Italy

Legislation and Materials

The core of Italian copyright - or, more correctly, author's rights - legislation is Law 633 of April 22, 1941. Looking at the date of enactment, the reader can easily imagine how the flow of time and the subsequent strata of modifications applied to the original text did not help produce a coherent result. Many requests of a coherent, general reform of the law have been raised - but the more corageous (so to speak) attempt, the so called "Corasaniti draft" [Mon01] [Cam01] has been firmly and rather unpolitely rejected by Mr. Masi of the office of the President of the Council of Ministers. Such an apparently internal and obscure querelle is cited as a particular example of a more general trend in Italian politics and law-making process - and, consequently, in copyright-related areas as well - whereas the general goal of producing a good, balanced and fair legislation is often sacrificed in the name of more or less petty "fights for power", if not because of well-organized political pressure by lobbying groups.

The current version of Italian author's rights law is available at

Implementing Act

Bibliography/References

[Mon01] A. Monti, Timide e insufficienti proposte contro i padroni delle idee, Interlex, 03/11/05, available at http://www.interlex.it/copyright/amonti80.htm

[Cor01] M. Cammarata, La “bozza Corasaniti” è solo un piccolo passo, Interlex, 03/11/05, available at http://www.interlex.it/copyright/piccolopasso.htm