The site slowly started to rebuild its community and is now getting millions of visitors per month again. At the same time, however, the torrent site is also drawing attention from various copyright holders.

On behalf of Sony, Warner and Universal, Italian anti-piracy group FIMI submitted a complaint against Demonoid to the Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) last month. AGCOM is a regulatory body that has the power to order website blockades without court interference, if sites are deemed to be infringing.

The labels’ complaint listed several tracks by Italian artists including Laura Pausini, Max Pezzali and Vasco Rossi, which were made available on Demonoid. However, instead of ordering blockades for these infringing works, AGCOM has now instructed ISPs to block the entire website.

As a result, Italian Internet subscribers can no longer access Demonoid.

TorrentFreak contacted Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer specialized in Internet and copyright disputes, who told us that the scope of the preliminary injunction is too broad and disproportional.

“The order, in my opinion, is not proportional. The Court of Rome repeatedly ruled that blocking orders must be directed only at illegal content, and not the whole site,” Sarzana says.

The lawyer refers to a ruling earlier this year, where the Court of Rome recalled a blocking order against the video streaming site Filmakerz.org. The Court argued that partial blocking of a specific URL is preferred over site-wide bans, something that clearly didn’t happen with Demonoid.

“Demonoid would do well to contest the measure which appears to be illegitimate,” Sarzana notes, adding that the AGCOM procedures may be unconstitutional.

This issue has also been raised by several consumer groups who asked the court to review AGCOM’s legitimacy. Earlier this week the Court of Rome referred these complaints to the Constitutional Court. Here it will be examined whether the current procedure violates right to freedom of expression and free speech, among other things.

If AGCOM is indeed deemed to be unconstitutional there’s a good chance that all existing blockades will be lifted. In addition, Sarzana believes that the wrongfully blocked websites may then be entitled to receive compensation for the damages they suffered.

However, until a decision from the Constitutional Court arrives AGCOM will continue to operate normally. FIMI is happy with this decision as well as the new blockades against Demonoid.

“We are extremely satisfied with this new blocking order and also about the outcome of the decision from the administrative Court of Rome on the regulation,” FIMI’s Enzo Mazza tells TorrentFreak.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“Italy’s removal from the Special 301 List reflects the significant steps the Government of Italy has taken to address the problem of online piracy, and the continued U.S. commitment to meaningful and sustained engagement with our critical partner Italy,” the USTR said in a special announcement earlier this month.

What Italy had done to deserve these compliments was fairly extraordinary. Instead of legislating to make a piracy crackdown easier or more effective, the government handed AGCOM, the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority, the power to deal with infringement.

Without need for costly and drawn out legal cases and court-ordered injunctions, from March 31, 2014, AGCOM had the power to order the removal of infringing content or the blocking of allegedly copyright-infringing domains. Remember, these are regulations calling the shots – not legislation.

Now, a little over two months since the start of the new system, AGCOM has been flexing its muscles against what many people believed to be the framework’s primary targets – torrent sites.

In four decisions made public this week by AGCOM, LimeTorrents, TorrentDownload.ws, Torrentz.pro and TorrentDownloads.me were all deemed to be infringing and as a result will end up blocked by the country’s ISPs. The decisions, published on AGCOM.it, also reveal who made the complaints and when.

The LimeTorrents case was reported to AGCOM by local anti-piracy group FPM representing Sony Music, Warner Music and Universal Music. In their evidence the labels provided links to torrents that linked to their works. After a review AGCOM agreed that the labels’ complaints were genuine. Attempts to contact LimeTorrents’ owners failed so they were disallowed from involvement in the process.

In conclusion, and “in compliance with the principles of proportionality”, on May 5 Italian ISPs were given just two days to block subscriber access to LimeTorrents. In general terms the complaints against the other sites were similar and featured both music and video focused anti-piracy groups working on behalf of several movie studios. Those sites will also be blocked.

Notable is the streamlined nature of the process. All complaints were filed mid-April and today, less than three weeks later, the blocks should already be in place. Little wonder the USTR is pleased.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The crackdown was the largest enforcement action against copyright-infringing sites in Italy, and local authorities hinted that it wouldn’t be the last.

One of the sites affected by the blockades was Filmakerz.org, a video streaming portal that offers a variety of movies and TV-shows for free. Mainly popular among Italians, the site’s traffic plummeted as a result of the ban.

But while most blocked sites are quick to throw in the towel, Filmakerz.org decided to appeal the case, with success. This week the Court of Appeals overturned the blocking order against the site, ruling that it was too broad.

The panel of judges clarified that each blocking request should specify under what exact URLs copyrighted works are being infringed, instead of submitting a single domain name. Without the exact location of the infringing content, the court can’t verify the validity of the blocking request.

According to Fulvio Sarzana, the lawyer who represented Filmakerz.org, the ruling is a clear blow against the increasing censorship efforts in Italy. Sarzana says that the court specified two important ground rules.

“The first is that the Public Prosecutor must prove the existence of a for-profit motivation to get the blocking order,” the lawyer tells TF.

“The second is that parts of the site that contain legitimate content must not affected. This means that a partial seizure of an individual URL is preferred over the seizure of the entire site,” Sarzana adds.

The ruling comes at a crucial time, a few days after Italy’s independent Electronic Communications Authority (AGCOM) implemented new regulations that would allow foreign sites to be blocked more easily.

“The verdict is important because it shows that the order to block a site should be carefully decided, and is also important in the light of AGCOM rules,” Sarzana told us, adding that the regulation to block entire domains contradicts with European and Italian jurisprudence.

Following the Court of Appeals verdict, local ISPs have been instructed to unblock Filmakerz.org, which is expected to be accessible again soon. It is unclear whether any of the other blocked sites also plan to appeal the blockade, but with the appeal decision in Filmakerz’s favor it might be worth a shot.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Earlier this year AGCOM, Italy’s independent Electronic Communications Authority, drafted new regulations that would allow it to order a domain seizure or ISP blockade of any site that fails to remove infringing content in a timely manner. The process, which has just been voted in by the regulator and will begin in April, has a couple of controversial tricks up its sleeve.

Unlike similar bodies in almost every Western country, AGCOM can not only order this kind of action without obtaining a court order, but obtained its powers to do so through an administrative process that wasn’t heard in Parliament. The scale and nature of the regulation has piqued the interest of IP Kitten, an industry-respected copyright blog that has declared it the most important piece of copyright-related legislation of 2013.

“Probably the most important piece of legislation is not really a law, but rather a regulation: the Regulation on Online Copyright Enforcement by AGCOM,” IP Kitten writes.

“It is important because for the first time in Italy an administrative authority (as is AGCOM) has vested itself with powers (to grant injunctions) which traditionally have fallen within the competence of courts. Overall, the Italian experiment is not only likely to be looked at with either interest or fear by other Member States, but also inform debate around forthcoming review of the InfoSoc and Enforcement Directives.”

Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer with the Sarzana and Partners law firm, has worked with many sites to lift blocking orders under existing Italian law. He is concerned by the new regulations and how they came to pass.

“AGCOM will order removal without any kind of judicial review. ISPs, consumers, libertarians and experts have vigorously 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 on the Internet by way of orders of removal and blocking,” Sarzana told TorrentFreak.

Dissent is also being heard from those in power, both locally and further afield, the lawyer says.

“Various members of the Italian Parliament (including the president of the Chamber Laura Boldrini) have questioned the competence of AGCOM in regulating this matter and observed that only the legislator, not the regulator, should fix limits and guarantees of civil freedoms. The Foreign Affairs Minister Emma Bonino has also criticized the regulator’s initiative,” Sarzana adds, noting that the regulation has also attracted the UN’s attention.

“While visiting Italy to report on the state of freedom of expression in the country, Frank La Rue, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, expressed his reservations against the new regulatory framework. La Rue, echoing the words of Italian academics and civil libertarians, noted that ‘all norms regulating constitutional rights, in particular freedom of expression, should be approved by the Parliament’,” he concludes.

The new regulations come into force in April so we won’t have to wait too long to see what the system produces and whether rightsholders decide to take full advantage. At this point that seems very likely indeed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Many of the world’s leading sites, such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, are already blocked at the ISP level following orders from various courts. However, going to court can be a drawn out affair and rightsholders have always been keen to short-cut the process with something more streamlined.

Thanks to AGCOM, Italy’s independent Electronic Communications Authority, they are well on their way.

Earlier this year AGCOM drafted new regulations that would allow it to order a domain seizure or ISP blockade of any site that fails to remove infringing content in a timely manner. AGCOM’s proposals envisaged a 72-hour window for websites and ISPs to process takedown notices, which is similar to the system currently in place in Russia.

Unlike under the old system, all this would be achieved without a court order. Only adding fuel to the ‘lack of due process’ fire is the fact that AGCOM introduced these rules through an administrative process, without a hearing in Parliament.

Nevertheless, on Thursday the proposals passed by unanimous vote, thereby heralding the introduction of an efficient process for dealing with unauthorized content and for punishing sites beyond Italy’s borders.

After consulting with the European Commission certain requirements for removing content have been adjusted (only working days will be counted) and it was also established that ISPs are not obliged to carry out Deep Packet Inspection. Some other technical details aside, the bulk of the measures remain intact.

“Today marks a new era for Italian culture,” said Marco Polillo, president of Confindustria Cultura Italia.

“We consider this a landmark victory against the pirates of Italian culture and those who support them. Now we can happily work with information and communications technology companies to develop new business models and increase the supply of Italian cultural production.”

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Enzo Mazza, president of Italian anti-piracy group FIMI, says the new mechanism to clamp down on pirate sites will be much better than the old one.

“The system will be very useful in speeding up the blocking of foreign sites,” Mazza explains.

“Italy already has a criminal procedure in place where public prosecutors have ordered the blocking of at least 18 major international rogue sites, but the ordinary criminal procedure can sometimes take months before an order is issued. AGCOM will solve this in a few weeks or less. It’s a very significant improvement.”

Despite many top file-sharing sites already being blocked in Italy, Mazza says there is still room for more and some may even require additional action.

“Any international pirate site is on the list. It’s not a secret that we will focus on any available target. We will review our records and decide what line will be more appropriate regarding a specific target. There are sites that just need to be blocked and sites where a more detailed criminal case will be the best option. AGCOM and criminal actions can be used in parallel,” Mazza concludes.

Once the mechanism gets properly underway in April 2014, Italy will have the toughest anti-piracy regime in Europe. Only time will tell the effect it has on the downloading habits of locals.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.