Today the department announced that following an investigation and the execution of a warrant against a resident of Naples, its officers have shut down a total of five file-sharing sites.

A 49-year-old man, known online under the pseudonym “Tex Willer”, was allegedly the operator of the series of sites including ItalianShare, MusicShare, FilmShare and ItalianSexy. All were hosted in Las Vegas and are currently down.

Together they reportedly had in excess of 136,000 subscribers and carried 31,600 links to movies, music, TV shows, software, games and pornography indexed on BitTorrent, cyberlockers and eDonkey networks.

As is common in such investigations, emphasis is being placed on the fact that the sites made music, movies and games available before their commercial release.

Furthermore, since the sites had advertising and donation accounts operating through PayPal, Guardia di Finanza are framing their investigation as one against for-profit piracy and tax evasion.

With assistance from FPM (Federation Against Music Piracy), AESVI (Italian Entertainment Software Publishers Association) and movie anti-piracy group FAPAV, complaints were filed against three alleged leaders of the websites along with the seizure of computer equipment.

The investigation is still ongoing, with GdF noting that seized data will “provide specific facts relating to those who were responsible for illegally sharing tens of thousands of protected copyright works online.”

In April, Italy censored torrent search engine BTjunkie but in response to its owner creating a proxy site to unblock access, GdF quickly took the proxy site down.

Source: Cybercrime Police Shut Down Five File-Sharing Sites

France and New Zealand have already signed this three-strikes approach into law, and a recent proposal from the Italian government shows that they are considering doing the same. However, unlike we’ve seen thus far, the Italian plan is not exactly the graduated response that other countries have adopted.

One accusation is all it takes to lose your Internet connection.

The lawmakers suggest two articles that will amend current copyright legislation. Although some of the text is open to interpretation, it is clear that the draft suggests far-reaching anti-piracy measures.

One of the most worrying changes for the public is that Internet providers have to disconnect subscribers upon receiving a single infringement notice. The legitimacy of the notification is not verified and the appeal options appear to be limited. In addition, the proposal also allows “interested patries” who are not the copyright holder to file complaints. To prevent pirates from sneaking back online, ISPs are further required to keep a blacklist of all copyright offenders.

The one-strike disconnection proposal and the backlist are obviously worrying for Italian consumers, but the draft legislation also targets online service providers. For instance, the proposal specifically requires ISPs to censor content deemed to be copyright infringing. If they fail to do so, they face both civil and criminal liability.

In addition, all companies that provide services or sell goods online would have to actively prevent direct or indirect copyright infringement. This could spell trouble for Google, which refers users to a lot of copyrighted material through its search engine and hosts this content on YouTube. Also, it would require companies like eBay to check if users own the copyrights to the goods they sell online.

Needless to say, news of the proposed law has many Italians worried and has also reached Member of European Parliament Marietje Schaake who asked the EU Commission if Italy is allowed to go this far.

“Via the press it has come to my attention that the Italian Parliament is currently considering a draft law by which internet users can be disconnected and blacklisted if they have been accused on an intellectual property infringement. The accusation does not necessarily need to originate from the rights holder of the work in question,” she writes.

Schaake then explains that since the Italian proposal violates several EU laws and principles, she wants to hear the European Commission’s opinion on the issue. Schaake further asked the European Commission whether it’s possible to prevent member states from disconnecting citizens from the Internet.

Earlier this year a report from the UN’s Human Rights Council labeled Internet access a human right, arguing that laws which allow for the disconnection of Internet users are disproportionate and should be repealed. Nevertheless, it appears that the Italian lawmakers are determined to push their plan forward.

Source: Italy Proposes Draconian One-Strike Anti-Piracy Law

When BTjunkie was censored in Italy earlier this year, the site’s owner quickly launched a proxy site at the domain proxyitalia.com. The site is a general purpose proxy service which allows Italians to browse the Internet from a foreign IP-address, including blocked sites such as BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay.

Although there are thousands of sites like this, the Italian authorities classified proxyitalia.com as illegal. A few days ago the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the police division tasked with cybercrime cases, took the proxy site offline after a request from Cagliari deputy prosecutor Giangiacomo Pilia.

But BTjunkie isn’t going to cave in this fast. After being censored again BTjunkie’s owners launched a new proxy service, but one with a twist. Instead of hosting the proxy on its own domain and servers, BTjunkie is now using Google’s services.

“The Italian police have taken freedom of speech censorship to a new low with the blocking of a general purpose proxy. As strong advocates of freedom of speech and open Internet, we feel an overwhelming duty to teach the Italian police a proper lesson on how futile their attempts to silence these fundamental freedoms are,” BTjunkie’s owner explains to TorrentFreak.

“First we will spread the word to Italians on how to use a general purpose Google proxy. We will advertise this address on our website and e-mail over a half million registered Italians. Next we will launch a new e-mail notification tool to make it easier for even more Italians to stay up to date with new ways to circumvent any further blocks,” he added.

Indeed, it only took a few minutes to start a new proxy on Google’s services, and BTjunkie’s half million Italian members were quickly notified. Not exactly the result the Italian authorities were looking for.

BTjunkie’s owner, however, believes that it is his duty to stand up against what he feels is blatant censorship.

“As the police continue to push the line of Internet censorship, I hope that Italians wake up and take a stand for their right to communicate on the Internet. Because right now, Italian Internet policies are more like China’s then a Western democracy,” he said.

BTjunkie’s owner is not the only one who’s surprised by the far reaching actions of the Italian authorities. Several UK Internet providers have expressed their concerns over the recent censorship attempts in Italy.

“This demonstrates a concern with blocking in that it can be a slippery slope to censorship and blocking of legitimate sites,” TalkTalk’s Executive Director of Strategy and Regulation, Andrew Heaney said in a comment.

Moving to Google seems to limit the options for the Cagliari deputy prosecutor to crack down on the new proxy. Unless they want to take on Google, and even if they do we have a feeling that a new proxy will surface soon again. It’s a battle that can’t be won.

To quote John Gilmore once again: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

Source: Google Helps Italians to Unblock Their Favorite Torrent Site

This week it turned out that not all Internet providers were complying with this second court order, which prompted the Sardinian prosecutor to sue these ISPs for aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringement.

But even if all ISPs block BTjunkie there are still several ways to access the site from Italy, through a proxy site for example.

When BTjunkie’s owner heard that Italy had blocked his site he decided to register the domain proxyitalia.com. “I’m disappointed with the Italian judicial system,” he told TorrentFreak at the time. “We will do our best to fight for Italian people’s right to communicate.”

A few hours later the new domain was hosting a general purpose proxy service which allows Italians to browse the Internet from a foreign IP-address. The added benefit is of course that censored websites such as BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay are readily accessible. Or were accessible, we should say.

Yesterday the Italian authorities decided to step up their anti-piracy actions and block access to the proxy site as well. The Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian police tasked with cybercrime cases, took out the site after a request from Cagliari deputy prosecutor Giangiacomo Pilia.

According to the authorities proxyitalia.com was acting illegally by allowing Italians access to BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay. This far-reaching intervention means that practically all proxy sites and VPN services located outside of Italy can be branded as illegal.

Following the logic of the Italian prosecutor means that the authorities will have to add thousands of sites and services to their blacklist in order to fully block the two torrent sites. Even then, it takes only a few hours to set up a new proxy site, so this cat and mouse game will never end.

BTjunkie’s owner told TorrentFreak that he’s in utter disbelief following the latest developments in Italy. He’s not going to give up yet though, and will try once more to help out BTjunkie’s Italian users.

“I’m going to offer the same type of proxy site, but hosted at Google apps this time. Let’s see if the police will ban Google’s IP-addresses as well,” he told us.

More info on the new proxy site will become available in the days to come.

Source: Italy Censors Proxy That Bypasses BTjunkie and Pirate Bay Block

The owner of BTjunkie was not informed about the action. “I’m disappointed with the Italian judicial system,” he tol TorrentFreak at the time. “We will do our best to fight for Italian people’s right to communicate.”

This promise was kept and a few days later BTjunkie launched a proxy site which allowed Italian users to circumvent the block. However, for many Italians the proxy wasn’t needed as the ISPs Fastweb and NGI reportedly failed to block the popular torrent site.

This failure to comply with the court order has now prompted the Cagliari court to launch a criminal investigation into both ISPs who are suspected of aiding and abetting online copyright infringement. This is the first case in Italy where Internet providers are being held liable for the copyright-infringing actions of their subscribers.

The case against the two ISPs was prompted by an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian police force with responsibility for dealing with cybercrime. They regularly monitor the traffic levels of ‘pirate’ sites and found that not all Italian ISPs were adhering to the court order.

As expected, the legal action was welcomed by the Italian music industry group FIMI, who previously called for a total blackout of all piracy-related websites.

“We believe the action brought by the judiciary of Cagliari sends a very important signal that lawlessness can not be tolerated or encouraged in any way. Especially not from companies that offer telecommunication services, who have a key role in stopping copyright violations as required by law,” FIMI’s president Enzo Mazza said commenting on the news.

According to a response from Fastweb, the whole case stems from a technical failure. The Internet provider today stated that it was never their intention to allow subscriber access to BTjunkie, and actually resolved the error as soon as the news broke.

BTjunkie’s blockade is not the first Italian attempt at blacking out a popular torrent site. The court order is similar to an earlier Italian block of The Pirate Bay that was first handed down in 2008. After an appeal process of nearly two years, The Pirate Bay was eventually blocked both completely and permanently last year.

Whether Fastweb and NGI’s failure to block BTjunkie was an accident or a deliberate attempt to bypass the court order will become clear in the coming weeks.

Source: Italian ISPs Sued For Ignoring BTjunkie Blockade

Local authorities claim that BTjunkie was one of the most frequently visited BitTorrent sites in the country, with over half a million visitors from Italy every day. In addition, they claim that aside from downloading music and movies, it was also possible to stream soccer matches of Italy’s top competition – the Serie A – via the site.

The court order follows an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), an Italian police force with responsibility for dealing with cybercrime, and falls under operation “Poisonous Dahlia.” The name of the operation references Dahlia TV, a pay-per-view television network that shut down in March due to financial problems. Among other things, Dahlia TV was offering live soccer matches of the Serie A soccer competition.

According to the prosecutor BTjunkie is in part responsible for Dahlia TV shutting down, as it allegedly offered streams of the soccer matches that the television network broadcasted. This appears to be a misunderstanding, as BTjunkie is a regular torrent indexer that is not involved in streaming in any way.

TorrentFreak briefly spoke to BTjunkie’s owner who was surprised by the developments in Italy. He’s currently considering how to respond and whether there are ways to circumvent the blockade, but he told us that he does not intend to appeal the court’s decision.

“I’m disappointed with the Italian judicial system. We will do our best to fight for Italian peoples right to communicate. At the moment I can suggest to try any of the other popular torrent sites and checking TorrentFreak later for a update on alternative methods for accessing BTjunkie from Italy.”

BTjunkie is not the first BitTorrent site to be rendered inaccessible in Italy. The Pirate Bay was first ‘censored’ in the summer of 2008, when a similar court order led ISPs to block millions of Italians from accessing the world’s largest torrent site.

At the time, The Pirate Bay chose to appeal the decision and it eventually won the court case. The Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement and the block was lifted temporarily, as the case was appealed once again by the authorities.

The Supreme Court then reviewed the case and ruled that ISPs can be forced to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. According to the decision by the Supreme Court, sites offering torrent files that link to copyrighted material are engaging in criminal activity.

The above means that even if BTjunkie’s owner wanted to, fighting the ban will be very hard, if not impossible. In response to the Pirate Bay blockade some people setup a proxy site that offered access to The Pirate Bay, but this site was eventually pulled offline by the authorities as well.

Update: BTjunkie works in Italy via a proxy of course.

Source: Italian Court Orders All ISPs to Block BTjunkie

Google’s YouTube shows even more similarities to torrent sites as it allows users to submit content, with the only difference being that YouTube actually hosts the uploaded files whereas torrent sites only link to content indirectly through .torrent files.

In the last year, three of the largest torrent sites – The Pirate Bay, Mininova and isoHunt – were all taken to court by copyright holders for assisting in copyright infringement, and all three sites lost their cases to some degree. Strangely enough Google has never said a word about these cases other than to distance themselves from The Pirate Bay team after they were sentenced.

Despite this attempt at demarcation, three Google employees are now in a very similar position as the aforementioned torrent site operators. An Italian court just handed out suspended jail sentences to three Google employees for ‘allowing’ users to upload a video that invaded the privacy of a third person.

The three employees were not aware of the upload before they were notified by the police, but they made it possible, much like they make it possible to upload copyrighted content. The similarities with torrent search engines are striking.

It is needless to say that Google is not amused by the court ruling. While the company kept its mouth shut in response to the legal actions surrounding the torrent search engines, they now speak of an attack on “the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built.”

“Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming,” Google’s Matt Sucherman wrote in a blog post yesterday.

This response from Google does indeed seem logical, and we can easily apply the same reasoning to sites that index and host .torrent files. The operators of torrent sites and video sites can’t possibly verify and screen the content of all uploaded files. This is something the site’s users should be held accountable for.

This doesn’t mean of course that the site’s operators should ignore the law. The Pirate Bay for example has always been very responsive to requests from the police concerning illegal material linked to by the site. IsoHunt goes even further as it actively works together with copyright holders and Mininova even allowed copyright holders to prevent infringing torrents from being re-uploaded in the future.

According to Google such policies should be good enough to operate a site like YouTube without running into legal trouble.

“European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence. The belief, rightly in our opinion, was that a notice and take down regime of this kind would help creativity flourish and support free speech while protecting personal privacy,” Sucherman writes.

So here we have Google in a similar position as most torrent sites are in. Although the Italian verdict is outrageous the obvious upside is that unlike the torrent sites, Google has the financial power to successfully fight the verdict. According to former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde, Google got what it deserved.

“It’s good that someone takes on Google for a change. Let them take the heat for once – and let them make sure that other sites that they’ve previously had no problem filtering, that basically do the same as them, don’t end up in this shit the next time,” Sunde told TorrentFreak.

“I think it’s good that time has finally caught up Google. Maybe now we have a level playing field here. They have to take the fight as well. Previously they only said nice things about how important the Internet was, and then ignored all of the things going on. Even supporting them – China for instance,” he added.

“A big player like Google has the financial muscles to fight this thing. And we all know that Italy is just full of rules made by Berlusconi, for Berlusconi,” Sunde said, adding, “That fascist needs to go.”

Google has indeed committed itself, and said it “will vigorously appeal this decision.” The whole case revolves around the question of whether or not the operators of media portals and search engines should be held accountable for the actions of their users.

In recent months Italian courts have clearly answered positively to this question. They have opened the door for a nationwide block of file-sharing sites and with yesterday’s decision file and video hosting sites are not safe any longer either. So the next question is, can Google secure a safe haven for torrent sites?

Source: Can Google Secure a Safe Haven for BitTorrent Sites?

The judge ordered all Italian ISPs to block the site’s DNS and all current and future IP-addresses. A few days later the blockade went into effect, preventing millions of Italians from accessing The Pirate Bay.

Many Italians described the ruling as outrageous and labeled Italy as “the new China,” but, as with most technical measures taken to hinder file-sharing, the Pirate Bay blockade is relatively easy to circumvent. True Pirate Bay fans can sign up at a free VPN service to regain access or simply move on to one of the many Pirate Bay alternatives.

The latter is what hundreds of thousands of Italian Pirate Bay users are doing.

The owner of BTjunkie has informed TorrentFreak that he has seen a huge jump in traffic from Italians after the blockade was enforced. His site today received 50% more Italian visitors compared to a week ago, indicating that Italian Pirate Bay users are not planning to stop using BitTorrent.

The problem remains that the Court ruling sets a worrying precedent, and leaves the door open for many more censorship requests to be made against other popular torrent sites. A virtual cat and mouse game will be the result, with the only beneficiaries being the lawyers.

Source: Blocked Pirate Bay Users Flock to Other Torrent Sites

The Pirate Bay chose to appeal the decision and eventually won the court case. The Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement and the block was lifted temporarily as the case was appealed once again.

A few weeks ago the Supreme Court reviewed the case and ruled that ISPs can be forced to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. According to the decision by the Supreme Court, sites offering torrent files that link to copyrighted material are engaging in criminal activity.

This week the case once again appeared before the Court of Bergamo where it was decided that all Italian ISPs will have to deny their customers access to The Pirate Bay.

Pirate Bay lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus, Giuseppe Campanelli and Francesco Micozzi told TorrentFreak that the Court followed the same reasoning as the Supreme Court, and deemed it unnecessary to bring the case before the European Court of Justice.

According to the two lawyers The Pirate Bay is still considering whether to appeal this decision or not, but that will not prevent or delay the block. “We don’t know when Italian ISPs will begin to re-apply the Pirate Bay filters, but we think that this will happen very soon,” Micozzi commented.

Aside from appealing to the Supreme Court, the Pirate Bay’s legal team is also considering bringing the case before the European Court of Justice.

It is doubtful that the verdict will have a strong impact on the piracy rate in Italy. The proposed DNS-filtering scheme can be easily bypassed by Pirate Bay users and there are hundreds of alternative torrent sites that can replace The Pirate Bay.

Source: The Pirate Bay To Be Censored in Italy, Again

The Pirate Bay chose to appeal the decision and won the court case. The Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement and the block was lifted. However, two months ago the Supreme Court nullified this victory, opening up the possibility for anti-piracy groups to censor The Pirate Bay and many other torrent sites in Italy.

This week the Supreme Court detailed its decision. According to the verdict, BitTorrent sites that host torrent files are playing a significant role in the downloading and uploading process of their users. By doing so they are more than an agnostic search engine such as Google.

The fact that a site is not hosted in Italy or operated by Italians is irrelevant according to the court. The site is visited by many Italians who (in part) use it to share copyrighted material, the Supreme Court argued.

With this verdict in hand, copyright holders can now request The Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent sites to be filtered by Internet service providers. The Pirate Bay is first in line, as its case has now been sent back to the Court of Bergamo.

Pirate Bay lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus, Giuseppe Campanelli and Francesco Micozzi have informed TorrentFreak that the site will remain accessible for now. “There will be another hearing before the Court of Bergamo,” they told us, “which will have to decide again whether to block The Pirate Bay in Italy or not.”

“We will go again before the Court of Bergamo, where we will have ample grounds to defend The Pirate Bay,” the lawyers noted, adding “And we could even appeal the new decision before the Supreme Court.”

The Supreme Court decision has nevertheless set a dangerous precedent. If The Pirate Bay loses its case it is expected that many other BitTorrent sites will face a shutdown order in the future.

Source: BitTorrent Sites May Be Censored in Italy

The Pirate Bay chose to appeal the decision and eventually won the court case. The Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement and the block was lifted.

That was not the end of matter, though. The case was taken to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision of the Tribunal of Bergamo yesterday, meaning that The Pirate Bay might be blocked by Italian ISPs after all.

The Supreme Court has not yet detailed its decision, but Pirate Bay lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus, Giuseppe Campanelli and Francesco Micozzi informed TorrentFreak that the site will remain accessible for now.

“There will be another hearing before the Court of Bergamo,” they told us, “which will have to decide again whether to block The Pirate Bay in Italy or not.”

“We will go again before the Court of Bergamo, where we will have ample grounds to defend The Pirate Bay,” the lawyers noted, adding “And we could even appeal the new decision before the Supreme Court.”

This most recent decision is a setback for the Pirate Bay, but as always the free publicity will only bring in more visitors to the site. When the tracker was blocked last year it only took a few hours before people started to share workarounds to regain access to the site, and the number of Italian visitors actually grew 5 percent.

Source: Supreme Court Opens Door For Pirate Bay Block

They have the fallout from the planned sale to Global Gaming Factory to contend with, a new lawsuit initiated by US movie studios, and yesterday they lost a Dutch court case in their absence. From that action they now face the prospect of huge fines in The Netherlands if they don’t disable that country’s access to their site within 10 days.

Today brings news of yet another upcoming lawsuit against Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm, even though they say they disposed of The Pirate Bay a little over 3 years ago.

Italy’s FIMI (Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana) and FPM (Federation against Musical Piracy) say they will be suing the three and seeking damages in excess of 1 million euros.

In August 2008, The Pirate Bay was made inaccessible in Italy after ISPs were ordered to block its domain. However, The Pirate Bay appealed and eventually won the court case. In October the Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement. The case is now awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court of Appeal.

This new Italian legal action is based on evidence collected during The Pirate Bay proceedings in Bergamo last year – evidence which, incidentally, was supplied by FIMI to the prosecutor in the first instance.

Referring to the planned sale of TPB to GGF and their basis of claim, President of FIMI, Enzo Mazza, said: “The claim is also based on the principle that by selling the site to others, the founders have confirmed that the whole illegal operation of The Pirate Bay was to make a profit and it is therefore unacceptable that someone can take the money and then escape without repairing the damage.”

Peter Sunde’s Italian lawyers, Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Paolo Micozzi, told TorrentFreak that under Italian law, an entity seeking compensation for damages, when there is an ongoing criminal indictment, could either file a civil action outside of the proceedings (i.e, a normal civil action for damages), or bring his claim for damages within the criminal procedure as a damaged party.

“In any case, nothing has been notified to us (as lawyers of Peter Sunde) so far,” Gallus told TorrentFreak. “I gather they have announced their intentions before starting the procedure.”

Source: Italian RIAA Sues The Pirate Bay For 1 Million Euros

But of course, being hacked isn’t the sole preserve of these organizations, it can happen to file-sharing sites too. In November 2008 a hacker tried to gain control of Torrentz.com and at the beginning of June NowTorrents had its own problems.

Today we bring news of another sizable hack, this time affecting Italy’s most prominent BitTorrent site, TNT Village. A hacker targeted the 50,000 member site and made off with the site’s database.

The admin of TNT Village explains: “A son of a bitch was able to discover my password. With it in recent days he has removed the TNT database. I then proceeded to change my password but in the meantime he/they had taken some sensitive data to users, and yesterday they were made public.”

Indeed, a torrent of the stolen data has appeared on various BitTorrent indexes. The data contained within is largely in Italian but a source with an interest in security breaches told TorrentFreak that the archive contains very sensitive information.

The site’s database schema, the actual database with around 50,000 usernames, passwords and emails, a list of site donors and private messages have all been leaked.

The site has taken steps to limit the damage but concerned users should change their passwords immediately, at the very least.

Source: Italy’s Most Prominent BitTorrent Site Hacked

Italy, which has seen its fair share of misery inflicted by Logistep and its partners Peppermint Jam, now has reason to be optimistic that these cynical, profit-motivated operations can be dampened down.

Although anyone with a basic knowledge of the Internet could come to the same conclusion given 30 seconds in a quiet room, the Tribunale Ordinario di Roma has now ruled that an IP address alone does not identify an infringer. According to a Punto Informatico report, on this basis the court kicked out a complaint against an individual accused of copyright infringement.

The District Attorney and judge said that the mere ownership of a connection from where an infringement took place is not sufficient to establish the identity of an infringer or liability of a defendant, especially since other people could have committed the alleged infringement.

In the UK right now, as many as 5,000 or more Internet bill payers are receiving letters through their doors from lawyers ACS:Law claiming that their Internet connection has been used to commit copyright infringement. TorrentFreak is in contact with many letter recipients and we are convinced that many people are being wrongfully accused for a multitude of reasons. Interestingly ACS:Law say that they do not necessarily claim that the bill payer committed the infringement, yet they still make threats and demand settlements for around £600 from that very individual.

They do this because they do not know and cannot prove who carried out the infringement, and simply hope that the bill payer feels responsible for what has happened and pays the settlement.

If it wasn’t clear before to some, it should be pretty clear now. As far as evidence goes, an IP address alone does not identify an infringer, merely a connection, and in the absence of additional evidence – such as that collected following an examination of the alleged infringer’s PC – it means little on its own.

Thank you Italy for your common sense.

Source: IP Address Alone Insufficient To Identify Pirate, Court Rules

However, with the Swedish verdict against The Pirate Bay in hand, the Italian justice authority is now looking into the possibility of starting their very own trial against the Pirate Bay ‘operators’. Interesting to say the least, because The Pirate Bay and those involved with the site have no direct link to Italy.

Nevertheless, anti-piracy lobbyists are already claiming a victory. “The charge is the same as the one in Sweden, so one can be optimistic about obtaining a similar verdict in Italy,” Enzo Mazza, president of the Italian Music Industry Federation (FIMI) told IDG.

The defense lawyers seem to be a little more down to earth. Francesco Paolo Micozzi and Giovanni Battista Gallus, the lawyers for Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that the music industry boss might be a little too optimistic.

“I absolutely disagree with the fact that the Swedish decision would in any way clear the way for the Italian prosecution,” they told TorrentFreak. “First of all, it’s a first instance decision, which means that it is not relevant at the moment.”

“Secondly, the Italian case has many different peculiarities, starting with jurisdiction issues, which make the Swedish decision much less relevant than it could seem at first glance. Thirdly, every decision is based on its own evidence, and in the Italian case the trial is yet to start,” they explained. Thus far, the only binding jurisdiction with regard to The Pirate Bay is that the Italian blocking order was absolutely unlawful under criminal law.

Nevertheless, the entertainment industry is one step ahead and already thinking about how they will divide the booty. Simona Lavagnini, one of the lawyers representing the Italian music industry said that it is not very realistic to expect the defendants to be extradited to Italy, but she believes that fines and a seizure of assets belong to the possibilities.

The Italian prosecutor will decide in a few months whether there will be an Italian Pirate Bay trial or not. The order for ISPs to block access to TPB is currently under appeal and the decision in that case will come some time in September.

Source: Italian Pirate Bay Trial in the Making

Today, in 2009, the situation is moving quickly. In common with situations in many countries around the world, the entertainment industries have all but given up chasing down individual file-sharers, declaring that their new focus will be on ISPs, who they will pressure to clamp down on pirates on their behalf.

In October 2008 a technical roundtable got underway in Italy which promoted collaboration between the music, movie and ISPs. In basic terms, in part it was a discussion about the mechanics of implementing a ’3 strikes’ or ‘graduated response’ to deal with piracy on P2P networks.

France has one of the toughest approaches to the ‘problem’ in Europe, so it will be of concern to many Italian citizens that their country appears to be taking the lead from Sarkozy’s vision of copyright enforcement.

According to a THR report, yesterday Italy’s Ministry of Culture signed an agreement with French officials to cooperate on anti-piracy issues. Furthermore, in an indication of how Italy sees its legislation progressing in the future, Minister of Culture Sandro Bondi said that Italian laws will “follow the French model” in providing strict protection and controls for copyright works.

As we previously reported, plans for a “3 strikes” regime had already been touted in Italy by the movie industry during meetings in Venice, with the MPAA’s President Robert Pisano stating: “Maybe the first couple of times they get a warning e-mail, then perhaps the speed on their account is reduced, and if they keep doing it then maybe their account is closed.”

With this announcement that Italy will follow the ‘French model’ and Sandro Bondi previously going on record saying that the fight against piracy is a priority for the government, it looks like the entertainment industries are getting closer to their aims, not just in Italy but in countries around Europe, and others across the world.

Source: Italy to Follow French 3 Strikes Model for P2P

Of course, the Pirate Bay team didn’t agree, and responded in true Pirate Bay style. “We’re quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech. A lot of smaller nations that have dictators decide to block our site since we can help spread information that could be harmful to the dictators,” Sunde wrote in a blog entry.

The BitTorrent tracker was not going down without a fight, and later announced that it would appeal the decision in court, which they won. The block was lifted and ISPs could again grant their users access to the most frequently used BitTorrent tracker on the Internet.

The Court of Bergamo decided that this block was unlawful, and earlier this week they explained why. According to the court statement (Italian), no criminal court is allowed to issue an order to ISPs to block traffic to a foreign website, based on alleged copyright infringement. Italian law implements an European Directive, 2000/31 CE, which this means that this ruling should be valid in other European countries as well.

“Under Italian law, this is possible only for child porn and for unauthorized gambling, but there is no such provision for copyright infringement,” Pirate Bay’s lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Micozzi explained to TorrentFreak.

“We have to make sure that no legislative bill promoting such filtering provisions will be passed in the future. At the European level, many authorities pointed out the need to find a balance between the enforcement of alleged copyright infringements, users’ rights, and privacy issues.”

In hindsight, the block only helped the Pirate Bay to grow even further. The case generated a lot of free promotion, and the number of visitors from Italy increased by 5 percent. Not exactly the outcome IFPI had hoped for.

Source: Court Deems Pirate Bay Block to be Illegal

The Court of Bergamo has now lifted the block, and ISPs are again allowed to grant their users access to the most frequently used BitTorrent tracker on the Internet. More details on the decision, and the reason why the block was reversed, will be made public later.

In a previous interview, Pirate Bay’s lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Micozzi described the order as “‘original’ or ‘creative’ at best,” and said it should not have been ordered in the first place because of the lack of jurisdiction. In addition, they argued that The Pirate Bay is not breaking any laws since it’s not distributing copyright infringing material.

The court’s decision might set an important precedent for BitTorrent sites in Italy, especially for Colombo-BT, the largest Italian torrent site, which was shut down by the same prosecutor responsible for the Pirate Bay block. The action against Colombo-BT was orchestrated by the anti-piracy outlet IFPI, which also hijacked all Italian Pirate Bay visitors following the block.

Visitors who were blocked from The Pirate Bay were redirected to an IFPI server, instead of a server operated by the Italian government. This is again an example of how lobby groups such as the IFPI, MPAA and RIAA are treated as government institutions. Since many Pirate Bay visitors claimed their privacy was violated, the Italian Pirate Party and Altroconsumo filed a complaint with the ombudsman earlier this week.

Source: Pirate Bay Wins Court Case, Italian Block Lifted

Although Pisano suggests the ‘carrot’ – encouraging file-sharers to use legal services of which he says there are dozens – the truth is they have completely failed to get into the minds of file-sharers with these services. “..our goal is not to punish anyone but rather to give them a reason to do the same downloading, but through legal channels,” said Pisano, according to a THR report.

But it seems the outcome is inevitable – the use of the ‘stick’. Like the IFPI, the MPAA now seems to be taking the line that if you can’t deal with individual file-sharers effectively through the legal system with civil action, it’s time to deal with millions all at once by pressurizing their ISPs to take measures against them instead. It’s likely the MPAA will issue complaints to ISPs about file-sharers in the same way as it has always done – except with a sting in the tail.

“Maybe the first couple of times they get a warning e-mail, then perhaps the speed on their account is reduced,” said Pisano, “and if they keep doing it then maybe their account is closed.”

The Italian Society of Authors and Editors is also calling for action against file-sharers, and wants to back this up with ‘educational campaigns’ targeted at schools. In contrast, Riccardo Tozzi, President of the National Union of Producers wants to convert pirates into paying customers by offering movies at an affordable price.

In 2003, Silvio Berlusconi’s government passed one of the harshest copyright laws in Europe, but it hasn’t really been enforced to the extent the MPAA and IFPI would like. Unfortunately for them, January 2007 saw the top criminal court in Rome announce that downloading films, music or software from the Internet is not a crime if done for no profit. Although this announcement seemed like good news for individual Italian file-sharers, it didn’t turn out particularly well for Italy’s largest BitTorrent site. Colombo.BT was shut down after it was alleged the administrators illegally profited from the site.

Although Italian Minister for Culture Sandro Bondi said the fight against piracy is a priority for the government, it seems that support for the movie industry doesn’t stop there. Bondi previously announced that the government’s movie interests department ‘General Direction for Cinema‘ had announced to the EU it will take measures to give “fiscal incentives” to movie production and distribution companies via tax shelter and tax credits.

In October a technical roundtable will get underway in Italy which will promote collaboration between the music, movie and ISPs, i.e they will discuss the possible implementation of a “3 strikes” policy. Stay tuned for an update.

Source: MPAA Wants ISPs to Cut Off Pirates

The Pirate Bay administrators are accused of making copyrighted material available on the Internet for commercial purposes. Giovanni and Francesco told us that this is a strange accusation, considering the nature of the site. “…even the judge who issued the decree states that no infringing material is hosted on The Pirate Bay, which provides just a tracker search engine,” they told us.

“The judge tries to ‘create’ a sort of contributory infringement accusation against The Pirate Bay,” the lawyers explained. It is alleged that the tracker and the search engine are absolutely necessary for the users to “search and locate the content on single computers”. That’s not all, the judge goes even further by stating that the name of the site, ‘The Pirate Bay’, signals intent to infringe copyright.

The lawyers think that because of the lack of jurisdiction, the block should not have been issued in the first place. They also dispute the claim that The Pirate Bay is distributing copyright infringing material. “We will bring all our arguments before the Tribunal, and we are confident of the Tribunal’s decision,” they said.

In previous articles, we suggested that the IFPI, Pirate Bay’s arch rival, might have had a hand in the block. The reverse DNS of the ‘blocked page’ pointed to IFPI’s servers, although they have changed that now. This is suspicious to say the least, and Pirate Bay’s lawyers told us: “It is clear that this decree has been strongly backed up by FIMI (the Italian IFPI),” citing a press release FIMI published where they applauded the Pirate Bay block.

A Tribunal of three judges will now look into the appeal, and a decision is expected in a few weeks. After that, the decision of the Tribunal can be further appealed by both parties before the Higher Court.

Source: The Pirate Bay Appeals Italian Blockade

The Pirate Bay has already taken several countermeasures to make sure Italians can access the site. These don’t work across all ISPs yet, and those users are redirected to the following page by their ISP. Interestingly, this page is hosted on a server that belongs to IFPI – a reverse IP lookup shows that the page is linked to www.pro-music.org, IFPI’s legal music site.

“I think it’s a scandal,” Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak in response to this remarkable finding. “I hope that people start noticing that IFPI gets more and more into bed with the police. It’s really disturbing that one side of an ongoing fight gets more authority without a legal basis.”

Peter finds it hard to believe that the IFPI now gets all the traffic destined for the Pirate Bay, without any legal grounds, and he urges Italian users to clear their cookies before the IFPI decides to steal them. We have to agree with Peter here, it is indeed very disturbing that the traffic is redirected to a site which belongs to an anti-piracy lobby, instead of diverting neutrally to the ISP or local authorities.

The IFPI was contacted for a response several days ago, but hasn’t replied so far. It’s not the first time that they’ve “hijacked” traffic from a torrent site. Last October they did the same thing with the OiNK domain. That instance was even worse, as they used the opportunity to threaten members of the BitTorrent tracker, in advance of any trial.

Last October, the IFPI lost their .com domain, which was mysteriously transferred to the Pirate Bay, who started International Federation of Pirate Interests. Even though the IFPI managed to get the domain back in their possession, the incident marked an increase in efforts from the organization to take out The Pirate Bay.

Thus far, only John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the IFPI, has responded to the Italian move against The Pirate Bay stating: “This decision sends out a clear message that The Pirate Bay’s activities are illegal under Italian law. The Pirate Bay facilitates the mass infringement of copyright across music, film, television and games. Its very name shows the contempt its operators hold for the creators of legitimate content.”

Italy is trying hard to get rid of their fascist label, and some Italians were quite upset about the Pirate Bay calling their country a fascist state, but scandals like this don’t help to improve this image. Things get even worse if you take into account that the IFPI covered up the fact that the organization was founded in Rome, Italy, under the watch of Mussolini, one of the greatest fascist dictators. Enough said.

update: A great video for our Italian speaking friends

Source: IFPI Hijacks Pirate Bay Traffic

Some ISPs have refused to block the site in the past but in any event, most attempts only seem to provide free advertising for the site and subsequent increases in traffic.

Unfortunately for the people at the IFPI – the driving force behind the block – the results so far aren’t what they’d hoped for. Rather like the increases in traffic experienced at HTTPShare when they tried to block that, this week has seen traffic from Italy to The Pirate Bay increase too.

Brokep from The Pirate Bay has announced that while the tracker has never been “particularly big in Italy”, the recent attempted block actually seems to have done them a favor.

“Since the block we’ve increased traffic from Italy,” he says. “We gained 10 places on Alexa in Italy, and our own stats show a 5% increase in traffic from Italy (which has been quite stable before),” which is understandable considering the masses of worldwide press coverage this week, a fact not lost on brokep:

“It’s quite interesting and my guess (with background about what happened in Denmark) is that the site will gain even more attention over the coming weeks in the media and also get a lot of new visitors.”

It seems unthinkable that there could be any other result. The music and movies industries might hate The Pirate Bay with a passion but millions upon millions of regular people love them. It’s difficult to keep that level enthusiasm down.

Source: The Pirate Bay Sees Boost in Italian Traffic Following ‘Block’

Italy is taking a stand against BitTorrent sites, so it seems. Two weeks ago, the largest Italian torrent site, Columbo-BT, was shut down by the same prosecutor who is responsible for the Pirate Bay block. IFPI, the infamous anti-piracy organization assisted the prosecutor, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if they assisted in this case as well, considering their history with The Pirate Bay.

In a response to the news, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunder told TorrentFreak that they have already implemented countermeasures to make sure all Italians will be able to access their site. “We’re working on setting up a really annoying system for them to filter,” he said. “Some of the ISPs decided to nullroute – so we changed IP so it works for them now some other decided to block the domain name so we added labaia.org, which means “the bay” in Italian.”

As usual, the popular BitTorrent tracker is not going down without a fight, and The Pirate Bay team is determined to keep the site accessible to all Italians. They will also contact the prosecutor, and they invite Italian lawyers who know how to counter this legally, to contact them.

“We’re quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech. A lot of smaller nations that have dictators decide to block our site since we can help spread information that could be harmful to the dictators,” Sunde wrote in a blog entry.

This is not the first time that ISPs were forced to block access to The Pirate Bay. In February, a Danish court ordered the ISP “Tele2″ to block its customers from accessing the site. The decision, which is currently under appeal, once again heated the debate on ISPs Internet filtering.

This Danish court case was initiated by the IFPI, that later tried to use the “landmark decision” to force Swedish ISPs to do the same, but failed. In fact, it seems that filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay is actually illegal according to European law, and it is highly doubtful that the block in Italy is lawful.

Sunde has his suspicions about the reason for the block, he told us: “It’s quite funny that the country Italy is run by the biggest media mogul of them all. we’re his competitors.” Whether or not Berlusconi was personally involved, blocking The Pirate Bay is doomed to fail, and will only strengthen the popularity of the site in Italy.

developing story… updates soon.

Source: The Pirate Bay Blocked in Italy