Italy is promoting its anti-piracy program 'Pirate Shield,' but it has been pointed out that the number of paid subscribers to video streaming services has not increased
Italy's anti-piracy program, ' Piracy Shield, ' which has blocked thousands of IP addresses and domains in the year since its introduction, has certainly been successful in reducing the number of pirate users, but it has been pointed out that it has not been able to attract pirate users to pay membership.
Brian Turnbow on LinkedIn: #piracyshield
'Piracy Shield' Fails to Convert Pirates to Paying Subscribers, Data Suggest * TorrentFreak
https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-shield-fails-to-convert-pirates-to-paying-subscribers-data-suggest-250119/
Pirate Shield was introduced by the Italian telecommunications regulator AGCOM and is a platform provided by Lega Calcio and AGCOM to implement the law ( Legge 14 July 2023, n. 93 ) which requires ISPs to block copyright- infringing live streams within 30 minutes.
Since its introduction in February 2024, Piracy Shield has blocked access to thousands of IP addresses and domains and is considered a 'great success' by authorities, with calls to expand the scheme from initially targeting only illegal live streaming of football matches to include film premieres and live TV broadcasts.
At the same time, stakeholders are trying to strengthen the influence of the piracy shield through various discussions, and in January 2025, Brian Turnbow of CDLAN, a technology company that operates cloud and hosting solutions, held a telephone conversation with an AGCOM representative.
However, after the meeting, Turnbow pointed out that there was something odd about the word 'success' used by the authorities.
Turnbow, who shared AGCOM's findings, said one of the major live streaming services, DAZN, has not seen a significant increase in viewership since introducing Piracy Shield.
Below are the number of users (top) and viewing time (bottom) of major streaming services shared by AGCOM. DAZN holds the rights to
What's interesting is that while the number of users is decreasing, the service fees are increasing. 'ISPs are bearing the costs of introducing the service, and for DAZN, it means that users don't get more users or viewing time, and users end up paying more,' Turnbow said, raising doubts about the 'success' of the piracy shield.
'AGCOM supporters point out that the Piracy Shield works because it blocks pirate domain names and IP addresses, reducing traffic to those sources. But while traffic to blocked services may decrease, people may instead be moving to other sources that aren't blocked. On the other hand, it could be argued that DAZN's subscriber base would be even lower without the anti-piracy measures,' TorrentFreak wrote in response to Turnbow's post.
Two months after the launch of Piracy Shield, the US company Cloudflare was sued by AGCOM for 'creating an escape route for Piracy Shield,' but the lawsuit was later dismissed , with the court finding that 'no evidence of conscious collusion on the part of Cloudflare could be found.'
TorrentFreak said, 'Experts have expressed concern that domains and IP addresses will be blacklisted without a mechanism in place to remove them, leading to a shortage of IP addresses accessible from Italy. If the past year has taught us anything, it's that a lack of transparency and feedback can end up being counterproductive.'
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