Are you authorized to fly your drone?

Let's face it: the DJI Phantom is simply awesome!
No matter which version or which camera you use to film your aerial shots, DJI products are just awesome!

Being so awesome and relatively cheap, they stimulated photographers, video-makers and flight enthusiasts to approach the drones and quad-copters world. I found myself very interested at acquiring one of those toys too, but for the moment I preferred to keep my shots at the ground level, leaving the aerial point of view for the future.

Anyway, due to the fact that I happen to be quite frequently in Italy, I was somehow already seeing myself flying one of those drones over the lakes taking some nice shots and video footage when I read a kind of discouraging news on an Italian newspaper website.
As soon as I read the title I kind of realized it was another Italian trick, put in place just to squeeze some more euro out of people's pockets. In fact what the news says is that in order to fly a drone in Italy, you must have a "flying license". Rumors were already spreading around with lessons and certification fees up to 1500€!
The thing that sounded a bit weird to me was that the same news was reporting something like 300-500 currently active drones in Italy: ok, there's a quite heavy economical crisis killing the Italian citizens' pockets and maybe not everybody is ready to put out few hundreds euro for a high-tech toy, but no more than 500 drones currently used all over Italy sounded ridiculously too low!

So, digging a bit more and reading the directives set by the ENAC - Italian national entity for civil aviation - I found the real regulation covering the drones issue.
As a matter of fact, the whole document isn't clear at all (that's definitely nothing new for the Italian standards for regulations) but it's possible to find out that, in general, typical flying drones for photo and video activity such as the DJI Phantom still do not require any certification or license to be used. More specifically, flying drones with a weight up to 25kg are considered flying toys. In this context, the pilot it the sole responsible person who has to self-asses himself and decide if he's able to safely fly his drone.

So, finally, what's clear is that there's a big confusion around the flying drones world, and I think that big part of it is due to the name: taking the Italian example it turns out that a drone, as described in the cited regulation, is something heavier than 25kg, or a remotely-controlled flying item used for dangerous and specific activities.
I think that the situation that arose in Italy is just the first one of a long series of similar ones. My suggestion is to inform yourself about local regulations concerning flying model, quad.copter and commercially-named-drone, especially when you're visiting a different country or nation.

Are you aware about the regulations covering the drones flight in your country? Do you need any certification or license to fly you DJI Phantom? But mainly, do you think a flying license for drones is actually required?