The anti-penetration platform is active. Agcom has confirmed the activation from today, February 1st, of the system which has actually been named Piracy Shield. Anti-piracy shield. Four months after the technical round table last September, the platform is active. It will allow what Lega Serie A has been asking for years: blocking any pirated streaming broadcast within 30 minutes and the reported sites. The first match that will see the platform active will be Lecce Fiorentina on Friday. Even if for everyone the first real test will be Inter Juventus, scheduled for Sunday evening.
How the Piracy Shield, the anti-pezzotto, works
The platform will be a communication center for numerous stakeholders. The owners of the rights to sporting events, the operators, those who will receive the reports, those who will have to block the broadcasts. It is among these subjects that the very effectiveness of the Privacy Shield is at stake. As Italian Tech explained last March, when the introduction of the platform was discussed for the first time, the rights holders will initially be responsible for reporting a pirated broadcast.
They will communicate this to the platform which will generate an ‘alert’, which will then be distributed to the providers (communications operators). Finally, the providers – around a hundred who have joined – have the task of blocking broadcasts. Within 30 minutes.
It is easy to understand how the platform will work if and only if the necessary conditions are met: the immediacy of communication, the immediacy of the response, the immediacy of the block. Since these are events that last 90 minutes and transmitted by ‘pirates’ capable of generating new IP addresses and transmissions very easily, time is the key factor.
Piracy Shield: what happens if an illegal site is reported
An example to better understand what could happen. If a match is broadcast from a pirate site, for example, Calciogratis.com, the IP address of this site (the internet protocol, a sort of identity card for the sites, a code that identifies them) will be reported and blocked by the providers . Until this platform it was not possible to block a site at IP level, and this is the main innovation of the Privacy Shield.
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Now not only can it be blocked, but Agcom can do it urgently by sending a ticket to the providers. Which will have to include costs to adapt to requests. The platform was donated by Lega Serie A to Agcom. It was created by a Milanese startup, Sp Tech, an offshoot of the Previti Law Firm created to develop platforms to defend copyright and online reputation through, as stated on the website, constant monitoring of the web and social media. This weekend we will have to understand if everything will work.
What can hinder the effectiveness of the Piracy Shield
There are doubts. And possible obstacles. The main ones, Tommaso Grotto, co-founder of Kopjra, explains to Italian Tech, are three. The first is “the burden on rights holders to carry out, internally or with the help of highly specialized third-party companies, proactive cyber intelligence activities to identify in real time, i.e. during live events, free and illegal illegal IPTV payment”. They will have to analyze them, extract the IP addresses and produce digital evidence to support the illicit nature of the phenomenon. The second is a question of timing and specialization.
In fact, the owners will have to produce “detailed documentation of the activity carried out” which they will have to send to Agcom. An activity that requires skills, research and documentation time which will have to “add to the 30 minutes foreseen for the inhibition”, he explains. Finally, there is the risk of inhibiting “IP addresses that do not relate exclusively to illicit activities and the problem connected to the timing of unblocking the reported and inhibited IPv4s, since, to date, they are to be considered scarce and, therefore, precious resources”, together with the dubious willingness to collaborate “on the part of entities without headquarters in Italy or the European Union”.
What are the consequences for those who watch pirated streaming matches
Doubts that will be analyzed in the next few hours. Together with those regarding what will happen to users of illegal services. Anyone who watches pirated games on the internet, or has a device to do so. A little piece. Sanctions that are not being introduced, but are already there.
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“Piracy Shield does not introduce any additional sanctioning mechanisms for users of illegal subscriptions. In fact, sanctions have already been foreseen for decades in the current regulatory system”, adds Grotto. “In any case, cyber piracy is not only illegal by definition but exposes users to significant IT risks,” he concludes.