I'm a journalist living and working in Italy.

We have an unbelievable situation here: on the one hand a government that is encouraging broadband with handouts of €75+ to new users, magazines that give detailed descriptions of how to join p2p groups and download music and films for free, a whole industry purring with happiness and the number of new users flying sky high.

Suddenly a month ago, the new law is passed outlawing p2p groups and offering prison sentences as incentives to close up shop. People are scared and are stopping all use, taking off their programmes and destroying the evidence as far as possible. The telecommunications industry is going to be spitting within a matter of weeks as new adsl users start to plummet.

We all know that downloading music and films is illegal, always has been, and, my personal favourite alibi, it is all down to the cost of cds, etc.. and it is true

But can we really cry about this? I would really appreciate other points of view to put forward as we are losing this fight here, going down the virtual tube!!!!