On account of the recent charges by SIAE against the didactic and cultural no profit sites for using digital images of painters protected by copyrights with the request of huge fines, as teachers and educators we signify our worries to the public opinion.
As a matter of fact, applying literally the pre-war law 22/4/941, n.633, subsequently adapted with the law 22/5/2004, n.128, and without specifying any difference between the didactic-formative-institutional use and the commercial one, the SIAE claims the payment of the copyrights for the protected works.
Particularly it maintains that the use, even if partial, of a work constitutes a damage for the moral right of the author and that the not authorized reproduction of these works is prejudicial to the exclusive patrimonial rights that the law recognises to the same.
Here there are just a few of the innumerable, immediate consequences that happen observing this rule.

1. Any school site or didactic blog which uses sound files, protected images, author’s quotations for a mere didactic objective risks huge sanctions and then the immediate censure.
2. The theatre plays and the concerts at the end of the school year characterized by a musical background in front of the public or the parents are unsustainable from an economical point of view.
3. The realization of didactic CD-rom and the creation of hypertexts are extremely expensive.
4. The didactic freedom and the specific professional competences of the teachers are thus conditioned.
   

This behaviour greatly restricts the educational function of the school and the didactic freedom of the teachers.
Therefore we ask to the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of the Culture that the school, within the limits of its own specific educational, formative and didactic functions, can be exempted from the copyright in the No Profit situations and that the teachers can be equalized to the categories which freely benefit by artistic works in a professional No Profit context. We also ask that the requests can be extended to the producers of No Profit off/on line culture who operate according to the cooperative learning methodology (or “approach”), as associations and No Profit communities.
The subscription began on the 28th of January 2007. At present the total number of the signatures is.

The subscription began on the 28° of January 2007.