Copyright Holders in Italy Granted Power to Block IPs Without Judicial Oversight

24 points by andrew-ld 2y ago ↗ HN

in Italy after the unanimous approval of law 93/2023 (https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/2023/07/24/23G00103/sg), copyright holders will be able to force all Italian internet providers to block access to a certain ip and/or internet domain, the penalty to those who refuse is a hefty fine, all internet providers within 30 minutes of the blocking request will have to confirm that they have blocked the resource to avoid more hefty fines.

This law will give enormous power to private companies, since all blocking requests ARE NOT SUPERVISED BY HUMANS, no judge or law enforcement will have to confirm the blocking, anyone who owns copyrighted content will be able to access a ticket platform (https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-shield-insane-iptv-blocking-system-revealed-and-easily-located-230819/) and enter a new ip and/or domain to be blocked (all internet providers will have to handle the ticket in maximum 30 minutes and confirm the blocking).

There is currently no whitelisting system to prevent critical services from being blocked by mistake, there is great concern among industry experts in Italy about the consequences of these blocks, already in Austria a similar law was rolled back (https://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-blocking-banned-after-anti-piracy-court-order-hit-cloudflare-230811/) since several times blocks have been issued against CDNs.

this law could conflict with net neutrality directives imposed by the european union, already telecoms regulator "Telekom Control Commission (TKK)" of austria after a series of reports (https://www.rtr.at/TKP/was_wir_tun/telekommunikation/weitere-regulierungsthemen/netzneutralitaet/nn_procedures.de.html) found that blocking ip addresses (for the purpose of preventing access to copyright infringing sites) could violate net neutrality

2 comments

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sircastor 2y ago ↗

I wonder if there are opportunities to abuse this From the other side, so to speak. There have occasionally been shows that have, without permission, shown some random code or PCB.

I wonder if an aggressive individual could block streaming services or some such. And how long it would take for the hasty repeal of the law.

andrew-ld 2y ago ↗

the law is still in a state where it has not been implemented since the technical part is missing, the body that is dealing with it is agcom (an Italian state agency for telecommunications), the problem is that the platform is not developed by the state but the Italian Football league provided their platform to agcom for free and agcom accepted it without asking any questions.

the problem is that this platform is not neutral, the Football league delegated to an espect copyright protection company to develop it, they have the full power of this platform.

the creators of the platform were the same ones who lobbied the Italian state to convince them in making a law that allows them to be able to block any ip or domain within 30 minutes and without any verification