Foreign Cloud must block copyright-infringing access

Domestic Courts have jurisdiction over copyright infringements committed through a foreign-based cloud. With its 4 November 4, 2022 ruling, the XIV Section of the Milan Tribunale delle imprese (Business Court) marks a significant point – although still only of merit – in the fight against online piracy – by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian by IlSole24Ore Continue reading “Foreign Cloud must block copyright-infringing access”

Regione Lazio, a ransomware and the Italian public policy about digital technology

The ransomware that hit the Regione Lazio infrastructure exposes once again the decades-old problem of the Italian public policy on technology. There has been a time when the Country had the chance to decide for the best. It did not by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian by Strategikon – an Italian Tech Blog. Continue reading “Regione Lazio, a ransomware and the Italian public policy about digital technology”

An early reading of the Facebook v Business Competence trials

Unfair competition by feature plagiarism. The Courts of Milan issue two verdict that might pose severe problems to the software industry by Andrea Monti – originally published in Italian by Diritto di internet

The two judgments of the Tribunal  and the Court of appeal of Milan rewrite the parameters for the assessment of software duplication in the context of deceptive conduct by favouring the external appearance (interface and functionality) over the traditional approach based on the comparison of the analysis (design) and the source code (implementation/expressive method).

The opportunity missed by the judgments, based as to the an on external similarities of the two pieces of software at issue, is to indicate how Article 2(I)(8) (which excludes from copyright protection

the ideas and principles underlying any element of a program, including those underlying its interfaces. The term program also includes the preparatory material for the design of the program itself

 and Art. 45 of Legislative Decree 30/05 which, in paragraph II, excludes the legal protection of mathematical methods (i.e. algorithms).

The effects of these decisions on the software industry, historically based precisely on the replication of functionalities, and the structure of liability under industrial law are still to be assessed.

Who owns your computer, and more importantly, can you trust it?

Operating systems and software manage the usability of machines by Andrea Monti – Originally published in Italian by Infosec.News

Adobe announces the end of Flash Player and that it will block content based on this standard, which is considered inherently unsafe and the subject of constant security updates.

It is a subject for another article to investigate why it was possible to allow such software (and those of other manufacturers) to burden and weaken computers around the world . For the time being, we are interested in the relationship between obsolescence management, licensing, the ‘ownership’ of a computer (or a smartphone or a tablet, or – when the IoT will, unfortunately, become a reality – any household appliance).

In short: buying a computer does not mean becoming its owner, because its usability depends on the strategies of operating systems and software’s producers to keep it running. The subject is certainly not new (Richard Stallman wrote about it at the dawn of free software), but today it has reached worrying dimensions.

Continue reading “Who owns your computer, and more importantly, can you trust it?”