A new law has been enacted by the Italian Senate with the aim of blocking pirate streaming sources and IPTV Services. The legislation is designed to eliminate live events featuring “illegally disseminated content, including by adopting urgent precautionary measures.” This new law assigns oversight of the process to the Italian Authorities for Communications or AGCOM.
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Italy has a history of grappling with online piracy issues, with authorities and courts previously taking action to shut down such entities.
- Italian Court Orders Cloudflare to Block Popular Torrent Sites
- Italian Police Fine IPTV Users After Tracking IP Addresses
- IPTV Subscribers in Italy Facing Fines and Possible Court Hearings
The recent bill passed by the Senate aims to halt illegal broadcasts directly through swift blocking measures.
Service Providers will be empowered to cut off access to illegal streams by blocking traffic to IP Addresses associated with broadcasting. The bill specifies various measures to block illicit content.
AGCOM can order service providers, including network access providers, to disable access to illegal content by blocking DNS resolution of domain names and blocking traffic routing network to IP addresses uniquely intended for illegal activities. When adopting this provision, AGCOM also orders the blocking of any other future domain name, subdomain,
where technically possible, or IP address, to anyone attributable, including changes in the name or simple declination or extension (so-called top level domain), which allows access to the same illegally disseminated contents or to contents of the same nature.
The legislation also addresses live broadcasts, especially sporting events, that will be swiftly removed using similar blocking techniques.
In these instances, AGCOM and Service Providers are authorized to take down these streams and IPTV Broadcasts without the need for a full legal procedure.
AGCOM holds significant authority in these scenarios and can demand ISPs, search engines, or other online entities to promptly remove the content when necessary.
The disabling measures taken ( paragraph 5 ) are immediately notified by AGCOM:
- network access service providers;
- to search engine managers and information society service providers involved in any capacity in the accessibility of the website or illegal services;
- to the European Union Internet Referral Unit of Europol;
- to the person who requested the adoption of the measure.
Upon receipt of the notification, network access service providers, search engine operators, and information society service providers involved in any capacity in the accessibility of the website or illegal services carry out the Authority’s provision without any delay and in any case within 30 minutes of notification.
This implies that unlicensed broadcasts will be shut down within 30 minutes of AGCOM being informed about the stream.
Any data obtained through these blocking measures will be forwarded to the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Rome for further scrutiny.
Most likely, this will involve identifying IP Addresses linked to broadcasting or viewing content deemed illegal.
Some details of the new bill are still being refined, including the technical prerequisites and tools needed for disabling these broadcasts.
It is planned that, within 30 days of the law’s enforcement, AGCOM, collaboratively with the ACN – National Cybersecurity Agency, will assemble a technical group with operators to define the technical requirements and operational tools needed for the planned disabling procedures.
Within six months of the technical group’s formation, a unified technological platform must be established for the automated execution of disabling measures.
As outlined, a “technical table” will convene within 30 days of the law’s enactment to determine the deployment of the processes and site-blocking measures.
You can access the full bill from the Senato della Repubblica through the link below.
Senate Act n. 621 – Prevention and Suppression of Unlawful Dissemination of Copyrighted Content
While there have been various site-blocking efforts worldwide, the recent bill from Italy’s Senate appears comprehensive and stringent. It will be intriguing to observe the implementation and effectiveness of these strategies.
This report was originally featured on TorrentFreak.
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