After almost two years of delays, the most controversial part of the new Italian law against piracy is finally launched: fines for pirate service users. The Di Finanza Guard, the Special Police Force under the Minister of Economy and Finance Italian, has announced the first round of fines at a conference designed to warn the general population.
In total, 2,282 people have been finedwith amounts that begin in the 154 euros, for connecting to an IPTV Pirate service that was dismantled last October; The fines have been sent throughout the country, although the illegal service was located in Lecce. At the press conference, the authorities have stressed that this is only the principle: there are already operations on the way to identify the subscribers of other IPTV Pirates services, and three prosecutors have initiated investigations to identify more objectives.
Fines for pirate service users are part of The same Italian law that introduced the so -called ‘Piracy Shield’the blocking system that forces operators to limit access to services under order of the owners of the Rights of Series A, also known as the Calcium League. These blockages are made without a court order and within a maximum period of 30 minutes, and have caused a multitude of collateral victims, including popular services such as Google Drive, which have been blocked without having anything to do with piracy or football; A situation similar to the one that is being given in Spain with the blockages ordered by LaLiga.
The law was born with controversy from the first moment, taking into account that it was introduced by the Italian senator Claudio Lotito, who is also the owner of Lazio, one of the greatest Italian clubs; besides, The Piracy Shield system was developed by series A and ‘donated’ to AGCOM, the maximum telecommunications regulator, to implement it. Until now, Serie A and the owners of their rights are the only users of Piracy Shield and those who can order immediate mass blocks.
Although Piracy Shield has already been running for more than a year, fines to users have had a greater difficulty to get ahead. The greatest obstacle is in the user identificationboth for the technical and legal issue; Last September, the AGCom, the Di Finanza Guard and the Rome Prosecutor’s Office signed a “Memorandum of Agreement” that put the basis for sharing the necessary data to initiate the process.
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The fines sent can now be the first result of this collaboration, with the police potentially sharing the data obtained from the pirate servers with the Prosecutor’s Office and with the regulator, although this has not been confirmed. The fines start from 154 euros, although the law contemplates that can reach 5,000 euros In cases of recidivism.
The news of the fines has been received with joy by Lotito, stating that “You can no longer joke” on piracy and that those who cross the line will suffer “personal and financial repercussions”, according to Torrentfreak. For its part, the series A warns that “no one who commits a crime of piracy in Italy can rest calm.”
