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Italian regulations introducing a new enforcement proceeding for the copyright breaches occurring on the Internet recently approved might be now reviewed in the light of doubts raised by the European Commission. But in absence of that businesses should now get ready to comply!
The regulations had been criticized by commentators because of the lack of consistency of the definitions with the language used in the EU E-Commerce Directive, but also because the Communications Authority (AGCOM) is a Governmental authority rather than a court and would vest itself with the powers of a tribunal even setting out the rules that it will be required to enforce.
As required by EU laws, the draft regulations had been notified to the European Commission and subject to a 3 months stand still period during which they could issue some comments. Interestingly, the Commission addressed some requests of clarification which were unknown to the public up until recently. The comments from the EC have been very well summarised by Alberto Bellan and Eleonora Rosati on IPKat in a post where they stressed that the European Commission focused their requests of clarification on the following main areas:
- The notions of “digital work”, “uploader”, “website manager”;
- Whether there would be an obligation on any website manager to have in place notice and action procedures;
- Whether selective action is envisaged only in relation to the removal of the alleged illegal content, and not also in case of disabling of access to it. Notably, would this imply that the addressee of the decision of AGCOM would need to disable access to the whole website, even if only part of that website is actually illegal within the meaning of the draft act?
Also, the European Commission had questioned whether the very tight timeframe in which the notice and take down proceeding for the removal of copyright infringing material was going to be run would have properly protected defendants’ rights.
It is good to say that some improvements have been adopted on the draft regulations compared to the initial version and indeed websites are not anymore forced to set up a notice and take down procedure subject to a very stringent timeframe of reaction. But the enforcement procedure is now filtered through a more long and detailed review by the AGCOM.
However, someone believes that the above mentioned concerns have not been fully addressed. And with the regulations coming into force at the end of March 2014, online operators shall start putting in place the appropriate measures in order to comply with the obligations set forth by the regulations.
We will see whether the Communications Authority will consider a further review of the regulations. But in the meantime, feel free to contact me Giulio Coraggio (giulio.coraggio@gmail.com), to discuss. And follow me on Twitter, Google+ and become one of my friends on LinkedIn.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Sébastien Bertrand
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