According to this Reuters report, Apple is now complying with local warranty laws in Italy after the company was threatened by the Italian government with shut downs of its local businesses and hefty fines if it did not comply. Last week Apple stopped selling its AppleCare warranty plans in its retail stores in Italy. The paid warranty program from Apple offers coverage after the limited warranty on an Apple product expires.

Apple may have to shut down its stores in Italy for 30 days, according to this BBC report. Apple's troubles stem from warranties and disclosing them properly to customers in Italy - a problem that earned them a 900,000 euros fine in late 2011. Instead of that standard warranty, Apple has been telling customers about its own paid-for service contract.

A new law being introduced by Italian politicians wants to crack down on citizens who are even accused of copyright infringement. The draft of the law would require ISPs to "blacklist" any citizens suspected of copyright, patent or trademark infringement. If ISPs are not compliant with the law, they could be held liable under civil law. Everybody gets a spanking equally under the law apparently.

Families who have lost loved ones to the Mafia are fighting against Mafia II, One of those people, Sonia Alfano, lost her father to the mob on January 18, 1993. She has come out against the video game Mafia II, saying that it trivializes the violence and murder committed by organized crime. Alfano's words carry a lot of weight because she is a member of the European Parliament. She is fighting to get the game banned in Europe. She is also the president of Italy’s association for the families of Mafia victims.

"It really, really hurts," Alfano, recently said in an interview. "We can’t allow this to happen, our wounds are still too fresh."

Last week she asked the European Commission to consider banning the game.

Just how boring are Rome town council meetings? Politicians participating in the gatherings have been given the okay to play videogames during the meetings to assist in combating the monotony.

Even worse (better?) perhaps, the Metro insinuates that officials were given laptops pre-loaded with computer games. Rome’s Mayor Giannai Alemanno (pictured) added, “Each councillor can amuse himself and defeat stress during our long, hard meetings.”

The Metro compares the Italian initiative to a “fact-finding” mission—to local strip clubs—suggested by members of the UK’s Cornwall Council. Council members wanted to see what kind of “impact” the clubs had on local economies and neighborhoods.

Piazza del Campo is a historic space in Siena, Italy, famous for being the scene of a biannual bareback horse race named the Palio di Siena. The use of the space as a cart track in the upcoming Gran Turismo 5 however, as illustrated in the accompanying video, has angered at least one Italian official.

Kotaku reports that Anna Carli, CEO of the Consortium for the Protection of the Palio is reaching out to Sony officials in order to resolve this dispute.

A relatively new Italian organization has been formed in order to defend and promote the legitimization of videogames as a medium of art, culture.

The Association of Interactive Multimedia Works (AIOMI) is headquartered in Rome and led by President Marco Accordi Rickards, who is said to have coined the term “conscious gamer,” which the AIOMI is based around.

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni (pictured), who in the past has readily admitted to downloading music illegally, reiterated that he still obtains music in this fashion and also criticized France’s “three-strikes” policy against file-sharers.

Maroni, who is in a band himself, first admitted to pirating music back in 2006, and defended the practice by saying that it’s not the same as stealing from a supermarket, according to an article on Torrent Freak.

Maroni added:

It is as if the owner of this computer where I’m going to take the music from did a copy of a CD he bought and gave it to me, something that normally happens when we buy a CD and make copies for our friends.