Our system for bans has improved indeed compare to MAM 0.11.x
But I'm sure it doesn't measure up with the "italian one" from what you've said about that.
Banning people is always a tricky issue. You have to define parameters which allows you to determine who is banned and who isn't. In most games this works with your guid/key/steam_id or something similar.
This approach works so far that a banned person has to buy a new copy of the game to play on your server again.
For other games which allows to change this parameter very easily (maybe due to insecure algorithms (keygens)) this system is broken.
So what other parameters can you define?
Name of the player?
Works as long the banned person is too dumb to change his nick.
Exact IP address?
Works unitl ip refresh or manual reconnect to your ISP which may gives you a new ip address.
Or even a larger range of the a complete IP subnet?
May exclude many legit players which have the bad luck to be in the same subnet as a banned person.
In addition subnets may change, together with your own ip address. So maybe you get a new ip addres which is within a banned ip range. Or the banned person gets a new address which is outside of the range and is the able to join again.
Country?
Technically the same as the previous point but in much larger scale. And obviously you may exclude many potential players which are willing to play legit.
Soooo. From my point of view I'm very interested which approach (maybe a further I am not thinking of) the italian programer is using?!?