Oops: P2P Music Sharing Accidentally Legalised In Italy

The Italian government has accidentally legalised P2P music sharing due to some funny semantics:

The new law, which was just passed by the Italian Parliament and can no longer be modified, allows sharing of music as long it for non-commercial purposes and the music is degraded.

What the parliament failed to consider is the fact that any MP3 or AAC track, as long as it is not encoded in lossless format, is "degraded."

The law does say that the music sharing has to be for educational or scientific purposes, but we all know how that will play out in court - it'll become extremely difficult for the Italian arm of the RIAA to build a case that the user wasn't sharing the music for educational purposes.

I can see it now: "I was trying to educate people about modern music and the melody structures across different genres! Honest!"

In order to make the P2P sharing illegal again, Italy would have to draft a brand new law, as once passed in parliament, laws can no longer be modified.

The law will become official as soon as it is published in the Official Journal, bringing a smile to Italian P2P sharers everywhere.

Whoops—Italy inadvertently legalizes some P2P music [Ars Technica]