Huh, I never knew about the copyright discrepancy in Italy. I just researched it since pirated software was available at every corner convenience store in many mainland European countries in the 80s and 90s and I always wondered why. I would stock up on every vacation, at first piling up cassettes for home computers, then later multi-cart console games.
Here's what GPT said: "The key shift was the EC Council Directive of 14 May 1991 (91/250/EEC) on the legal protection of computer programs. This forced member states to explicitly protect software as literary works under copyright. Implementation varied (Italy did it in 1992, Spain in 1993, etc.), but by the mid-1990s the patchwork was gone."
Here's what GPT said: "The key shift was the EC Council Directive of 14 May 1991 (91/250/EEC) on the legal protection of computer programs. This forced member states to explicitly protect software as literary works under copyright. Implementation varied (Italy did it in 1992, Spain in 1993, etc.), but by the mid-1990s the patchwork was gone."