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

24 points

3 years ago

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

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