaders won the case as a private company like the record label does not have the right to monitor P2P users and all the personal data obtained regarding the users must be now cancelled.

Interesting.

Here's the story (Italian).

4 comments:

Giulia said...

Interesting, indeed!

Nadine said...

That gave me food for thought this morning. Privacy is a big thing everywhere especially in doctor's offices where I work. It's getting tough in the states for the patient to get his record unless it's in writing.

nyc/caribbean ragazza said...

That is really intersting. Wait until people can download movies quicker. I wonder if that will impact the film business as negatively as it did the music business.

Cherrye said...

I didn't hear about this. Thanks for the chuckle.