Italian government launches “Piracy Shield” in attempt to fight illegal broadcasts damaging Italian channels and streaming platforms. The Piracy Shield was launched somewhere in December of the last year, and its primary goal is to end pirate IPTV services in the country. This initiative is aiming at stopping piracy by removing infringing advertisements in search engines and enforcing Internet Service Providers and VPN services to comply with the blocking orders. More on this initiative in this week’s blog post.
What is the Piracy Shield?
Piracy Shield is an anti-piracy system aiming at ending the spread of illegal IPTV broadcasts in Italy. This initiative will make VPN services and Internet Service Providers to abide by the anti-piracy measures and block pirate broadcasts results from search engines. The system was designed to block sites that unlawfully stream live sporting events, as this issue has been rampant in Italy for many years. This platform is aimed at safeguarding the rights of the content owners and ensuring that the copyright laws are not violated. The popularity of pirate IPTV broadcasts in Italy is mostly related to football and other sports, and over the years many sports broadcasters have been suffering due to illegal broadcasts. As of now, the law has been put to action, although not in full effect yet. The more strict measures are expected somewhere in the end of January.
How Does the Piracy Shield Work?
The Piracy Shield operates on a machine-to-machine basis. The system will direct the reports made by the rights owners to the accredited Internet service providers who are responsible for blocking the IP of a person who’s violating the copyright law. The deadlines for the essential activities to make the platform operational have been set for the end of January 2024. The system will be overseen by the special subunit of the Guardia di Finanza law enforcement agency.
The Role of ISPs, VPNs and Open DNS Services
The responsibility of implementing the Piracy Shield’s directives is not limited to regular ISPs. According to the operational requirements, all entities involved in facilitating access to pirated content, including VPN and open DNS service providers, must comply with the blocking orders. This implies that these service providers will have to execute the blocks requested by Agcom, either through accreditation to the Piracy Shield platform or by implementing measures that prevent users from accessing the infringing content. This may seem like an issue for those who are using VPN to access the streaming service, but this particular initiative concerns pirated broadcasts only.
The Involvement of Search Engines
The Piracy Shield’s directives also aimed at search engines like Google, Bing and others. According to the new law, even if search engines are not directly involved in providing access to pirated content, they are still required to take action against it.
Companies like Google have already expressed their willingness to comply with these directives. The Piracy Shield has received substantial backing from tech giants, meaning that one way or another the notorious broadcasts will be shut down. Now, an ordinary user won’t be able to look up a “watch Serie A free online” in Google and get a coherent result for this request. Most likely, this user will be redirected to RaiPlay website. Google has committed to deindex platforms from their search result pool in order to uphold and abide by the Piracy Shield initiative.
Why is Piracy Shield important?
The Piracy Shield holds immense potential to make a huge leap in terms of a fight against digital piracy. If combined efforts of rights holders, ISPs, VPN and DNS service providers, and search engines prove to be fruitful, there won’t be piracy platforms with decent traffic in a matter of months. It is a marathon event, not a sprint, and the coming months will be crucial in determining its effectiveness.
This initiative is extremely important for the survival of Serie A and other Italian sports events, considering how hard it is now for many Italian clubs to stay afloat. Its success could pave the way for similar initiatives worldwide, resulting in a more secure and fair digital landscape.
Why do you need a VPN to watch Italian TV from abroad?
Whether you’ve lived all your life in Italy and had to move to another country, or simply want to travel but can’t afford to miss a single piece of action in Serie A while abroad, a VPN service on a laptop or a smartphone will assign you with an IP address located in Italy and unblock RaiPlay and other Italian streaming services and channels without you needing to look for online pirate broadcasts on some shady websites with ads popping up left and right. It is one of the big downsides of traveling, since you need to go to a sports-bar and hope that your favorite team’s match is on, and often times instead of broadcasting Derby della Madonnina they will air a rerun of two local teams unenthusiastically kicking ball for 90 minutes straight. With a small app on your smartphone, you can take your favorite matches, movies and series with you anywhere.
Get VPN today!
Don’t waste time waiting for the Piracy Shield law to come in full effect and block every VPN service in Italy. The issue lies in the fact that no matter what kind of content you’re looking for from abroad, you won’t be able to access it, even if it’s totally legal. ZoogVPN does not cooperate with any piracy-oriented websites or services, nor do we condone piracy. All we do is provide free and unrestricted access to the Internet for everyone. We offer an opportunity for users from every part of the world to stay connected with their loved ones and access their favorite streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video and a slew of others without breaking any law. Our VPN service is a great companion during travels and leisure, as our mobile apps allow users to access public networks without worrying about being hacked or spied on. In times when many VPN services don’t provide services to heavily-restricted countries like China and Russia, ZoogVPN works just fine thanks to our obfuscation feature called Shadow protocol.
Get the best VPN for Italy today!
- alexandra sokolovskaya
