The Senate approves the “Anti-pezzotto” law
The bill against online piracy, which had already received the go-ahead from the Chamber of Deputies on 22 March, was unanimously approved.
The approved bill protects and promotes “intellectual property in all its forms, as a tool to stimulate innovation, creativity, investment and the production of cultural and editorial content, including digital content”, ensuring “adequate forms of support, including economic support, to companies, authors, artists and creators, to facilitate the production, translation and internationalization of intellectual works”.
The bill contains a series of concrete and flexible measures to repress the illegal dissemination of copyright-protected content on the web.
· IP address blocking
AGCOM (Communications Regulatory Authority) will now have the power to order service providers, including access providers, to disable access to abusively disseminated content not only by blocking the Domain name system (DNS) resolution of domain names (such as a www.pippo.com), a power already provided for in the current AGCOM regulation, but also by blocking IP addresses (a numerical code identifying a site). The order can be extended to any further future domain name, sub-domain, or IP address, which can be traced back to anyone, including variations of the name or simple declination or extension (so-called top level domain) that allows access to the same abusively disseminated content.
In this way, blocking orders become much more effective. DNS-only blocking orders are in fact easily 'bypassed' (through the use of IP addresses) and for this reason, these orders were previously easily circumvented by pirates.
· Urgent blocking as a precautionary measure
In serious and urgent cases, such as those relating to the making available contents of a live broadcast (such as, live sporting events), first viewings and events of social interest or of great public interest, the Authority - upon application of the rights holder (or of its licensee or agent) - may adopt a precautionary measure in an immediate procedure without cross-examination. In the case of live broadcasts, the measure is adopted and executed before the beginning or, at the latest, during the broadcast itself; in the case of events not broadcast live, the measure is adopted and executed before the beginning of the first broadcast or, at the latest, during the broadcast itself.
The disabling measure is communicated immediately by the Authority to any service providers involved in enabling the availability of the illegal website or services, as well as to the European Union Internet Referral Unit of Europol and to the person requesting the measure. Service providers are obliged to execute the measure within a maximum of 30 minutes from the notification.
· Sending files to the Public Prosecutor's Office and increasing penalties
The approved bill also provides for the obligation of AGCOM to transmit to the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Rome the list of disabling measures adopted, initiating a criminal offence report. Penalties have also been made more severe for those who create pirate sites ("whoever unlawfully performs [...] the activity on a digital, audio, video or audiovideo support, in whole or in part, of a cinematographic, audiovisual or editorial work, or performs the reproduction, performance or communication to the public of the unlawfully performed activity" for profit), which will be punished with imprisonment from 6 months to 3 years and a fine from euro 2. 582 to EUR 15,493, and for the users of the unlawful services (i.e. those who purchase the pezzotto or any unauthorised subscription), who shall be punished with a fine of EUR 5,000.
· Requesting information from credit institutions
In order to identify the beneficiaries of the proceeds of the offence, the bill of law provides for the possibility for the judicial authority to request from credit institutions, payment service providers and companies that issue and distribute credit cards, even if they are foreign entities, the information necessary to identify the owners of the websites involved and the other natural persons who receive proceeds from their activity of unlawfully making protected content available.
· Technical Table
AGCOM will have 30 days from the entry into force of the law (still in the promulgation phase) to amend its regulation on the protection of copyright on electronic communication networks (No. 680/13/CONS of 12 December 2013) and create a technical table open to telecommunications companies and the Cybersecurity Agency in order to define the technical and operational requirements of the tools necessary to enable the obscurations provided for by the law.
The aim is to make the new system operational from the beginning of 2024.