TorrentFreak

Last week we reported that the Italian cybercrime police shut down several file-sharing websites. The sites, which were connected by ownership, offered links to torrents and files hosted on cyberlockers. However, the actions were not without collateral damage. According to reports from the Italian media two perfectly legal sites were taken out by the DNS [...]

The Italian police division tasked with handling cybercrime cases has announced it has shut down several file-sharing websites. The sites, which were connected by ownership, offered links to torrents and files hosted on cyberlocker services and indexed more than 31,000 illicit items including movies, music, TV show, games and software.

In recent years Italy has taken several far-reaching measures to thwart online piracy, including a nationwide block of The Pirate Bay and BTjunkie. Building forth on this tough stance, lawmakers are now proposing several new measures that will put Internet users at risk of losing their connection after one alleged infringement. Even worse, these copyright complaints can be sent by anyone, not just the copyright holder in question.

Last week the Italian authorities moved against the general purpose proxy site proxyitalia.com because it could be used by Italians to access BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay. Their goal was to prevent Italians from secretly accessing these torrent sites, but this plan backfired. BTjunkie’s owner quickly launched a new proxy, one that will be much harder to crack. This time the Italian authorities have to censor Google’s App Engine to stop it.

Italy is taking its crusade against BitTorrent sites to an unprecedented level. The authorities have moved against the general purpose proxy site proxyitalia.com because it could be used by Italians to access BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay. Following this logic they will also have to censor thousands of other proxy sites and ban all VPN services, or shut down the Internet entirely.

A criminal investigation has been launched against two prominent Italian Internet providers because they allowed their customers to access the BitTorrent site BTjunkie. The ISPs are suspected of aiding and abetting online copyright infringement, after they ignored a court order to block subscriber access to the popular BitTorrent search engine.

After similar action against The Pirate Bay, an Italian court has today ordered all ISPs to block subscriber access to another major BitTorrent site, BTjunkie. The public prosecutor described BTJunkie as one of the most prominent havens for pirated media and the authorities further blame the BitTorrent site for the failure of the Italian pay-per-view TV-station Dahlia TV, which shut down due to financial problems last month.