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aiolos

Wed 24 Jan, 2007


Italian court: Downloading OK if not for profit

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MILAN,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> Italy <b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>-<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> Italy's top criminal court has ruled that downloading music,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> movies and software over the Internet isn't a crime if profit wasn't the motivation,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> though analysts questioned Monday whether the ruling would have much effect on copyright laws.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>
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The court's decision,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> issued earlier this month but reported over the weekend by the Italian media,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> overturns earlier convictions against two former Turin Polytechnic Institute students who set up in 1994 a peer-to-peer,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> file-sharing network that was shut down within months.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>
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They were found guilty of illegal duplication and given a one-year sentence,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> which was reduced to three months on appeal,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> defense lawyer Carlo Blengino said.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>
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The top criminal court in Rome threw out the convictions,<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b> ruling that it was not a crime to download computer files from such networks if there was no financial gain.<b style="color:#FFA34F"></b>