Techdirt: Italy Decides That Leonardo da Vinci’s 500 Year Old Works Are Not In The Public Domain. “The Communia blog has another example of something that is unequivocally in the public domain and yet cannot be used for any purpose, in this case a commercial one. The public domain art is the famous Vitruvian Man drawn by Leonardo da Vinci over 500 years ago.”
From ANSAmed, and translated from Italian (an English version is available but the formatting is really bad): Project to digitize Italian periodicals in Egypt. “A project was presented in Cairo which, through the digitization of tens of thousands of pages, aims to preserve and make available to the public the historic collection of printed periodicals by the end of the year in Egypt in the Italian language in almost 50 years, between the end of the 19th century and the pre-war period.”
Clark University: ‘The fantasy of it runs wild’. “Nestled between Rome and Florence, the Italian hillside town of Bomarzo appears calm and unassuming. But with a look down the hill, monsters appear. Just below a Renaissance palace is a 29-acre park, where mystery and wonder emerge from boulders and outcroppings of Tufo stone. More than 400 years ago, artists carved beasts and mythological figures into Pier Francesco ‘Vicino’ Orsini’s land. ‘When you’re there, the fantasy of it runs wild,’ says art history Professor John Garton, who is working on an international project to preserve the site crafted in the late Renaissance period, between 1550 and 1585.”
New York Times: When Visiting Michelangelo’s David, She Brings a Duster. “Imagine a job that lets you get up close and personal — really, really up close and personal — with one of the world’s most famous statues. It is one perk of being the in-house restorer of the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy, where Eleonora Pucci’s task is to regularly dust Michelangelo’s David, which she described recently as exhilarating, if somewhat nerve-racking.” The link is to a gift article; you should be able to read this without encountering a paywall.
Reuters: Italy court rejects Google’s appeal against watchdog fine, accepts Apple’s one. “An Italian administrative court rejected an appeal by Alphabet’s Google against a decision by Italy’s antitrust authority to fine the group, but accepted Apple’s appeal against the watchdog’s ruling.”
The Guardian: Uffizi Galleries sue Jean Paul Gaultier over use of Botticelli images. “The matter came to light earlier this year after the Uffizi in Florence was notified of the garments being advertised by Jean Paul Gaultier on its website and social media. The painting by Sandro Botticelli is the centrepiece of the Botticelli Rooms at the world-famous galleries and, according to Italian law, any use of the country’s publicly owned art to sell merchandise requires permission and payment of a fee.”
Reuters: Italy’s communication authority fines Google over gambling advertising. “Italy’s communication authority said on Tuesday it had fined tech giant Google, owned by parent company Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), 750,000 euros ($766,350) for allegedly breaching a ban on gambling advertising on its YouTube video platform.”
NiemanLab: How one Italian newspaper put Facebook “on lockdown” for more than a year. “Giornale di Brescia, one of Italy’s most popular local newspapers, quit Facebook in November 2020. It was not an easy decision: at that time, the company’s Facebook page had more than 200,000 followers and drove almost 20% of the website’s traffic.”
MyHeritage Blog: 22 Historical Record Collections Added in June 2022. “We are proud to announce that we added 22 record collections with 12.8 million historical records from across the globe, including the U.S., Canada, Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Ukraine.”
Reuters: Italy’s competition watchdog probes Google over data portability . “Italy’s competition authority AGCM said on Thursday it had launched an investigation against Google for suspected abuse of its dominant position in data portability, an accusation the Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) unit denied.”
The Guardian: US tourist injured falling into Mount Vesuvius crater after taking selfie. “The 23-year-old and his family reached the 1,281m-high (4,202ft) summit of the volcano towering over the southern Italian city of Naples after bypassing a visitor turnstile and proceeding along an out-of-bounds path. The man was taking a selfie, according to local press reports, when his phone slipped out of his hand and into the mouth of the volcano.”
Google Blog: Preserving languages and the stories behind them. “Thanks to a collaboration with our global partners, ranging from language communities to national language institutes, you can now discover the languages of Maya, Tepehua, Sanskrit, Vurës, Kumeyaay/Diegueño, Potawatomi and Serravallese, spoken across Mexico, South Asia, the South Pacific, the United States and Italy.”
Bleeping Computer: Italian city of Palermo shuts down all systems to fend off cyberattack. “The municipality of Palermo in Southern Italy suffered a cyberattack on Friday, which appears to have had a massive impact on a broad range of operations and services to both citizens and visiting tourists. Palermo is home to about 1.3 million people, the fifth most populous city in Italy. The area is visited by another 2.3 million tourists every year. Although local IT experts have been trying to restore the systems for the past three days, all services, public websites, and online portals remain offline.”
Reuters: Pro-Russian hackers attack institutional websites in Italy – police. “Pro-Russian hackers have attacked the websites of several Italian institutions and government ministries, the police said on Friday. At 0800 GMT it was still not possible to access the websites of the Italian foreign ministry and its national magistrates association.”
Google Blog: Milan Cathedral, up close and beautiful. “Milan Cathedral Remixed was made possible by Google Arts & Culture technology, in partnership with the Veneranda Fabbrica. This ambitious digitization project led to the capture of more than 50 stained glass windows in high resolution, bringing the Google Art Camera to a dizzying height of 30 meters. This captured the details of more than 2,000 stained glass window panels, many of which can’t be seen from ground level.”
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