Hurrah for cracking down on evil illegal file sharers. No? Whatever, four Italians who allegedly shared 120,000 illegal music files have been fined 12 million euros. Which sounds like an awful lot, though these guys were evil, let's not forget. The four, arrested in the town of Melegnano near Milan, also face criminal charges for making the illegal content available via the DCC++ P2P network. The fine is actually an "administrative fee" levied under Article 174 of the Italian Copyright Act.
Commenting on the raid, Enzo Mazza of Italian record industry trade body FIMI told reporters: "This operation sends a very clear signal that the Italian authorities will not tolerate the mass uploading of copyright infringing material onto the internet. People are wrong to think they are anonymous when they post material onto peer-to-peer networks. In fact they can be located and legal action brought against them. The administrative fines levied in this case show that abusing copyright on a grand scale can be an extremely costly business".