A document detailing technical requirements of Italy’s Piracy Shield anti-piracy system confirms that ISPs are not alone in being required to block pirate IPTV services. All VPN and open DNS services must also comply with blocking orders, including through accreditation to the Piracy Shield platform.

According to the article, it requires them to get accreditation to operate in in Italy, unless I'm reading that wrong.

Most corporate VPN companies I've dealt with would love to slip in additional cost to counteract this cost on their end.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

According to the article, it requires them to get accreditation to operate in in Italy, unless I'm reading that wrong.

Uh huh. So, I put a DNS server and VPN server online, and an Italian happens to find it. Is Italy going to try to extradite me or something?

[–] micka190@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

Disclaimer: This is speculation, because I haven't read the actual law (and I'm not Italian, so it's not like I really have a reason to).

I would assume that they will handle it like this:

To be able to sell your VPN service in Italy, you'll have to get accredited. Since you're now taking Italian customers' money, your company's dealings in Italy fall under Italian law. They might be able to extradite you, depending on what country you operate from, but realistically most businesses don't want to get involved in that kind of stuff, because even if you don't get extradited, no one wants to be put in a situation where they need to actively avoid a country.

This leaves free VPN services, right? Well, since ISP and "legal" VPNs need to conform to the new law, the Italian government could blacklist those VPNs' websites (which all ISPs and legal VPNs are required by law to block within 30 minutes of them being added to the block list). So now, you're in an awkward position as an Italian if you want to get a VPN that doesn't follow those laws.

I'm not sure at what extent this law goes, or how they handle people who are paying to circumvent it (because you might have bought a VPN before this), but they might simply require that banks refuse to process payments from VPN providers that refuse to get accredited.

Obviously, they can't really block this thing without going the Great Firewall route (and even that has ways of being bypassed), but that's not really their goal here. Their goal is to establish a stranglehold on what the everyday citizen does. It's to put a framework in place that allows them to quickly and efficiently block content they deem you shouldn't be able to see. It's a disgusting display of a government overreaching and censoring what their citizens' have access to on the web.