Luciano Daffarra
Lawyer, Daffarra d’Addio & Partners, Milano, Italy

This article represents a synthetic work meant to help readers understand the main problems concerning the protection of intellectual works over the Internet. Far be it from exhausting all the aspects of this matter, nevertheless it aims to establish some “landmarks” that may possibly show some ways of achieving a better balance among all the interests at stake, so that the sacrifice of one or more relevant juridical values may be avoided.

Attention is first drawn to this subject from a judicial controversy that caused a sensation in Europe, the so-called “Peppermint Case” (from the German record company Peppermint Jam Records GmbH) that can be summed up as follows: a few hundred Italian citizens received a notice from Peppermint Jam Records’ attorneys to erase some music files, the economic exploitation rights of which were detained by Peppermint, and which had been shared and put at the public’s disposal through the Internet from their personal computers, thanks to the use of filesharing programs.