Italy

[IT] New Decree to Combat Child Pornography on the Web

IRIS 2007-4:1/26

Marina Benassi

Attorney at law

The Italian Ministry for Communications has recently signed a new decree aimed at combating child pornography on the internet by obliging Internet Service Providers to block sites displaying illicit content within 6 hours of notification by the competent organ, the Centro Nazionale per il contrasto della pedopornografia sulla rete Internet (the National Centre for combating child pornography on the internet). This organ was created by a previous act (2006), and operates within the Italian Postal and Communications Police, a specialised branch of the Italian Police force. The Centre is invested with the task of gathering information and collecting reports received from the general public and/or from other institutions, concerning websites with child pornography content. The new law fixes a deadline of 60 days from its publication in the Italian Official Journal for the service providers to adopt adequate systems aimed at guaranteeing that sites containing child pornography can be promptly blocked and obscured within the given 6-hour time span. A further deadline of 120 days after the publication in the Official Journal has been fixed for the service providers to implement further systems enabling them to intervene also at IP-address level, thereby allowing the providers to block entire strings of illicit networks instead of individual sites. The new decree was published in the Official Journal of 29 January 2007. Through this decree the Italian legislator aims to further improve the tools that both police and magistrates possess in order to combat the rise of child pornography.