Piracy Shield' platform also for pirated films, TV series and music. Extended copyright protections

The Council of the Communications Guarantee Authority approved the amendments to the Regulation on online copyright concerning the fight against the illegal offer of live content. The amendments extend the scope of intervention of the 'dynamic injunctions' to all owners of live events, who are therefore entitled to apply to the Authority for infringements concerning audiovisual and assimilated content broadcast live and, consequently, to be accredited to the Piracy Shield platform also through anti-piracy Associations or Federations.

With these measures, it will be possible to disable access to unlawfully broadcast content during the first thirty minutes of the broadcast of live content and first viewings of cinematographic and audiovisual works or entertainment programmes, as well as similar sound works, by blocking the DNS resolution of domain names and blocking the routing of network traffic to IP addresses predominantly intended for unlawful activities.

Whistleblowers are in any case required to make their reports on the Piracy Shield platform with the utmost diligence and rigour and to avoid reporting resources that present a high risk of overblocking. In the event of non-compliance with the requirements and conditions governing the operation of the Piracy Shield platform, the Authority will suspend accreditation to the platform. This is without prejudice to the Authority's power to order the unblocking of resources that have been blocked for at least six months, taking into account the capacity of the platform. Whistleblowers are entitled to ask Agcom at any time for the unblocking of the resources no longer used for unlawful activity.

Addressees of the Authority's measures are providers of mere conduit and hosting services, as well as providers of caching services and all entities involved in the accessibility of illegal websites or services, such as providers of VPN services and publicly available DNS services, as well as search engine operators.

Violations of copyright and related rights by audiovisual media service providers are subject to sanctioning proceedings, as established by the new provisions of the Consolidated Law on Audiovisual Media Services.