Since early 2024, Italy has operated Piracy Shield, an online ticketing and notification system that commands ISPs to block sports piracy sites within 30 minutes of notification.
Upon its introduction, Piracy Shield’s blocking mandate applied to online distribution of sports programming.
In mid-February 2025, Italy’s communications regulator AGCOM made the decision to extend the reach of Piracy Shield, which were summarized in early March in a LinkedIn post by AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio:
“AGCOM will strengthen the regulation on the blackout of pirate sites provided for by Resolution no. 680/13/CONS, updating it to the new provisions of the Digital Service ACT, the Anti-Piracy Law no. 93/2023, the Omnibus Decree and the Consolidated Law on Media Services.
The most important changes will concern:
👉 30-minute blackout orders not only for pirate sporting events, but also for other live content;
👉 extending blackout orders to VPNs and public DNS providers;
👉 the obligation to de-index pirate sites by search engines;
👉 the procedures for unblocking domain names and IP addresses obscured by Piracy shield that are no longer used to disseminate pirated content;
👉 the new procedure to combat piracy on linear and “on demand,” to protect, for example, film and series TV. “
The regulation will enter into force once the public consultation is concluded, which will end after 30 days from the publication of the measure on the www.agcom.it website.
“The Authority then approved the resolution reporting the results of the Technical Table, with which AGCOM discussed with operators the issues related to the update of the technical and operational requirements of the Piracy Shield platform, including the increase in the maximum limit of resources that can be blocked with the platform and the methods for forwarding reports by rights holders.”
In effect, this signals the emergence of Piracy Shield into full production for a majority of multimedia content distributed online by ISPs in Italy.
Further reading
AGCOM publishes the resolution opening the public consultation on the changes to online copyright regulation. Press release. March 4, 2025. FAPAV (Federation for the Protection of Audiovisual and Multimedia Content Industries)
Copyright, in consultation new anti-piracy rules. Press release. March 4, 2025. AGCOM (Autorita per le Garanzie Nelle Communicazioni)
After (football in Italy), more protection for cinema and audiovisual. LinkedIn Post. February 2025. Massimiano Capitanio, Commissioner, AGCOM
Why it matters
Piracy Shield has had its growing pains but this has not deterred Italian authorities from making incremental improvements.
“These changes to the Regulation represent a very strong signal in the fight against piracy not only of sports but also of cinematographic and television content,” said Federico Bagnoli Rossi, president of the Italian anti-piracy organization FAPAV.
“It is now necessary to speed up the times and act by also updating the technical and operational requirements of Piracy Shield, including the increase in the maximum limit of sites that can be blocked through the platform and how the rights holders send reports,” he said.
