Game over! The Parliament rejects the Italian SOPA

Yesterday afternoon, the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament has dismissed the so-called Fava-bill, which would have amended the Italian legislative decree on e-commerce and, especially, ISPs liability exemptions.

57 deputies (from Lega Nord, Fava’s party) voted for the amendment, 14 deputies abstained, while the other 363 voted against the bill.
It is a great victory for those who believe that the circulation and the flow of information over the Internet cannot be limited by the protection of copyright or, rather, that the rules on copyright cannot prevail – as stated by the European Court of Justice in the Sabam case – on the other fundamental rights.

As already pointed out in a previous post, this bill had been proposed as an amendment of the “Legge comunitaria” (an act which implements, at one time, the European laws which have not yet been implemented in the national legal system).

The aim of the signatories of the amendment  was, probably, to circumvent the control of the European Commission, to which the text of the amendment itself, as an autonomous bill, had been notified. In fact, according to reliable rumors, the bill had raised many doubts as to its compatibility with EU rules, especially for its provisions on filters.

In any case, fortunately, the amendment was rejected. The hope is that, in the next future, the choices on how to protect intellectual property rights may be the result of a shared discussion, without unnecessary tricks.