L'e-Publishing in Italia nel 2001 : a che punto è la riforma dell'editoria? [Paper presented at the Italian Session of Online Information Meeting 2001 - London, 5 december 2001, and at Seminario AIDA "L'editoria elettronica: nuove leggi e vecchia economia", Milano, Palazzo delle Stelline, 15 march 2002]

The article examines the two laws recently approved by the Italian Parliament, no. 62 regulating publishing and no. 248 regulating copyright, and the way these may affect both the off-line and the on-line publishing up to 2001. Provocatively, the author reads the new legal encadrement as dramatically insuffi cient to set to order the multifaceted and sometime thorny relations among all the actors of the publishing world; the law is thus seen as being altogether incapable of opening a true new course. Looking out on a wider perspective, the international context is also far from showing clear guidelines. Indeed, quite differently, contradictions do emerge when agents varying from public institutions engaged for open sources, publishers concerned with copyright protection, to newly-born information services needs are forcely bound to interrelation. The fast-changing publishing world is less and less bound to the fixity of print as it moves more and more towards electronic