The game on TV or the pirated first-run movie will automatically stop a few minutes after it starts. The authorities blocked them in real time. And you know those huge collections of mp3s and mkv (film) files downloaded to your hard drive, terabytes of stuff painstakingly archived? Now they will cost us dearly – if we took those works illegally: 5,000 euros, five times as much as before.
These are the two main innovations that will arrive in the coming months, as regards the normal users of pirated works, according to what can be read in a bill that has just been unanimously approved in the Chamber. Its definitive approval seems inevitable, so let’s see how it will change the lives of those internet users who have so far had a less than adamant relationship with copyright.
Which works and how
Let’s start by saying that the law covers all works subject to copyright. Movies, music, matches, books, newspapers (…) and obtained in any way (illegally): in streaming (direct or not), from websites, via file sharing or otherwise. The new legislation thus fills an ambiguity that seemed exclude streaming from applicability (not referenced in still-effective rules, arrived in a pre-streaming era).
Anti-piracy emergency response
The regulation gives Agcom superpowers to block a stream before it is active or at the latest 30 minutes before departure, with immediate action, for “cases of seriousness and urgency, which concern the making available of contents broadcast live, first visions of cinematographic and audiovisual works or entertainment programmes, audiovisual contents, including sporting ones, or other similar intellectual works, sporting events as well as events of social interest or of great public interest”.
Agcom will request the dns or IP block that allows access to that illicit content to internet providers. It will ask for removal from the servers that host the file or transmit the live feed (which however is almost always in vain because they are located outside the EU) and for de-indexing from search engines. Result: it will become less possible to find, especially illegally matches and other events in which there are big economic interests. And once they are found, there will still be the risk of an interruption at the climax.