Plagio is an Italian term deriving from the Latin "plagium". The crime has been prosecuted in Italy until 1981.
Plagio-controversy
In Italy the crime of plagio was cancelled by the Constitutional Court in 1981 with the decision no. 96 of 8 June 1981, which declared the unconstitutionality of the crime, erasing the legal prosecution, because in contrast "with the principle of obligatory nature of the case contained in the absolute reservation of law in criminal cases, enshrined in Article. 25 of the Constitution. "Specifically, according to Giovanni Flora, professor of criminal law at the University of Ferrara, the Court sanctioned the vagueness of the wording of the criminal case, "citing the fact of impossibility of verify essentially covered by the present case, however, the impossibility of its assessment with logical-rational criteria, the intolerable risk of arbitrators of the judicial body. "
A few years after the declaration of unconstitutionality of the plagio at the presence of Leonetto Amadei, the President of the Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic, Mario Di Fiorino organized a scientific conference in Forte dei Marmi in 1989 on "Socially accepted persuasion, plagio and brainwashing", for the discuss of the new situation.
The crime of plagio has rarely been prosecuted in Italy, and only one person was ever convicted. In Italy the Court declared plagio unconstitutional found the concept to be imprecise, lacking coherence, and liable to arbitrary application (1981)