Derek Slater points to the Sony Playstation case, where an Italian judge said (as paraphrased by Derek):

Sony's protections were not about preventing piracy, but about preventing competition, innovation, and consumer uses. He makes a distinction between "machine sellers" and copyright holders under the Italian DMCA, affirming implicitly that copyright law wasn't meant to protect the former in this way.

Nice to know that there is some reason being applied to the new European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD - see the Italian version here).