Abstract

This note reviews the main changes introduced by a recent new law to regulate the reproduction rights of cultural heritage items owned by Italian national museums and institutes. Until July 2014 to take photographs, even without "flash" or tripod in a state institution required the authorization from the director of the institution; it was subject to strict limitations and the payment of a fee. Moreover the photographs could not be licensed as CC-BY-SA that is the type of license required from popular network sharing services as for example Wikipedia. Even photographs of monuments, both public or privately owned, could be published on the net only after the explicit permission of the owners or of the public custodians of the monument. After the introduction of the new law, in July 2014, taking pictures and share them on the internet has been partially liberalized. The liberalization, sadly, does not include the bibliographic and the documents in public archives. This note illustrates the new rules and provides robust arguments to support the author's thesis that the only CC license now granted is the CC-BY-NC-SA.