Italy Plans to Wipe Out Pirate Sites and Expose Owners

[silicon_toad2000]

http://torrentfreak.com/italy-plans-to-wipe-out-pirate-sites-and-expose-owners-131029/

Italy’s independent Electronic Communications Authority is planning to take drastic action against pirate sites and their operators. The organization submitted a draft regulation to the European Commission which allows for blockades and seizures of websites that fail to respond to a takedown notice within three days. In addition, the telecoms regulator will instruct local and foreign Internet providers to identify the operators of the alleged pirate sites.

“AGCOM has introduced these rules through an administrative process, without hearing the Italian Parliament and without oversight by a court, as is the case in all other countries,” Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer with the Sarzana and Partners law firm specializing in Internet and copyright disputes, tells TorrentFreak.

“Websites and ISPs have three days to remove the infringing works or disable access to such content. If they fail to do so AGCOM gives an order to take down the entire site or to prevent access through the IP-address blocking,” Sarzana adds.

Another element of the new regulation causing concern is that AGCOM can compel local and foreign Internet providers to hand over the personal details of site owners, again without judicial oversight. The telecoms regulator can then share these details with copyright holders who may want to take legal action.

[GhostShip]

The helpful part of all this is that these regulations are riding roughshod over data protection legislation and thus any sites mounting a challenge to the terrorist-style take down orders will have a rock solid case against the ISP for breach of the data protection regulations that cover all of europe, this of course would not be the case if a Judge issued an order but if poor law is passed that leaves scope for any sort of legal challenge its simply a matter of time till a party with a greivance takes that route.

As to the matter of demanding foreign companies hand over data to third parties for a civil action, I dont see that happening as in the first instance an Italian court has no jurisdiction outside its borders or territories and to do so might allow for that "foreign"company to face massive fines for breaching thie local data protection laws once again, I supose its too much for these monopoly minded halfwits to hire a few legal scholars before they think up headline grabbing ideas such as these that are fraught with significant pot-holes in the real world.