"The decisions challenge a widely held practice that intellectual property rights are protected for a specified period before entering the public domain — the artist’s lifetime plus 70 years, according to the Berne Convention signed by more than 180 countries including Italy.
More broadly, the decisions raise the question of whether institutions should be the arbiters of taste, and to what extent freedom of expression is being limited...
Court cases have debated whether Italy’s law violates a 2019 European Union directive stating that any artwork no longer protected by copyright falls into the public domain, meaning that “everybody should be free to make, use and share copies of that work.”
The EU Commission has not addressed the issue, but a spokesman told the AP that it is currently checking “conformity of the national laws implementing the copyright directive” and would look at whether Italy’s cultural heritage code interferes with its application."
