The massive blockade of pages has arrived in Europe thanks to the sentence exercised by Laliga and Telefónica at the end of last year, which allows them to order operators to limit access to IP addresses instead of domains so far. Consequently, many websites and legal services that share management are blocked at the same time.
The result of this mass block is not a surprise for anyone is up to date with the fight against hacking; There is nothing more to look at a very close country, Italy, where they have used the piracy shield system for over a year to block pages and services, many of which are completely legal.
Piracy Shield, designed by Calcio League and implemented by the highest Italian telecommunications authority, Agcom, authorizes owners of football rights Order the blocking of pages and services directly to operators and without judicial approval; If it is familiar, it is for a good reason: last year, Javier Tebas abandoned that Europe could impose a similar model, but it was not necessary to wait thanks to the decision of the commercial court number 6 of Barcelona.
The implementation of Piracy Shield in Italy has not been well received, or by internet user defense organizations or by some of the main companies in the sector, including Google and Cloudflare. And now Agcom has responded to criticism, although perhaps not in the way these organizations would have liked.
While you collect TorrentAgcom has published the new “technical and operational requirements” by Piracy Shield, essentially an update of the rules to follow for the use of the system. Certain changes refer to the amendment to the initial law approved by the Italian congress last year, as the obligation that the VPN and DNS services in addition to web search engines They also carry out the blockade, which until now was only compulsory for operators.
In this way, all services that offer internet content in one way or another will have to register with Piracy Shield, “no matter where they are”, and even if they are not directly involved in the access of a pirate site. In other words, this Will force Google to block websites within 30 minutesIf you do not want to undergo legal consequences and even prison terms for your employees.
There are already VPN services, which offer a confidentiality to users, who have announced that They can no longer offer their services in the countrySo the consequences for privacy and freedom of internet access in Italy can be noticed in the coming weeks.
Another important change affects the blocking of legal pages, which have already undergone services such as Google Drive and many small blogs and services that share management with the Pirate services. For the first time, Agcom seems to admit that this problem existsSomething that so far has categorically denied despite the complaints of the users concerned; However, its solution may be insufficient, as it depends on the owners of the rights.
To start, for the first time that a limitation is imposed on the duration of blockages, which so far was indefinite, “Only” six months; But it is always undefined if management continues to offer hackers. In other words, blocking the pirate pages is indefinite and the blocking of legal pages is six months, which will probably be not very comforting for those affected.
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At least, Agcom has “dared” to ask the owners of the rights that “Respect maximum diligence and maximum rigor” When ordering services who wish to close and have a “criterion of proportionality and reasonable character”. However, it does not include any sanction or consequence to ignore these criteria, and in fact, the amendment to the law protects both Agcom and companies in the event of excessive blocking which affects fundamental rights such as information.
Agcom continues to ask the owners to determine whether the IP address offers pirate content “mainly” before ordering their blockage, and makes an explicit mention to services such as Cloudflare, in which several services can share the same address. In this case, if there is no “certainty of the dominant nature” of the contents of the pirates, So it shouldn't be blocked. In the event that rights owners are not safe, they should consult Agcom directly. Therefore, it is unlikely that the blockages of legal pages end, at least, for the moment.
