PIRACY: EXPANDED THE SCOPE OF THE PREDICATE OFFENSE IN TERMS OF COPYRIGHT PROTECTION

On 24 July, Law no. 14 July 2023 was published in the Official Gazette. 93 containing “Provisions for the prevention and repression of the illicit dissemination of contents protected by copyright through electronic communication networks”. The provision intervenes directly on the Law on copyright (Law 22 April 1941, n. 633), providing in paragraph 1 of the art. 171-ter – referred to by art. 2-novies Legislative Decree 231/2001 -, the addition of the letter h-bis which extends criminal liability also to anyone who “unlawfully, also with the methods indicated in paragraph 1 of article 85-bis of the consolidated text of public safety laws, of which to the Royal Decree of 18 June 1931, n. 773, performs the fixation on digital, audio, video or audio-video support, in whole or in part, of a cinematographic, audiovisual or editorial work or carries out the reproduction, execution or communication to the public of the illegally performed fixation”. Therefore, there is yet another expansion of the number of predicate offenses capable of establishing a liability of the entity pursuant to Legislative Decree 231/2001. These regulatory changes – which will enter into force on 8 August – are part of an overall reform of the sector aimed at combating the phenomenon of piracy, recognizing AGCOM with more incisive powers of intervention. Among these, the possibility of “ordering service providers (…) to disable access to illegally disseminated content by blocking DNS resolution of domain names and blocking the routing of network traffic to IP addresses stands out.” uniquely intended for illegal activities”.