> The Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian police tasked with cybercrime cases
Bullshit.
Guardia di Finanza's first and foremost task is to prosecute tax evasion and smuggling.
Italy is a country with a very high number of tax evaders (I suspect we're among the top evaders in the world), which means that those idiots are not doing their job properly. Really, they don't deserve a minimum of respect whatsoever.
They're waaay too busy getting corrupted from the bosses of big industries who don't want them to stick their nose into their businesses.
Way too busy to bring down proxy servers.
Way too busy, in short, to put some effort into turning Italy into a decent place, and not a nation that others laugh at.
Their remit also covers fighting the trade of counterfeited goods. There are a lot of Italian luxury items being counterfeited around the world every day (Armani, Prada etc), so the GdF was given a lot of power and money to fight knockoff traders. Then the local RIAA-equivalents managed to equate unauthorized copies of digital content as "counterfeited goods", hence involving the GdF on policing the internet -- previously a task left to the Postal Police (the separate body policing communications in Italy -- yes, it's weird how we have so many different corps, no wonder real criminals are never caught).
The GdF is powerful, much more than the average Police corps, and they really don't understand the internet. Nobody can reign them in, at the moment -- some members of government are currently under investigation for corrupting GdF elements to (guess what) favour PM Berlusconi's businesses.
Yeah, Italy is fucked up, that's why I don't live there anymore. Not that things are getting much better in the UK...
I was thinking about leaving Italy too, that's why I'm trying to amass as much knowledge about software development as I possibily can.
And no, the rest of the world isn't any better.
What is true, though, is that in Italy they are pulling your leg (for lack of a better translation of 'prendere per il culo') AND they are no longer afraid of telling you they are doing it. And it's getting worse everyday.
But hey, we're being led by a bunch of old clowns, of which Berlusconi is only an example. We can't expect things to be just fine.
The site BTjunkie was ordered blocked in Italy. In response, the owner of BTjunkie set up a proxy service, proxyitalia. The court then ordered this also blocked.
In other words, guy thumbs his nose at court, court strikes back.
Bullshit. Guardia di Finanza's first and foremost task is to prosecute tax evasion and smuggling.
Italy is a country with a very high number of tax evaders (I suspect we're among the top evaders in the world), which means that those idiots are not doing their job properly. Really, they don't deserve a minimum of respect whatsoever.
They're waaay too busy getting corrupted from the bosses of big industries who don't want them to stick their nose into their businesses. Way too busy to bring down proxy servers.
Way too busy, in short, to put some effort into turning Italy into a decent place, and not a nation that others laugh at.