In a move that caused ripples of amusement over the internet, the Italian Parliament passed a law that has the unintended side effect of legalizing illegal music downloads. How did that happen? A simple misunderstood definition of a word.

In the world of technology, degraded means something entirely different than in non-technological terms. By okaying the downloading of degraded media files, the Italian Parliament inadvertently okayed the download of MP3s, a type of music file that has been degraded and compressed.

The intent of the law was to allow sharing of files for educational purposes. The Parliament wanted people to be able to learn and share knowledge on online, and that means having access to various types of multimedia files for lectures, demonstrations, classes and more. Unfortunately no one thought about how it would affect online music.

It is fairly certain that the Parliament will go back in and change the law to fix the issue, but for now Italian music lovers are jumping for joy at the loophole. It isn’t clear how long it will be until the law is revised, or how the law will affect any pending illegal download cases while it stands.

From the original article (translated from the Italian into English via Google):

In the new paragraph states “is permitted free publication through the Internet, free of charge, images and music at low resolution or degraded for scientific or educational use, and only when such use is not for profit” .

Google translation of legislation here.

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