Italy - pirate music dealer fined 363,000 euros

Milan, 22 February 2007

Fiscal Police (GdF) from Desenzano raided the home of a man involved in the sale of pirate CDs and DVDs, on receipt of a search order signed by the Public Prosecutor.

The Fiscal Police were assisted by specialist music, video and software anti-piracy units. During the raid, three hard disks - each with more than 120 gigabytes of copyright protected works - were seized, in addition to 427 burned CDs and DVDs that were ready for shipment.

Most of the discs' content was proved to have originally been downloaded from peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The suspect is now facing a criminal sentence of up to four years imprisonment and in the interim the Fiscal Police have issued him with an administrative fine of 363,000 euros.