Italian justice wants to "seize" a foreign website
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
In an investigation started by the Bergamo Prosecutors, an Order of the
Justice for preliminary investigation of the Court of Bergamo was issued on
1 August 2008, asking for the “seizure” of the PirateBay website, hosted
outside Italy, for displaying a collection of links to allegedly illegal
duplicated material. The order was implemented by 10 August 2008 by forcing
Italian Internet providers to block the access to that site, both to its
domain, as well as to its associated IP number.
The PirateBay owners quickly reacted and changed their IP address and set up
a new website called labaia.org (La Baia means The Bay in Italian). They
have also promoted measures to bypass the “blacklisting”: “We have already
changed IP for the website – that makes it work for half the ISPs again. And
we want you all to inform your Italian friends to switch their DNS to
OpenDNS so they can bypass their ISPs filters. This will also let them
bypass the other filters installed by Italian ISPs, as a bonus.”
But the case is worse, as revealed by the EDRi-member ALCEI. The
interpretation of the concept of “seizure”, in an extremely extended and
seriously questionable manner, triggers a serious threat for the rights
of citizens and companies that are not, in any way, involved in this
inquiry.
ALCEI explains in a letter sent to the Italian Data Protection Authority
(Garante per la protezione dei dati personali) that the “enforcement of
the Court order, exceeded what the Justice said. Users attempting to connect
to the “seized” site are redirected to the IP number 217.144.82.26,
belonging to servers located in the United Kingdom and apparently registered
by the pro-music.org domain, a music industry association protecting their
brands and intellectual property rights. If the above is true, then a
private association, outside the Italian jurisdiction, is collecting
internet traffic data that, when matched with those retained by the ISPs,
would allow the identification and possible criminal investigation of third
parties absolutely not involved in the Bergamo’s criminal case.”
But besides the case as such, ALCEI also underlines the fact that this
case – per se “one among many” – is of the utmost importance when
examined in a broad perspective because it falls into a wider and long
lasting lobby to legislators, politicians, magistrates and law
enforcement officers to share the (wrong) idea that “filtering is good
for citizen security” and the ISPs must be liable for everything that
happens on the net, whether under their direct control or not.
Italy has already passed legislation, for some years now, that goes
toward these directions (for a variety of alleged “reasons”, such as the
all-purposes “minor protection excuse” or to fight “illegal” online
gambling etc. – and now, once again, for “copyright sake”).
Italian politicians are pushing at the European Union level the idea of
forcing search engine providers to filter “questionable” queries.
The relevant question that the Italian EDRI members are asking is: “Is
it the case that Italy is on the edge of a civil rights aggression? Maybe
not. For a number of reasons (ignorance, disinterest, electoral
convenience) Italy seems to be more prone to copyright lobbyists
interests than other European countries.”
GIP Bergamo – Decree 1 August 2008 (only in Italian, 1.08.2008)
10 August 2008, Italy blocks Pirate Bay (only in Italian,10.08.2008)
http://punto-informatico.it/2381433/PI/Brevi/10-agosto-2008-italia-blocca-pirate-bay.aspx
Italian authorities attempt to take on Pirate Bay (11.08.2008)
http://www.out-law.com/page-9336
Fascist state censors Pirate Bay (10.08.2008)
http://thepiratebay.org/blog/123
A complaint to the Garante per i dati personali in the “piratebay” case
(only in Italian, 16.08.2008)
http://www.alcei.it/index.php/archives/129
EDRi-gram: ENDitorial: “Frattinising” isn’t the only threat (26.09.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.18/frattinising