A leaked document suggests that Italy is considering French-style 3-strikes measures, but they could be more wide-ranging. It also appears that the Italian government is backtracking on a proposal to consult users and consumer organisations.

Last October, the Italian government announced its intention to form a committee to review options for dealing with Internet copyright infringements. At the time, the Minister of Culture, Sandro Bondi, indicated interest in persuing a French-style 3-strikes proposal, but said that all interests, including consumers and users, would be included in a consultation process. Since then, the situation appears to have changed. I have pieced this story together from various media reports and from contacts in Italy.

It seems that in December, three members of the new committee - Comitato tecnico contro la pirateria digitale e multimediale - were announced. One was from the SIAE, which is the Italian collecting society

Read more: 3-strikes +++ proposed in Italy

According to reports in the Italian media, Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has come up with a proposal to regulate the Internet. He wants to put it to a meeting of the G8 - the club of the world's leading economies - which he will be chairing from January. The rationale appears to be that the G8 already oversees the financial markets, and the Internet has no regulation. Berlusconi is also suggesting that Italy could take the lead.

However, it should not be overlooked that Berlusconi owns a large media empire, which is threatened by developments on the Internet.

Read the reports here:

Corriere della Sera

Repubblica

Is corporate censorship by the music industry what we want for Europe?

Italian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been ordered by a judge to block access to the Swedish peer-to-peer file trading site The Pirate Bay. It's understood the order was given on 8th August by a judge in the city of Bergamo, in the north of Italy, and sent to all the large Italian ISPs. It is understood that they have since complied with it.

The Pirate Bay is understood to have put in place measures which permit users to get access in spite of the blocks.

However, what concerned me was a report in TorrentFreak that the blocked users were being redirected to a page hosted on an IFPI-owned server. I felt it unwise to report this without checking, and having carried out reverse IP and Whois checks on the IP address of the redirect page , I can confirm that this is the case. I have already commented on the changes to European law which have been voted through in the Telecoms Package, which reduce ISP liability for blocking content, contrary to existing European law. This judgement - with a redirect to IFPI - only serves to confirm my view that this is a change demanded by the music industry and the politicians are giving in to such pressure without taking the trouble to understand the wider implications. Censorship doesn't have to be done by the State. And ISPs are capable of putting up their own redirect pages. If P2P sites can be blocked to support copyright, and traffic redirected to the rights-holders, what comes next?

The story is covered by the International Herald Tribune, and by TorrentFreak .