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Expressing grave concerns over Italy's Piracy Shield system, this January tech and telecoms advocacy group CCIA urged the government to withdraw planned legislation and engage TRIS, an EU procedure which aims to prevent internal market barriers. In a newly submitted contribution under TRIS, CCIA urges the European Commission to issue a detailed opinion to ensure Piracy Shield's compatibility with EU law. Praised by major rightsholders as progress in the fight against piracy, Italy’s Piracy Shield system made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Authorized under new legislation and promoted as a killer blow to piracy of live sports, Piracy Shield’s launch soon descended into a series of overblocking blunders and international news headlines. Realization that Piracy Shield was incapable of living up to the hype, led to legal amendments that contained direct threats against the tech sector. CCIA Intervenes On Behalf of the Tech Sector The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) represents global tech giants including Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Google, and Meta, among others. In a January 2025 letter to the EU Commission, CCIA acknowledged that Piracy Shield exists to protect rightsholders but warned that the blocking mechanism is a “blunt instrument” that threatens businesses and the public alike. When telecoms regulator AGCOM launched a public consultation on proposed amendments to copyright regulations and Piracy Shield’s operations, CCIA took the opportunity to restate its concerns. Highlighting the risk of overblocking, CCIA turned to the blocking requests made by rightsholders and a requirement under Italian law to execute them within 30 minutes. “[W]e believe that the Piracy Shield poses significant risks to the principles of freedom of enterprise expression, as established by European and Italian law,” CCIA wrote. CCIA Urges European Commission to Intervene After months of engagement, including its letter to the European Commission back in January, CCIA’s latest submission calls on the Commission to seize the opportunity to publish a detailed opinion to address Piracy Shield’s apparent incompatibility with EU law. CCIA’s submission to AGCOM begins by highlighting the proposed amendments. “The Piracy Shield allows copyright holders to request site-blocking orders to be executed within 30 minutes, with limited transparency or recourse for affected parties. “These amendments, most notably changes to Article 10 and Article 8 (3-bis) of the Regulation, further consolidate the Shield’s role, including extraterritorial content-removal capabilities without clear coordination with EU law, particularly the Digital Services Act (DSA),” CCIA’s submission reads. “Given the serious implications of these proposals for the EU internal market, the freedom to provide cross-border services, and fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and due process, CCIA Europe urges the Commission to issue a detailed opinion under the TRIS procedure.” TRIS – Prevention of Technical Barriers to Trade One of the basic principles of the European Union is an internal market that embraces the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. Mechanisms that restrict or have the effect of restricting such movement, may create prohibited ‘internal frontiers’. The aim of the TRIS procedure (Directive 2015/1535) is to identify and prevent the appearance of internal barriers before they can have a negative effect on the market. Under TRIS, notifications sent to the European Commission may lead to a legal analysis in light of EU law. CCIA’s submission draws attention to key issues that it believes should be assessed by the Commission, summarized as follows: Lack of procedural safeguards and transparency in the Piracy Shield platform • Blocking requests processed automatically, does not seem AGCOM checks for accuracy. • No meaningful opportunity to contest blocking orders before enforcement. • No independent review or appeal mechanism that operates in a timely manner. • Piracy Shield technical specs and operational protocols have never been made public. • Development and governance lacked stakeholder inclusivity. • Platform incompatible with principles of proportionality and due process Risk of overblocking and collateral damage covers known incidents of overblocking, including the event that caused a widespread outage of Google Drive and the blocking of shared IP addresses at Cloudflare. In general, blocking of shared IP addresses “poses a high risk of unjustified interference with lawful online content and services” while domain name blocking “heightens the potential for overreach and content censorship, particularly when a single domain may host a mix [of] infringing and non-infringing content.” Questionable legal basis for cross-border removal AGCOM’s new proposal introduces a provision empowering itself to issue orders for the removal of content hosted in other EU Member States, vaguely referring to the Digital Services Act (DSA) as a legal basis. This raises several concerns: • The DSA provides for structured cross-border cooperation mechanisms and does not grant national authorities carte blanche to take direct enforcement action against hosting services in other Member States. • The proposal lacks clarity on which provisions of the DSA are being invoked and how these powers align with Articles 8 and 9 of the DSA, which govern the issuance and enforcement of orders to act against illegal content. • This extraterritorial enforcement risks undermining the DSA’s country-of-origin principle and creates legal uncertainty for service providers operating across the EU. The final section in the submission titled Ineffectiveness of network-level blocking notes that blocking is easily circumvented and does not remove any infringing content from the internet. Blocking can also “serve to obscure” rather than address the root causes of piracy. Overall, better options exist. That leads CCIA to its conclusions and a brief summary of its key points and concerns. No timeline is mentioned in respect of a decision for or against an assessment, or how long a subsequent opinion could take to arrive. The full CCIA submission is available here (pdf) Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Last December the Court of Milan ordered Cloudflare to block sites added to Italy's Piracy Shield system. Cloudflare sees itself as a neutral intermediary but increasingly frustrated rightsholders say it should play a more active role by assisting their fight against piracy. A decision issued by the same court now requires Google to poison its Public DNS to prevent access to pirate sites. It was handed down on March 11 without Google being heard in the matter. Italy’s war on pirate IPTV providers, resellers, and viewers, began in earnest back in February 2024. Yet despite the significant resources committed to the expanding Piracy Shield initiative, it’s all but invisible to the public. Piracy Shield’s existence, not unlike that of a cosmic black hole, is perhaps most easily confirmed by observing the effect it has on the entities that surround it. After drawing in every ISP in the country, each required to block pirate sites within 30 minutes at their own expense, legal amendments recently expanded the potential for new recruits. VPN providers, DNS operators, hosting companies, and other blocking-capable entities, can now be compelled to participate in a piracy war with no obvious end. Both Cloudflare and Google have faced considerable pressure to participate voluntarily. Once it became clear that was unlikely to happen, telecoms regulator AGCOM began openly criticizing the companies’ refusal to implement blocking measures. Just below the surface, both were already becoming entangled in uncompromising anti-piracy legislation, specifically designed to ensure that intermediaries have no other choice. Cloudflare Falls First In a decision handed down last December, the Court of Milan ordered Cloudflare to block pirate streaming services offering Serie A football matches. The Court found that Cloudflare’s CDN, DNS resolver, WARP, and reverse proxy service, facilitate access to live pirate streams. The Court spoke of “causal contribution” to copyright infringement and the undermining of Italy’s ‘Piracy Shield’ legislation. With its finding that refusal to take action established legal responsibility for the self-described online intermediary, the Court warned that further refusal to block would be addressed with fines of €10,000 per day. Serie A Complaint Triggers Action Against Google In a lawsuit filed at the Court of Milan, Serie A complained that Google refused to comply with requests to block pirate sites for which AGCOM had issued blocking instructions. In a statement published Thursday, AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio claims that not only did Google fail to respect those orders, but it also took no action to address content previously listed for blocking on the Piracy Shield system. Published on LinkedIn, Capitanio’s statement references a decision handed down on March 11 by the Court of Milan, which reportedly clarifies that all relevant internet access providers, including Google, must respect the requirements of law n. 93/2023. The Court’s decision wasn’t made available to support AGCOM’s statement, and at the time of writing, we are still trying to locate a copy. Whether it contains any additional information is unknown but as things stand, the reporting suggests a landslide defeat for Google and praise all round for AGCOM’s work. The Decision, According to AGCOM Capitanio’s assessment notes that Google is subject to EU regulations concerning digital services. As a result, the company is also required to comply with requests for blocking measures issued on an “urgent basis in order to counteract illicit activities carried out by recipients of services, where those services causally contribute” to rights violations. “It is therefore reiterated, as already noted in the December [2024] order against Cloudflare, that when AGCOM determines that certain content violates copyright, any service that contributes to the distribution of that content must comply with [AGCOM’s] decisions,” Capitanio adds. “In ordering the execution of the blocks, with a precise reconstruction of the legislation, the Judge therefore confirmed the value of AGCOM’s investigations, once again giving legitimacy to a system for the protection of copyright that is unique in the world.” One-Sided Decision Since AGCOM has clashed quite fiercely with both Cloudflare and Google over blocking and related issues during the last 12 months, any defeat for Google will likely be considered a win for the regulator. This brings us to another important aspect of the announcement. After Serie A receives praise from AGCOM, it becomes evident that Google has not yet had an opportunity to defend its position. “The validity of Serie A’s requests seem so clear that the provision was issued inaudita altera parte, that is, without even needing to hear from Google, which will obviously bring its defense in view of the hearing that will have to confirm the provision,” Capitanio notes. To use a football analogy, Serie A appears to be leading four-nil after the first leg, but has yet to face any opposition. More detail on the specifics of the procedure may yet prove informative but until then, Google is clearly being identified as the loser. “The Court reminds the American company, as it already did with Cloudflare, that no one should even unwittingly favor crimes related to piracy. The road to full legality is still a long one, but these are fundamental steps forward,” Capitanio concludes. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of February): 874 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Italy's Piracy Shield blocking platform turned one last month; bruised but perhaps a little wiser for the experiences of the past 12 months. An updated set of technical and operational requirements for Piracy Shield have just been published by telecoms regulator AGCOM. The text offers a nod to several areas in clear need of improvement, but after a year of turmoil, will that be enough? The official launch of Piracy Shield on Saturday February 1, 2024, played out more quietly than many had predicted. The next five days saw the blocking of just 11 IP addresses, adding weight to the theory that the system still wasn’t quite ready. After several months the volume of IP addresses and FQDNs (fully qualified domain names) dramatically increased but not before overblocking entered the equation. When mounting criticism found a platform in the media, legitimate concerns were publicly dismissed as fake news. Public awareness of piracy was always part of the plan but on terms designed to build bridges, not erect even more walls. Yet in October 2024, further amendments to the law (the Omnibus decree) caused uproar by targeting the very people and companies upon which Piracy Shield completely relies. One legal amendment threatened ISP bosses with prison if they failed to proactively report piracy to the authorities. Some ISPs highlighted the injustice of trampling on the rights of an entire industry, purely for the benefit of protecting football. Others spoke only of betrayal. Piracy Shield: New Technical & Operational Requirements Published by AGCOM last Friday, ‘Update of the Technical and Operational Requirements of the Single Technology Platform with Automated Operation Called Piracy Shield’ is available under the more convenient reference Delibera 48/25/CONS (pdf) on AGCOM’s website. It contains proposals for changes to Piracy Shield’s operations which will most likely pass as-is, unless someone contests it at the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio within 60 days of publication. AGCOM begins by referencing the requirement in the Omnibus decree that VPN services and publicly available DNS, “wherever resident and wherever located,” plus “search engines and, more generally, the providers of information society services involved in any capacity in the accessibility of the website or illegal services” will be required to obtain accreditation to use Piracy Shield and like ISPs, start blocking pirate services. In the event that “managers of search engines and the providers of information society services” are not directly involved in the accessibility of a pirate site or service, they will still be required to act. Within thirty minutes of receiving notification of a blocking order, they will be required to “adopt all technical measures useful for hindering the visibility of the illegal content,” including in any case, “the de-indexing from search engines of the domain names subject to AGCOM’s blocking orders, including the domain names subject to the reports made via Piracy Shield. IP Addresses & Domain Name Blocking/Suspensions Another measure introduced via the Omnibus decree reads as follows: “The providers of IP address assignment services, the Italian Registry for the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) .it, the providers of domain name registration services for ccTLDs other than the Italian one and for generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) names, shall periodically re-enable the resolution of domain names and the routing of network traffic to the addresses.” AGCOM clarifies that IP addresses blocked pursuant to this article, may only be unblocked on a date at least six months after they were initially blocked, assuming they are not used for illicit purposes. In respect of domains and IP addresses in general, previous limits no longer exist in 2025, but increases will be applied gradually. Permanent Technical Table “ISPs and rights holders, including trade associations and federations, as well as representatives of the ACN [National Cybersecurity Agency], the Guardia di Finanza, the Postal Police and representatives of the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy, participate on a permanent basis in the work of the Technical Table… ” Noting two dates in January 2025 where ‘Technical Table’ meetings took place, AGCOM says that rightsholders and ISPs were previously invited to submit their observations on the implications of the new provisions in the Omnibus decree. Submissions and subsequent discussion seems to have led to some type of consensus or acceptance on the interpretation of some of the more contentious provisions. Overblocking Avoidance When rightsholders wish to block content made available by an IP address offering both infringing and non-infringing content, going ahead regardless would almost certainly lead to collateral damage. Previously, an IP address/server ‘univocally’ or universally used to supply infringing content could be blocked. However, by mixing legitimate and illegitimate content on the same server, it was argued that pirates could avoid blocking by gaming the rule. By replacing ‘univocally’ with ‘predominantly’ the ‘loophole’ was closed but left rightsholders in a position to potentially block quite a lot of legitimate content to protect their own. AGCOM offers a solution of sorts. “It has been specified that the requirement of prevalence must be interpreted in compliance with the criteria of proportionality and reasonableness, assessing their existence on a case-by-case basis. The reporters [of infringement] are required to respect the utmost diligence and the utmost rigor in submitting the blocking requests,” AGCOM notes, adding that if the prevalence of illicit content is in doubt, AGCOM should be consulted. In view of earlier overblocking at Cloudflare, for example, AGCOM makes an additional comment suggesting that measures are already in place to prevent a repeat moving forward. The regulator notes that “resources for which there is no certainty of the prevalent illicit nature or resources for which it was not possible to carry out all the technical analyses aimed at excluding blocks of legitimate resources” should not be reported for blocking, as is the case already. The same applies to “resources that present a high risk of overblocking, such as, for example, content delivery networks, reverse proxies, VPN services, cloud storage services and the like.” ISP Compensation & Pirates’ Privacy Currently required to provide their own equipment and software, pay overtime, and cover all other costs associated with blocking, ISPs have been asking for fair compensation for their work. AGCOM explains that “the law does not attribute powers to the Authority [AGCOM] in this regard,” but it “reserves the right to activate the initiatives within its jurisdiction in order to represent this situation in the appropriate venues.” On the privacy front, AGCOM reminds all involved in Piracy Shield that diligence and confidentiality of information and data should be observed at all times. That leads to the question of transparency and whether blocked IP addresses should be made public as previously promised, but never emerged. “[W]ith particular reference to the confidentiality of the blocked IP addresses, it was specified that the Authority believes it cannot publish the entire list of blocked IP addresses as they fall within the category of ‘personal data’ that may allow indirect identification, as clarified both by the Court of Justice of the European Union and by the Privacy Guarantor, as well as to not undermine the action to combat piracy,” AGCOM notes. From a technical perspective, AGCOM is on pretty solid ground. However, the same does not apply to any kind of domain name so, in the interests of transparency, releasing those could be a reasonable compromise. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of February): 874 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

The CCIA, which represents global tech firms including Amazon, Cloudflare and Google, is sounding the alarm over Italy's "Piracy Shield" blocking scheme. The group's European branch urges the EU Commission to step in to prevent overblocking and to promote transparency. Additional measures requiring Internet services to actively report illegal activity on their networks are seen as problematic too. Launched last year, Italy’s elaborate ‘Piracy Shield‘ blocking scheme was billed as the future of anti-piracy efforts. To effectively tackle live sports piracy, broad blocking powers aim to block piracy-related domain names and IP addresses within 30 minutes. While many pirate sources have indeed been blocked, Piracy Shield is not without controversy. There have been multiple reports of overblocking, where the anti-piracy system blocked access to Google Drive, Cloudflare, and other legitimate sites and services. Meanwhile, calls for more transparency and accountability are growing. Tech Industry Sounds Alarm Bell Yesterday, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) sounded the alarm. In a letter addressed to the EU Commission, the coalition of tech industry companies, including Amazon, Cloudflare and Google, shared grave concerns. The European branch of CCIA acknowledges that Piracy Shield aims to protect rightsholders. However, they argue that the ‘blunt’ DNS and IP blocking measures represent a threat to other companies and the public. “While this approach aims to protect intellectual property and reduce online piracy, it relies on IP address and domain name system (DNS)-level blocking, making it a potentially extremely blunt instrument to address online copyright infringement,” CCIA writes. In addition, extending the blocking scheme to DNS resolvers and VPN providers is seen as a major concern. These tools are not suited to carry out blocking measures, CCIA says, as they are fundamental to the protection of free expression. CCIA emphasizes that concerns about overblocking are not hypothetical, as the Piracy Shield is already wreaking havoc. It cites the aforementioned Google Drive blockade, which affected millions of Italians and took hours to resolve. “On 20 October 2024, Google Drive was mistakenly blocked by the Piracy Shield system, causing a three-hour blackout for all Italian users, while 13.5% of users were still blocked at the IP level, and 3% were blocked at the DNS level after 12 hours.” Overblocking Transparency, Verification & Accountability While European Courts have previously greenlighted pirate site blocking schemes, CCIA highlights that Italy’s implementation lacks sufficient safeguards and transparency. That makes the prevention and swift correction of errors much more difficult. The tech group also notes that Piracy Shield was developed by a company affiliated with local football league Serie A, one of the few rightsholders currently allowed to use the system. This raises concerns of whether the system adequately considers all stakeholders’ interests. CCIA says that AGCOM, the regulator that manages Piracy Shield, should take measures to address these concerns. “The Italian Piracy Shield should at the very least incorporate more robust verification protocols and significantly enhance transparency, as well as adequate redress mechanisms for affected users, to reduce these negative impacts.” Problematic Reporting Obligations In addition to matters directly related to blocking, the tech industry is concerned about recent amendments to Italian copyright law that introduce obligations that contradict the principles set forth in the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). These amendments mandate all intermediary providers to report any knowledge of illegal activity, including minor copyright infringements. Failure to comply could result in up to one year of imprisonment. According to the CCIA, these requirements introduce new obligations for companies that simply pass on traffic. It argues that these requirements go beyond EU law and will create a chilling effect on freedom of expression and innovation online. Withdraw Piracy Shield CCIA believes that Piracy Shield and the recent legal amendments violate several EU laws. They were not submitted under the TRIS procedure either, a key element of the European Union’s single market policy when it comes to rules regarding online services. To properly address these concerns, CCIA urges the EU Commission to engage with the Italian Government to put a halt to the anti-piracy measures, so their lawfulness can be thoroughly checked. “The Italian government should withdraw the above-mentioned legislation in order to go through the TRIS procedure, allowing the Commission and other Member States to review the substance of these flawed and ineffective initiatives, and address their infringement of European laws,” CCIA concludes. Withdraw — A copy of CCIA Europe’s letter is available here (pdf) Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Despite blocking thousands of illegal streaming sites, Italy's 'Piracy Shield' anti-piracy program has failed to deliver increased viewership for legal services like DAZN. This revelation appears in data provided by telecoms regulator AGCOM, which oversees the blocking regime. It adds fuel to the already heated discussions, which divide stakeholders and copyright representatives. Nearly a year has passed since Italy officially implemented ‘Piracy Shield‘, a system that aims to deter and decrease live sports streaming piracy. Since last February, Piracy Shield has blocked access to thousands of IP-addresses and domain names associated with unauthorized broadcasts. This massive blocking operation is seen as a grandiose success by the authorities and many participating rightsholders. There were some mishaps, including repeated instances of widespread overblocking, but these were regarded as unavoidable teething problems. ‘Piracy Shield’ Expansion There are no signs that ‘Piracy Shield’ will lose importance anytime soon. On the contrary, there are calls to expand the system beyond the protection of live football matches to many other types of content, movie premieres and live TV, for example. At the same time, stakeholders are working to enhance the impact of the program through various legal efforts and collaborative discussion. VPNs were brought into the mix recently, along with DNS services, Cloudflare and others. Broader blockades are better blockades, the theory goes. Telecoms regulator AGCOM, which is in charge of the blocking system, actively reaches out to various stakeholders. Earlier this week, AGCOM spoke to Brian Turnbow of CDLAN, a technology company that operates cloud and hosting solutions, among other things. What was said during the call has not been disclosed, but the discussion prompted Turnbow to look more closely at Piracy Shield’s achievements thus far. That led to some interesting findings. ”Piracy Shield’ Blocks, So it Works To put these findings in context, it’s important to understand how an ‘effective anti-piracy blocking program’ should be defined. AGCOM and other backers have pointed out that Piracy Shield works because it blocks pirate domain names and IP addresses, which decreases traffic to these sources. Therefore, it ‘lowers’ piracy by definition. Obstruo, ergo efficax sum. However, reality doesn’t always reflect this tautological line of reasoning. While traffic to blocked services might indeed decline, people may have moved to other unblocked sources. And even if illegal traffic overall is down as an early study suggested, a drop in piracy doesn’t necessarily lead to more paying customers. This is where Turnbow comes in again. After his call with AGCOM, he shared some data from the regulator’s own quarterly report. This can be used to argue that the success of the year-long blocking effort is less spectacular than assumed. Skeptical Eye Spots Little Progress Turnbow’s own ‘investigation’ isn’t complex either. But instead of focusing on the repressive elements, he checked if Piracy Shield positively impacted legal streaming services. He was particularly interested in DAZN’s viewership, as they hold the rights to Serie A content, which is a key player in the blocking program. There was little data crunching involved, as the bar charts clearly show that the number of DAZN subscribers didn’t go up in 2024. The same applies to the hours watched, which was flat too. “The number of users post piracy shield in 2024 is the same as 2023.. no gains. The number of hours watched in 2024 is the same as 2023, again no gain. 2024 overall is below 2022 when there was no piracy shield,” Turnbow notes. The only noticeable increase he could find was in the subscription price, which wasn’t reported by AGCOM. That reportedly went up from €40.99 to €44.99 at DAZN. “So after 12 months, the data says ISPs sustained costs to implement the service, no users or hours gained for DAZN, and higher prices for end users,” the LinkedIn post reads. The data Wanted: A Nuanced Discussion Turnbow doesn’t claim to have shared groundbreaking conclusions. Besides, this type of cherry-picking is also selective, and opponents could argue that subscribers could have actually dropped significantly, without the anti-piracy measures. That said, the skeptical LinkedIn post shows that online intermediaries aren’t simply going along with a broad blocking program, without taking a critical look at what they’re getting themselves into. If the past year has shown anything, it’s that a lack of nuance, transparency, and openness to feedback, can end up being counterproductive. Extreme positions on both ends of the spectrum often block real progress. The fact that the tip-off for this article came from a major representative of a prominent copyright holder group, shows how dire the situation is. Even those who have fought piracy for decades are divided; the Piracy Shield effect seems reminiscent of the Tower of Babel. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Italy's 'Piracy Shield' blocking system was originally invented to protect time-sensitive live sports streams from pirates. A year later, rightsholders are pushing for an update to cover a wider range of content, including films. This move, which is expected to be discussed in a forthcoming consultation, aims to gradually expand the 'next-gen' blocking system. Less than a year has passed since Italy officially implemented the ‘Piracy Shield‘ system that aims to thwart live sports streaming piracy. Since February the system has blocked access to thousands of IP-addresses and domain names associated with unauthorized broadcasts. This massive blocking operation is seen as a major success by the authorities and many participating rightsholders. As time passed, however, its weaknesses also became painfully obvious. In addition to effective blockades, there were multiple reports of overblocking, where the anti-piracy system blocked access to Google Drive, Cloudflare, and other legitimate sites and services. Meanwhile, calls for more transparency and accountability were growing. Piracy Shield Expansion The authorities haven’t been sitting still since the ‘Piracy Shield’ launch. In addition to technical tweaks and improvements, expanding its reach was of particular interest. In October, for example, an amendment was approved to compel VPNs and DNS services to comply with blocking orders too. This expansion was unofficially confirmed at the Court of Milan which ruled that Cloudflare has to block Piracy Shield targets across all applicable services. In the coming year, it’s expected that the ‘Piracy Shield’ legal framework (Law 93/23) will be further updated following a public consultation. AGCOM, the organization in charge of the blocking system, announced as much in its annual report last month. “As known, in fact, Law No. 93/23 further expanded the scope of the Authority’s action by strengthening its functions for a more effective and timely countering of piracy actions online with reference to all events broadcast live on the network,” AGCOM wrote. “To this end, the Authority will proceed, after public consultation, with the necessary amendments to the Regulations […] and with the technical activities of updating and implementing the live blocking platform (Piracy Shield) functionality to achieve the objectives set by the law.” From the annual report Piracy Shield for Movie Premieres? AGCOM’s comments suggest that more sports and other live TV content may eventually receive ‘Piracy Shield’ protection. A public consultation is planned to discuss these and other potential expansions. This is music to the ears of local anti-piracy group FAPAV, which represents major film organizations and companies, including Italian branches of Netflix, Universal, Warner Bros, and Walt Disney. FAPAV President Bagnoli Rossi recently applauded AGCOM for the rollout of the ‘Piracy Shield’, describing it as a fundamental anti-piracy tool. At the same time, he expressed a wish to expand its scope even further, covering ‘non-live’ movies as well. “We hope that the new public consultation will be opened as soon as possible, aimed at extending the timeliness of intervention to other audiovisual content provided for by law, including for example first-run films and non-sports live television broadcasts, a measure that the sector is waiting for,” Rossi says. Slippery Slope? Put differently, FAPAV would like to make the ‘Piracy Shield’ the defacto blocking standard for a wider variety of valuable copyrighted content. This is not a trivial comment. It suggests that a 30-minute blocking window, which was written into law specifically to help protect rightsholders of live broadcasts, might be expanded to non-live content. This is a controversial suggestion; ‘instant’ blockades are more susceptible to errors than measures ordered following a proper judicial review. While that may be acceptable collateral for live content, the stakes change when the same blocking technology is used more broadly. While AGCOM hasn’t specifically mentioned the inclusion of non-live content, it’s clear that rightsholders will argue in favor of this during the upcoming consultation. That by itself, will be plenty of fuel for further discussion, controversy, and drama in 2025. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Italy launched its ambitious "Piracy Shield" platform in early 2024, hoping to finally curb the rampant piracy of live sports events. Throughout the year, the system has primarily targeted the domains and IP addresses used by pirate IPTV providers to stream illegal content. Official data made available to the public is limited but with help from data provided by an anonymous source, we can identify key trends from a very controversial year. Ever since the existence of online piracy first hit the mainstream, the phenomenon has been described using words such as massive or vast. Setting the bar so high means that as far as basic descriptions go, the last quarter-century has always had a huge piracy problem. Only when focusing on a relatively small aspect of the piracy market and then pausing to look up, does the true scale come into focus. When Italy officially launched its Piracy Shield platform on February 1, 2024, the stated aim was to eliminate IPTV piracy on home turf. Almost literally, it transpires, since the majority of all blocking in 2024 has been carried out by broadcasters such as DAZN and Sky, to protect top-tier football league Serie A. Controversies litter the past eleven months. Cloudflare and Google were both wrongfully targeted as enthusiasm to prevent piracy took precedence over the interests of internet users, and previously promised transparency gave way to almost complete unaccountability. What can or will be done to prevent further overblocking in 2025 remains to be seen but, thankfully, we can offer a little more transparency right now. Piracy Shield: The State of Blocking 2024 Telecoms regulator AGCOM has just released its 2024 annual report (pdf) and at 200-pages long it’s a hefty read. In respect of Piracy Shield it offers little enlightenment. The report states that from February 1 to May 26, 2024, rightsholders requested and obtained 13 precautionary measures in respect of the illicit transmission of live sports. In the same period, 18,879 fully qualified domain names (FQDN) and 4,006 IP addresses were blocked by Piracy Shield. Data provided to TorrentFreak by an anonymous source is more comprehensive. The data claims to include all IP addresses blocked by the system until just a few days ago, more than 6,900 in total. The number of fully qualified domain names, meaning domain names and all subdomains where they exist, is significantly larger, almost 17,500. Piracy Shield: IP Addresses Blocked (reported locations per ipinfo.io) Using geo-location tools provided by ipinfo.io, it’s immediately apparent that servers located in Europe itself account for the majority of IP addresses blocked by Piracy Shield. How many of these locations indicate an originating source of pirated streams is beyond the scope of this article, but it’s clear that it’s relatively uncommon for distant IP addresses to service Italy directly. Reasons for that include a preference for local datacenters based on performance, onward distribution of streams for use by local suppliers, and in theory a reduced risk of IP addresses ending up on Italy’s blocklist and others elsewhere in Europe. Success in that respect seems patchy. Europe and Other Regions Closer to Home Moving more closely towards Italy reveals that IP addresses have been blocked in almost all countries in Europe, with notable absentees Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Greece. With some of their name labels almost completely obscured by location markers, Italy’s northern neighbors appear to be among those causing the country the biggest headaches. Piracy Shield: Closer to Home The focus box shows that 196 IP addresses have been blocked in Italy itself. This is interesting for a number of reasons. In general, most countries limit their blocking to overseas services/locations because in theory, blocking is a last resort, useful when pirate services are beyond the jurisdiction of national police and the courts. With virtually no restrictions on which IP addresses are placed on Italy’s blacklist, nothing is a surprise. The Badlands of Western Europe While 196 IP addresses is normally quite a lot, for Piracy Shield that isn’t a particularly large number. When compared to other European countries with coastlines on the North Sea, it fades into insignificance. Piracy Shield: Northern Neighbors Considering that the Netherlands, , and all have established domestic site-blocking programs, it’s notable that these countries appear to be among the major exporters of pirate streams. That being said, the Netherlands appearing at the top of the list isn’t a surprise. In general online piracy terms, not much has changed in 20 years, except for the method used to deliver the content. At the heart of Europe, in second place isn’t a major shock either. However, given attitudes to copyright elsewhere in the EU, other locations might be a more logical, if not less practical choice, with the same applying to . Romania’s position seems about right; the country has always had great internet, is known to be favored by some suppliers, with rightsholders still complaining about enforcement options in the background. Given the volume of entities in the list and the shifting nature of domain names, more time is needed to process those, so we’ll return to this topic very soon. In the meantime, the top 10 countries blocked by Piracy Shield worldwide in 2024 (IP addresses only) Piracy Shield: Top 10 Blocked Countries 2024 (by IP address only) Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Italy's Piracy Shield IPTV blocking system is back in the news today after yet another completely avoidable blocking blunder. On Monday night, yet another CDN IP address was added to the blocklist rendering innocent sites unavailable. Italian tech news site DDaY, a long-standing critic of Piracy Shield's indiscriminate blocking, was among those affected. After a series of completely avoidable incidents that have seen countless innocent sites blocked by Italy’s Piracy Shield blocking system, at this point is it appropriate to keep calling them ‘blunders’? Continuing to do so might suggest acceptance that incompetence is always to blame. In reality, recent legal amendments addressed the issue of overblocking by dramatically weakening what little protection innocent sites had against becoming collateral damage. In practical terms, rightsholders can now knowingly block innocent sites in many circumstances, with the full support of Italian law. Piracy Shield Blocks Another CDN IP Address In what appears to have been an attempt to prevent people from watching pirate streams of Serie A match Monza vs Udinese, a blocking ticket was filed last night at 21:19 targeting the IP address 84.17.59.117. The ‘winning’ ticket (credit: Matteo Contrini) It is beyond trivial to determine who operates that IP address, it takes less than seconds to check. Even those with rudimentary experience and knowledge of leading providers should’ve suspected that blocking was likely to lead to collateral damage. Targeting an IP address operated by CDN provider Datacamp and by extension BunnyCDN was almost certainly likely to lead to overblocking. Here, however, the nature of the network means an accurate assessment of how far the collateral damage might extend would not have been possible; whichever rightsholder filed the ticket, decided to block it anyway. Blocking Hit Tech News Site DDaY.it In the early hours of Tuesday, Italian tech news site DDaY.it revealed that the blocking of 84.17.59.117 had disrupted its ability to operate. DDaY explained that the IP address is used by the CDN service that keeps its site online and by blocking it, readers were facing timeouts and other issues. As shown in the short clip below posted to X.com, some visitors to DDaY were redirected to a page operated by telecoms regulator AGCOM which explained the blocking by effectively branding DDaY a pirate site. “It happens that the good guys, in order to play the good guys with martial conviction (hey, they are the good guys…), by slinging a flamethrower called Piracy Shield, end up becoming the bad guys. And “fin di bene” [greater good] cannot suffice to justify so-called collateral damage,” the news platform reported in a response this morning. “Obviously DDAY is not the target of the block ordered by Piracy Shield and the blocked IP address is not even the main one of our site. But evidently our CDN provider has a load balancing management system that makes sure that some sessions are directed to the blocked IP, thus leading to the connection errors.” DDay is a Long-Time Critic of Piracy Shield As a long-time critic of the Piracy Shield system, DDaY finds itself in an inconvenient position. In Italy, opponents of Piracy Shield are often portrayed as siding with pirates, which the publication certainly does not. That the site’s voice has been silenced by the same mechanisms it has been calling out since its launch earlier this year, is not a great look. The publication says that the IP address has now been removed from the blocklist but once again, the big question of why it was added in the first place will go unanswered. DDaY would like an apology, but history shows us they probably shouldn’t hold their breath. “The fact that (perhaps) the reported pirate site was also blocked, cannot console us for the fact that we were hit by the provision, probably together with many other innocent sites. By doing so, those who operate under the flag of good to stop piracy, end up behaving like those pirates who dedicate themselves to taking down other people’s sites.” Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of November): 5,298 news posts RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Critics of Italy's Piracy Shield are not difficult to find but, with its powerful and influential proponents rarely far away, getting heard is a considerable challenge. Not to mention getting anything done. After calling for the platform's suspension and meeting resistance in the wake of the recent Google Drive blocking blunder, AGCOM board member Elisa Giomi has gone public with a laundry list of concerns. It pulls zero punches. RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia, currently has over 10,000 members, typically Internet service providers and telecoms organizations. The organization’s latest meeting, RIPE89, ran for three days last week and was open to all. A presentation by Massimiliano “Max” Stucchi titled: Blocking and Censoring the Italian Internet for Football Reasons, told the story of how “a small group of (influential) people can convince a country to implement draconian filtering rules…and how this can easily go wrong, all in the name of football.” RIPE89 The presentation made no mention of RIPE, but Piracy Shield looks a bit like its evil twin. One of RIPE’s most important roles is to allocate IP addresses to promote connectivity. Piracy Shield has spent months attempting to render thousands of IP addresses useless. While RIPE welcomes all in the spirit of sharing, Piracy Shield and transparency are complete strangers. This admittedly comes in handy when Cloudflare and other innocent IPs are blocked in error. The upside is that, when ISPs see an unusual blocking technique, they get to name it. New Blunders Revealed One intriguing example mentioned by Max is Inception Blocking and here’s how it works. When internet users try to access a resource blocked by Piracy Shield, they are directed to their ISP’s blocking page which explains why the resource has been blocked. Inception Blocking is when the IP address of the ISP’s block page somehow finds itself on the Piracy Shield blocklist, meaning that it can’t be accessed either. There’s no blocking page for blocking pages just yet, but should one eventually exist, it must be blocked in 30 minutes or less, presumably. Max’s presentation further revealed that Imperva Incapsula IP addresses were also blocked as part of the blunder that blocked Google Drive on October 19th. That event, which has been confirmed as a DAZN error, has also impacted RIPE Atlas, a system designed to measure internet connectivity. There are concerns that devices attempting to access a blocked pirate site may be monitored and since fines of up to 5000 euros are said to be in the pipeline, some probe operators prefer not to take risks. Don’t Criticize Piracy Shield Too Much? At the end of the presentation (link below), audience members were invited to ask questions. Tom Strickx, Principal network engineer at Cloudflare, took to the mic and thanked Max for his presentation. He then made an interesting observation, before summing up the whole situation in a few words. “Thanks first of all for talking about this. It’s probably the first time I have seen anybody talk about this,” Strickx said, making a point with this finger. “Note: this is absolute fucking bullshit,” he added to slightly nervous laughter in the room. Max lives in Switzerland these days, not Italy, so on one level his calm response was expected. On a more unsettling level, we’ve been hearing similar comments for a while now. “The thing is, I decided to do [the presentation] because I don’t live in the country,” Max responded. “I have a little bit more freedom.” A similar point was raised by another speaker later on. “So this thing is obviously bad, but why are you – somebody from outside Italy – doing this presentation, why isn’t some Italian ISP? Is it illegal at this point?” Max assured the speaker that talking about Piracy Shield isn’t illegal in Italy, and suggested that while he selected it as a topic, it may be that others did not, or just didn’t have the time. “Because since it’s going on for almost one year,” the audience member continued, “there should be a massive..[response].” Since the launch of Piracy Shield, at least two local people familiar with the difficulties in Italy have hinted to us that there might be implications for saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. When pressed to explain, one simply asked to move on. The other refused to go into detail but briefly said that one day things may run smoothly and then by coincidence, perhaps not so smoothly in the future. Google Drive Blunder Emboldens Critics Who or what that alludes to is difficult to pin down, but there’s little doubt that piracy, blocking, politics, and high level sports are complicating an already complex landscape. With proponents of the project seemingly convinced that only escalation will produce results, things have been heading in the wrong direction for a while. The fact that more people are starting to speak out in opposition seems unlikely to deter that. ISP association ASSOprovider, an opponent of Piracy Shield and those behind it since the very beginning, has been fighting for transparency and accountability through various legal routes. In April, instead of supplying the information ASSOprovider had requested, AGCOM fined the association for not providing information on the ISPs it represents, information ASSOprovider insisted was already in AGCOM’s possession. In the wake of the Google Drive debacle, an undeterred ASSOProvider has just filed a complaint with the Regional Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of Auditors of Rome. The complaint hopes to “ascertain the existence of any financial damage and the appropriateness of AGCOM’s actions in the management of the economic resources relating to the Piracy Shield.” President of Assoprovider, Giovanbattista Frontera, is calling for a full review of the Piracy Shield system and guarantees to prevent future errors. “We ask for transparency and responsibility in the use of public resources and in the management of a system that significantly impacts the Italian internet network,” Frontera notes. A Dissenting Voice Inside Italy’s Telecoms Regulator An intriguing development inside AGCOM itself seems highly significant, especially as momentum builds against the platform and the support it continues to receive from government and regulator AGCOM. Until now, comments attributable to anyone at AGCOM about Piracy Shield have been overwhelmingly in its favor, even when established facts on the ground supported a much tougher reading of significant failures. That the first dissenting comments come from an accomplished, highly credible individual, who appears to have gone out on a limb for something she believes in, make this very interesting. The fact that these are the words of an AGCOM board member, may represent a watershed moment. By decree of the President of the Republic, Elisa Giomi was appointed to the board of AGCOM in September 2020, yet that accomplishment is merely a footnote according to her extensive profile on the AGCOM website. As the author of over 70 publications for major Italian and international publishing houses and for Italian and foreign peer-reviewed journals, there’s no doubt that Giomi gave this post on X considerable thought before going public (translated). In a post on LinkedIn, Commissioner Giomi goes further still, before courageously heading out into uncharted territory. ‘Piracy Shield, Public Resources And Football Hypnosis’ Giomi reveals that after the blocking of Google Drive, she proposed a temporary suspension of Piracy Shield. One of five commissioners at AGCOM, Giomi’s proposal was voted down. Further detail appears in a Corriere (paywall) interview. “In recent days I have had to distance myself from the position of my colleagues on the Piracy Shield platform. I did it because I found myself faced with a context of total underestimation of the very serious episode of Saturday 19 October..,” Commissioner Giomi explains. “I asked for the immediate suspension of the operation of the platform in order to avoid worse consequences. The majority of the Council, however, chose to continue. The creation of the platform is imposed on [AGCOM] by law, but we cannot continue to hide the failure of the Piracy Shield initiative, which I had predicted, so much so that I expressed my opposition from the beginning.” The Commissioner reveals the extent of her opposition on LinkedIn, noting that “amid the often virulent reactions of colleagues” she had voted against the platform at all stages for the last two years. Giomi also criticizes the language used to justify the existence of Piracy Shield and the regime it supports. “I also want to distance myself from the rhetoric that continues to justify this initiative in the name of a generic imperative to legality, as if the fight against criminal phenomena in a country like ours was reduced to the (important, of course) fight against piracy and the latter was in turn reduced to preventing the illegal decryption of football matches,” Giomi notes “Do you know how many public resources the failed piracy shield is draining in terms of time and personnel?” Unchartered Territory Criticism of Piracy Shield itself is perhaps the easiest way to show opposition to a broken system. Much more rare is a whole list of concerns, starting with how it came to exist, apparently without obvious consideration of alternatives. “The ambiguity of the donation of the platform to AGCOM by [Serie A], which is a party to the matter, being one of the very few subjects entitled to report; the very hasty timing with which the Council decided on its adoption; the total lack of transparency in the attribution of external consultancy on the goodness of the initiative; the resistance to carrying out a survey of alternative solutions available on the market; the uncertain and late remedies with which they have tried in vain to resolve the continuous problems; the usual leakage of sensitive information on ongoing proceedings that now accompanies all the most important decisions of this council, moreover in the total inertia of those who should ensure confidentiality.” Some of these concerns have been mentioned previously but never from someone in such a unique position, seemingly prepared for all the right reasons, to lay it all on the line, without commercial concerns being anywhere near the equation. Such qualities are increasingly rare and deserve every available protection. “If we woke up from the collective hypnosis that blinds us every time we talk about football, overshadowing the real aberrations – such as fines of up to 5000 euros for a single user or the tolerance towards advertising of gambling for teams – perhaps we could bring everything back into due proportion and above all recognize that the priorities of the Italian institutional agenda are different,” Giomi concludes. Brava A video of the presentation at RIPE89 can be found here Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of October): 4,832 news posts RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

After Italy's Piracy Shield system blocked Google Drive last weekend, telecoms regulator AGCOM says that if Google had fully collaborated in the fight against piracy, the disruption could've been easily avoided. Meanwhile, an expert has raised the alarm over Piracy Shield's security, warning that nobody knows whether a bad actor has infiltrated the platform. Google Drive today, but will it be trains, hospitals, and government infrastructure tomorrow? After blocking Cloudflare in February, the reputation of Italy’s Piracy Shield IPTV blocking system found itself on life support; it wasn’t actually dead, though, at least not yet. Acceptance by those responsible that things needed to improve, with an olive branch extended to the experts previously ignored, would’ve been viewed as a positive step. Instead, initial denial led to reluctant acceptance that something had indeed happened, but it was insignificant and if anything, Cloudflare was largely to blame. Then came the double down; followed by another, and then another. After suing Cloudflare to compel its participation in Piracy Shield, Serie A lost the lawsuit yet still managed to come out on top. Legal amendments passed into law this month make Piracy Shield cooperation mandatory and for good measure, internet service providers now face a potential prison sentence for failing to report piracy. Italian citizens, meanwhile, were put on notice of automated piracy fines arriving in the mail. Oppression Will Continue Until Morale Improves When Google Drive was blocked in error on Saturday night, the mood among observers – some of whom belong to the ‘ignored’ group mentioned above – was one of disbelief. The most famous internet domain ever to exist had simply walked through every security check before blocking measures denied service to millions of innocent Google users. On Sunday, to a background of lingering blocking still causing issues, a timely live discussion took place on YouTube. Hosted by corporate reputation expert Matteo Flora, participants included (left to right, full list here) former AGCOM Commissioner Antonio Nicita, current AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio, and former member of parliament, IT expert, and founder of Rialto Venture Capital, Stefano Quintarelli. For context, Quintarelli’s latest blog post is titled “#PiracyShield, 10.19.2024 the largest cyber attack in Italy.” Would Massimiliano Capitanio be able to say anything to assure those in attendance that everything is under control and there’s nothing to worry about? Blocking Google Drive “Should Not Happen Again” Capitanio acknowledged the seriousness of blocking Google Drive and said this should not happen again. He characterized the incident as a “distraction” and a “serious problem” but took no responsibility and stopped short of issuing an apology. AGCOM’s commissioner went on to defend the regulatory framework and technical ability of the Piracy Shield platform. As for the blunder, that was put down to an “erroneous report” filed by a rightsholder, most likely part of a batch of legitimate reports that didn’t cause chaos. Blocking Blunders Must Not Derail Piracy Fight Capitanio repeatedly refused to say who was directly responsible but pointed in the general direction of Serie A, Sky, and DAZN, the three entities that currently account for most if not all live blocking in Italy. Pointing out that 600 domains and 200 IP addresses associated with pirate services were disabled on the same day without issues, Capitanio insisted that the blunder must not be allowed to detract from the mission in hand; combating illegal streaming services and the organized crime behind them. Indeed, Capitanio’s own focus on blocking to protect football was absolute. There was no concern expressed towards Google or the millions of users affected by the extended blackout, only defense of the Piracy Shield system. Ultimately, however, Google was never likely to be considered a victim if there was any chance it could take some of the blame. Once again, Capitanio criticized Google and Cloudflare for not registering with the Piracy Shield platform. If Google had done so, Capitanio said, the details of Google Drive’s infrastructure could’ve been put on the national “do not block” list in advance, thereby avoiding the negative effects of Saturday night’s blocking blunder. AGCOM’s chief then went on to complain about Google’s refusal to delete Android apps already installed on users devices and other measures AGCOM regularly demands, none of which are required by law. A Dire Warning From Stefano Quintarelli Quintarelli believes that piracy needs to be combated but has little faith that the current reliance on blocking mechanisms through intermediaries is effective. Indeed, reliance on a solution like Piracy Shield is likely to be both ineffective and introduce new problems, such as the overblocking and collateral damage seen last weekend. Of more concern is his belief that the inherent insecurity of the Piracy Shield platform introduces a “huge systemic vulnerability” that eclipses the fight against piracy. Italy now has a system in place designed to dramatically disrupt internet communications and since no system is entirely secure, what happens if a bad actor somehow gains control? Quintarelli says that if the Piracy Shield platform were to be infiltrated and maliciously exploited, essential services like hospitals, transportation systems, government functions, and critical infrastructure would be exposed to catastrophic blocking. Stefano Zanero and host Matteo Flora both expressed concern that lives could be at risk if blocking targeted life-supporting services. That wouldn’t necessarily require a state actor with malicious intent, just someone with access to the current system untrained enough to consider the most popular domain in the world a legitimate target. None of the rightsholders mentioned by Capitanio took part in the discussion. If any had attended, they could’ve explained why the commissioner’s enjoyment of an entirely legal stream provided by DAZN also faced interruption Saturday night due to the same blocking blunder. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of September): 4,292 news posts RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Italy's Piracy Shield blocking system was launched early 2024 promising to end the flood of pirate IPTV providers saturating the local market. Site-blocking proponents' claims of huge success were met by reports of significant failures. In the absence of any useful, credible data being made available by those behind Piracy Shield, researchers in Italy are trying to answer the big question: Is Piracy Shield effective at reducing access to pirated live sports streams? Piracy Shield’s first birthday is still several months away so the appearance of a study into its effectiveness came as a surprise but not an unwelcome one. Commentary by Italian telecoms regulator AGCOM, mirrored by top-tier football league Serie A and streaming service DAZN, hasn’t been at all useful for those seeking answers to the two most important questions: 1) How effective is Piracy Shield at denying access to pirate live sports streams? 2) What is the effect (if any) on new subscriber uptake and customer churn? Thus far, success has been expressed via the number of domains and IP addresses added to the system for blocking. With roughly 25,000 domains and IP addresses currently blocked, and huge numbers added week after week, the need for more blocking is just as easily framed as a measure of failure. How Effective is Piracy Shield? A study to measure how effective Piracy Shield is at blocking was recently conducted at the University of Padua. Graduate student Maffei Davide and Prof. Alessandro Galeazzi, with support from Dr. Giacomo Quadrio and Dr. Enrico Bassetti of the SPRITZ security group, opted for an analysis of network traffic via the university’s VSIX[g] node. “The project was born from the need to collect information on the functioning of Piracy Shield, as well as on the evaluation of its effectiveness. Through the analysis of network flows, we want to be able to distinguish video flows from other types of traffic and identify the differences between ordinary and pirated traffic,” David Maffei explains. Using traffic analysis, the researchers examined various characteristics such as communication protocols (TCP, UDP), network ports commonly associated with streaming services, stream duration and size, and packet flags signaling successful transmission and reception. Through the analysis of these and other characteristics, the researchers aimed to isolate video streaming traffic from other network activity. The next task was to isolate likely legal streaming traffic, from traffic likely to be illegal. Identifying Legal Streaming Traffic To identify streaming traffic likely to be legal, the researchers needed to establish which companies hold the broadcast rights for the sporting events being analyzed. After identifying Sky and DAZN, the next step was to discover their Content Delivery Network (CDN) partners; in this case, both Sky and DAZN mainly use Akamai. The next stage required the researchers to determine the IP addresses generating network traffic coinciding with football match broadcasts. The paper provides additional detail but in broad terms, the researchers considered i) average traffic rate (between 1 and 20Mbps), ii) consistent traffic patterns (to exclude addresses with high traffic peaks unrelated to streaming), and iii) significant difference in traffic during match time, when compared with the two-hour slots before and after a game. After identifying the Content Delivery Network (in this case Akamai) used for legal broadcasts and finding the corresponding Autonomous System Numbers (ASN), the researchers were able to reconstruct the legal streaming traffic to generate a legal traffic baseline, as illustrated in the image below. Legal traffic baseline (May 2024) This baseline allowed the researchers to compare legal traffic with suspected illegal traffic. Identifying Suspected Illegal Streaming Traffic The researchers began by identifying the most-used network ports used during the match period; overwhelmingly ports 443 (https) and 80 (http) in the top 50. The data generated by these high-traffic ports was analyzed to detect network flows with similar characteristics to those associated with video streaming, following the pattern of legal traffic established in the baseline. To facilitate identification, traffic graphs were generated for each port, with port 41122 producing a very similar profile to the legal baseline. Among many checks carried out to ensure that traffic was actually illegal, the researchers compared this traffic with traffic generated by ASNs linked to websites previously blocked for copyright infringement. Again, the finer details are available in the full report. Piracy Shield: Effective or Not? When referencing Piracy Shield, the researchers appear to take the whole system into consideration, from the detection and identification of pirate streams by affected rightsholders, to the eventual blocking of domains and IP addresses by ISPs. Key metrics the researchers wanted to consider but were forced to leave out, include detection rates, false positive rates, response times, and efficient management of IP addresses and availability. The researchers cite limited data availability and a general lack of transparency throughout the system as obstacles to more comprehensive research. To evaluate the effectiveness of Piracy Shield, the researchers compared legal traffic with suspected illegal traffic. The image below shows data reconstructed from traffic generated by ASNs associated with IP addresses blocked by Piracy Shield (orange) and separately identified legal traffic (blue). “The graph highlights that illegal traffic presents significant volume peaks at football match times, indicated by the vertical dotted lines. These peaks coincide temporally with the start an end of sports events, suggesting a strong correlation between presumed pirate traffic and the unauthorized transmission of sports content,” the report notes. The paper notes difficulties in identifying specific patterns related to illegal video streaming (orange), although a clear pattern typical of streaming did emerge. On the other hand, legal traffic (blue) shows smaller fluctuations. A more concerning finding for rightsholders is the volume of suspected illegal streaming, which at times overlaps with legal streaming traffic, further complicating the task of distinguishing legal from illegal traffic. More sophisticated algorithms and filtering techniques may be needed to improve identification accuracy. Conclusion: “Some Effectiveness” Overall, the results of the traffic analysis suggest that Piracy Shield demonstrated “some effectiveness” in reducing illegal traffic but the scale of the impact – and of course any effect on subscription uptake – is beyond the scope of the study. The continued availability of pirate sites and the ability of users to circumvent blocking are cited as key concerns, along with strong negatives concerning the platform itself. Rightsholders’ ability to implement blocking without supervision, meets a lack of transparency and scrutiny in general, and the suggestion of unaccountability. Implications for net neutrality are also raised as a concern. Whether “some effectiveness” justifies the imposition of the many negatives on everyone except Italian football, will remain a lively topic of debate. There seems little here to inspire confidence that it’s all been worthwhile, but that may be challenged once the first comprehensive rightsholder-funded research sees the light of day. Evaluation of the Effects of Piracy Shield Through Video Stream Analysis and Its Operation (pdf) Source RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of September): 4,292 news posts