- The Italian piracy shield caused a meticulous examination of European legislators
- The European Commission has sent a letter to the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs to warn that it may not be in accordance with the EU digital service law
- The Italian anti-pirate system has so far led to significant unlock incidents that have aroused strong criticism
The infamous anti-pirate system, the hacking shield, could violate European law.
On June 13, 2025, the EU Commission sent a letter to the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, warning that the hacking shield may not comply with the rules of the Digital Services Act (DSA). The system, according to the legislators, can even undermine the fundamental rights of citizens to freedom of expression and information, led by the Charter of fundamental rights of the EU.
The Italian hacking shield allows authorities not only to require ISPs, but also VPN suppliers and DNS, to block suspicious hackers in the 30 minutes. A characteristic rented by the right -handers of the country, which has also led to significant excessive incidents and aroused strong criticism in industry.
What is the problem with Italy’s hacking shield?
Italy applied for the first time its piracy shield system in February 2024 to prevent citizens from accessing live sporting events via pirate sites, especially football matches. To do this, right -handers may require that domain names linked to hacking and suspected IP addresses of copyright be blocked within 30 minutes.
The Italian anti-pirate system has certainly proved to be effective so far. However, technological companies have raised concerns to the EU authorities concerning several overbill incidents that have even affected the legitimate Google domains.
More specifically, the Association of the IT and Communications Industry (CCIA) warned against a lack of transparency on blocking and a lack of support for these sites wrongly blocked.
These concerns aroused an EU investigation into the technical details of the anti-pirate system of Italy, which highlighted some notable problems.
The legislators stressed how the DSA “does not provide a legal basis for the issuance of orders by the national administrative or judicial authorities, and does not regulate the application of these orders”, “inviting the Italian authorities to clarify how these procedures meet the requirements of the DSA in the final text.
Above all, the letter also underlines that “the effective set of illegal content must also take into account the fundamental right to freedom of expression and information under the charter of fundamental rights of the EU”.
This point is probably linked to the decision of the Italian communication regulator Agcom to demand that providers of private DNS networks and virtual private networks (VPN) actively block alleged flows alleged on request.
Confidentiality experts and technologists have previously pointed out that targeting VPN suppliers could have “consequences” for people’s safety and privacy. A VPN supplier (AirVPN) has in fact already ceased to accept new Italian subscribers.
“A model of what should not do”
Although we have to wait to see if the comments of the EU Commission will change the way Italy deals with illegal streaming in the future, this is certainly not an isolated case.
Other European countries have increasingly used such a blockage in terms of infrastructure against hacked or other content, arousing concerns in the industry.
France, for example, has recently taken a strong position against VPN suppliers. After a successful legal action against the DNS services in 2024, on May 15, 2025, the Paris judicial court supported the request for Canal + and ordered five of the best VPN services from Techradar – NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN and Cyberghost – to block access to the 203 areas linked to illegal sports flow sites.
Giants in Spanish sporting streaming, Laliga and Telefónica, also have been emit more and more IP blocking orders since February 2025. This is why the DNS giant based in the United States Cloudflare is fighting in court to solve these problems before the next Laliga season.
Nevertheless, according to the executive director of the i2coalition, Christian Dawson, Italy remains the worst example.
Dawson told Techradar: “The number of problems we see with the hacking shield of Italy is remarkable, and we want the rest of Europe to see this as a edifying story. We do Worried, however, that many other Member States are turning to the Italian piracy shield as a model, and we think it is a model exactly what should not be done. “”
