Italian Court Says Due Process Isn't Necessary For Blocking Sites Over Copyright Infringement

from the zoom-zoom! dept

A years-long fight in Italy between copyright rightsholders (chiefly Hollywood) and consumer groups looking to protect Italian citizens, took a dark turn recently. If you aren't already aware, the Italian government put in place a delightful regulation in 2014 giving the Authority for Comunications Guarantees (AGCOM) the authority to simply block websites deemed infringing outright, without the need for such pesky things as court cases or trials. Consumer groups immediately challenged the regulation, stating that it violated the Italian constitution, specifically suggesting that giving a government body the authority to unilaterally block websites without any sort of judicial review was a violation of the exercise of freedom of expression and economic initiative. Given exactly how often demonized websites are demonstrated to have perfectly legitimate uses, not to mention how absolutely terrible every government everywhere seems to be in understanding and protecting things like Fair Use, it's an easy argument to understand.

Unfortunately, an administrative court in Italy has chosen to take itself out of the judicial review business when it comes to site-blocking.

The case was initially rejected by the Constitutional Court in 2015, which referred it back to the administrative court of Lazio. Last week this court decided that the site blocking procedure is in line with both European and Italian law. According to the court, the site-blocking regulation is compatible with the European Union’s E-Commerce Directive as well as the Italian Copyright Act. In addition, the procedure doesn’t violate the Italian constitution or fundamental rights in general, as opponents had argued.

Overall the case is seen as a significant victory for copyright holders. Not only can they continue with their site-blocking requests, but the court also clarified that all the blocking costs must be paid by Internet providers.

In other words, it's now open season on sites that rightsholders decide they don't like. No need for a trial in which to prove any actual allegations. No need to prepare a rebuttal from a defendant arguing for their own rights. Instead, rightsholders, such as Hollywood, can petition to have a site blocked and, if AGCOM agrees, the site is blocked without any due process. And, because ISPs are apparently there only to serve failing business models, all the costs associated with these review-less blocks are shouldered by the ISPs.

If you think that the copyright trolls and Hollywood aren't licking their chops to go site-blocking crazy after this decision, you've lost your mind.

“This is a big win for rightsholders,” says Enzo Mazza, chief of the Italian music group FIMI, who says that they have plans to expand the current scope of the blocking efforts.

“Our future goal is now to increase the enforcement of AGCOM to also cover new forms of piracy such as live streaming, stream ripping and similar issues. In addition, we hope AGCOM will extend the blockades to the IP-address level as the Criminal Courts are using now,” Mazza tells TorrentFreak.

And away we go. Licensing groups and rightsholders will now look to slam open the door the court left ajar for them. As the blocks are expanded, you can pretty much count on collateral damage that will harm Italian citizens and restrict their freedom both of speech and access to legitimate internet sites. But no worry, because it's not like there is a court that will oversee all of this. Instead, websites and the surfing public will live only at the pleasure of AGCOM.

That should go well.

Filed Under: agcom, copyright, due process, italy, site blocking

Consumer Organizations And Internet Companies Mount Legal Challenge To Italy's Extreme Copyright Enforcement Regulations

from the fightback-time dept

Techdirt has been following for a while the saga of Italy giving its Authority for Communications Guarantees (AGCOM), which regulates broadcasting and telecommunications, wide-ranging new powers to police online copyright infringement too. That culminated in the first instances of Web sites being blocked without any kind of judicial review earlier this year. Since then, there has been an important development as civil organizations and Internet companies have mounted a legal challenge to the new regulations. One of the lawyers involved in these actions, Fulvio Sarzana, explains what happened:

On 26 September 2014, The Italian regional administrative tribunal referred the question regarding the constitutionality of the administrative enforcement procedures foreseen by a new regulation on online copyright infringement to the Italian Constitutional Court.

Here's why:

the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio required the Constitutional Court to issued its judgment, since it held that the regulation might be unconstitutional, for violation of the principles of statute and judicial protection in relation to the exercise of freedom of expression and economic initiative, as well as for the violation of criteria of reasonableness and proportionality in the exercise of legislative discretion and of the principle of the court, in relation to the lack of guarantees and legal safeguards for the exercise of freedom of expression on the Internet.

Given that the constitutionality of the copyright regulations is in question, consumer and business organizations -- Altroconsumo, Movimento di difesa del Cittadino and Assoprovider -- have sent a formal request to AGCOM asking for the whole approach to be suspended until a decision is handed down. They argue that this is necessary in order to avoid the high costs that AGCOM would incur from being sued by those who have had their sites shut down, in the event that the regulations are found unconstitutional (original in Italian.)

AGCOM has refused to suspend the regulations completely, but it has slowed down the pace of its actions, as Sarzana notes:

in October 2014, the President of Agcom, Mr. Angelo Cardani, indicated that Agcom shall proceed "with caution" , addressing only cases "of real urgency", pending the case in the Constitutional Court.

Although hardly satisfactory, that does show that even AGCOM realizes that there is a possibility its days of unbridled power to censor sites are numbered. Let's hope so.

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Filed Under: agcom, constitutionality, copyright, enforcement, italy, legal challenge

US Government Praises Italy For Implementing SOPA Features The US Public Vehemently Rejected

from the questions-to-ask dept

It's no secret that the USTR has been pushing for copyright maximalist policies over the past few years (mostly done by a guy who recently went through the revolving door to become an MPAA lobbyist). However, one thing they keep claiming is that they're only looking to get other countries to match existing US laws, rather than expand them. That's clearly untrue if you look through the actual language being negotiated (only available via leaks). But, even so, it's pretty clear that the USTR is pushing an extreme maximalist approach. Last week, it released its latest Special 301 report, in which it names which countries are "naughty" about intellectual property. "Naughty" is not defined by any objective standard. Rather, the USTR asks various industry lobbyists to tell them which countries they dislike the most, and the USTR rewrites it into the list. The Special 301 process has long been a complete joke that even many maximalists recognize as silly (we heard the former head of the US Copyright Office once mock it).

The latest version of the report is more of what we've come to expect in previous reports. China has been naughty. India and Spain have been called out of class for a special extra review. Blah blah blah. But, it also notes that both Italy and the Philippines were removed from the Watch List "in recognition of their intellectual property rights accomplishments." Both countries have certainly become much more aggressive on copyrights recently -- and they've done so by being a lot more aggressive than the US. In fact, as we've been reporting, Italy made a dangerous move to allow an administrative agency to issue censorship bans on websites without any judicial process. And, in fact, it's already begun issuing questionable death sentences on sites, forcing ISPs to block access.

If this sounds like the approach originally considered in SOPA (actually, it's going even further than that), that was then massively rejected by the public, you'd be exactly right. So you would think that the USTR would, perhaps, chastise Italy for such an abuse of intellectual property for censorship in a manner that the American public (who the USTR is supposed to represent) have rejected. But, nope. The USTR praises this very approach:

Italy is removed from the Watch List in the 2014 Special 301 Report in recognition of the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority’s (AGCOM) adoption, on December 12, 2013, of long-awaited regulations to combat copyright piracy over the Internet.

In other words, here you have the USTR basically admitting that it approves of countries moving to an approach even more extreme than SOPA. Of course, the reality here is pretty transparent. If Italy and others implement SOPA, down the road, it can be negotiated into various international agreements, so that the US will claim that it has to implement SOPA to "comply with our international obligations." It's been done before. That's exactly how we got the DMCA. Congress initially rejected it, and so Bruce Lehman specifically went to WIPO to get the DMCA put into the 1996 Copyright Treaty... and, voila, two years later Congress said it had to pass the DMCA to comply with that treaty.

The USTR has long been a supporter of maximalist policies. Praising Italy for implementing an even more extreme version of SOPA just highlights how little concern the USTR has for the interests of the American public. Instead, it appears almost entirely focused on the interests of the most powerful lobbyists (who, not surprisingly, are also the USTR employees' likely future employers).

Filed Under: agcom, censorship, copyright, injunctions, italy, sopa, ustr

Italy's First Attempt To Block Websites With No Judicial Review Reveals How Dangerous The System Is

from the this-is-a-problem dept

Late last year, we wrote about how Italy was about to change some of its copyright enforcement setup to give enforcement powers to regulators instead of the courts. That is, regulator AGCOM could now simply declare -- with no judicial review or due process -- that certain sites were infringing and then order ISPs to block access to those sites. While other Italian prosecutors have sought to do the same thing, AGCOM now has the official power to delete websites off the Italian internet if they so much claim they're somehow infringing.

Recently, AGCOM decided to exercise its new power, issuing its first administrative blocking injunction against a site called Cineblog01 -- meaning that ISPs in Italy need to block users from accessing the site. Now, it does appear that the site was linking and/or embedding certain films that may have been infringing. But there are still serious problems with the injunction. IPKat, who wrote about this, details three fairly serious problems with the way that AGCOM handled this.

1. AGCOM declared the site guilty of "massive infringement" based on having just eleven movies. That seems like a ridiculously low threshold. Under such a threshold nearly any user-generated content site might be declared as engaging in "massive infringement."
2. Much is made of the claim that AGCOM tried to reach the operator of the site. They are required to try to communicate with the "website manager." Since the operators of the site used a privacy guard feature from their Panamanian registrar for their Whois entry, AGCOM basically just reached out to that Panamanian registrar, and when there was no response, concluded that the site's operators were ignoring the requests. While we can argue over whether or not the site should have provided a better means to communicate, it still seems fairly weak to argue that sending an email to a third party like that constitutes true notification of the complaint.
3. Third, and most importantly, IPKat checked out the site and the eleven movies in question... and found that they all had been removed already. In other words, it seems fairly clear the site was perfectly amenable to a standard notice-and-takedown type of system, but AGCOM went all in and ordered the entire site blocked.

It's entirely possible that the site had bad actors who were violating the law, but it certainly doesn't look like AGCOM is being all that careful to make sure that's the case, and that's almost certainly going to lead to problematic results.

Filed Under: administrative review, agcom, censorship, copyright, injunction, italy, takedown

Italy's Public Prosecutor Orders ISPs To Block Dozens Of 'Pirate' Websites Just Because He Said So

from the wave-that-magic-wand dept

We've already reported on how Italy's communications watchdog, AGCOM, has assigned itself the power to censor websites based on a copyright infringement claim from a copyright holder, without any sort of judicial due process. However, it appears that Italy's public prosecutor has decided to go even further and simply order ISPs to censor dozens of websites based solely on his say so that they were sources of infringing materials. No copyright holder made any specific claim about those sites. There doesn't appear to have been any due process, or really any process at all, other than that the public prosecutor decided which sites were "pirate sites," and then handed them off to the "Guardia di Finanza" (the financial police, more or less), a part of Italy's Ministry of Economy and Finance, who went out and ordered ISPs to block access to these sites entirely.

Unfortunately, it looks like this is something of a trend, with law enforcement types suddenly deciding on their own what websites need to be shut down absent any sort of judicial due process. These efforts probably make copyright maximalists happy, but they fly in the face of pretty much all of copyright law. They're almost entirely based on confusing law enforcement types into believing that copyright is just like "property" and thus that it can treat sites that are somehow connected to possible infringement the same as entities that traffic in stolen merchandise. There are, of course, worlds of difference between the two, but copyright maximalists play on the ignorance of law enforcement officials in these settings, playing up the misleading analogy, leading to vast censorship and a near total lack of due process.

Filed Under: agcom, copyright, italy, piracy, takedown

Italy Attempting To Have Copyright Enforced By Regulators, Not Courts

from the bad-ideas-at-work dept

A year and a half ago, we thought this plan was dead in the water, but apparently while we weren't paying attention, a plan moved forward in Italy to take significant copyright enforcement powers out of the courts and, instead, give it to the Italian regulator AGCOM. If you want to see a recipe for a bad idea, this is it. Regulators are very much subject to regulatory capture, and a regulatory board entirely focused on copyright enforcement will almost certainly be controlled by maximalists who come from industry, rather than those with the public benefit in mind.

As it stands, the proposal is currently being reviewed by the EU to see if it complies with EU directives. A ruling in favor of the AGCOM plan would have a huge negative impact on Italy, innovation and culture.

If the initiative of AGCOM goes through, it will create an important precedent in Europe, since the enforcement of copyright in the Internet is normally carried out by courts, not by administrations.

ISPs, consumers, libertarians and experts have vigourosly contested AGCOM’s proposal because it could affect freedom of speech as well as business rights. In particular, they challenge the modality whereby the Italian regulator would supervise and tackle copyright infringements in the Internet by way of orders of removal and blocking. By contrast, rightshodlers associations as well as the Italian Collecting Society SIAE have supported the initiative.

The UN has already expressed its concerns about the proposal, noting that handing free expression controls to a regulatory agency, rather than an elected body, is a serious mistake, because if any content is to be removed from the internet, it should first be reviewed by a court. But the current proposal pretty much dispatches with the courts entirely in many cases, leaving the issues entirely up to regulators. Imagine if the US Copyright Office or the US Patent Office got to determine enforcement of those laws, rather than the courts. It would be a disaster for free expression and innovation -- and yet that's exactly what Italy is seeking to do.

Hopefully, the EU will reject this plan for stifling free expression and removing basic due process within the court system in Italy.

Filed Under: agcom, copyright, italy, regulators

Italian Gov't Gives Up Trying To Regulate Copyright Online

from the why-bother dept

Apparently there's been a years-long effort in Italy to give the Italian Communication Authority (AGCOM) some regulatory authority to enforce copyrights online. And apparently there has been some fighting over this (mostly over AGCOM's competence in this field). However, according to The 1709 Blog, it appears that AGCOM is now giving up its goal of regulating copyright online:

Although AGCOM has showed its ability to reconcile the various rights and interests involved in copyright, it will not go ahead with its copyright regulation. This is because Italian Government has not yet adopted the proviso needed to clarify the nature and extension of AGCOM's competence to this end. Therefore, until this happens, AGCOM will not feel obliged to adopt its "well-balanced" regulation.

This, of course, does not mean that there is no online copyright in Italy. Just that it's not being regulated by AGCOM for the time being. Considering just how badly pretty much every attempt to regulate copyright has gone recently, perhaps this is a good thing.

Filed Under: agcom, italy