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On 25 March 2021, the Italian Council of State referred some preliminary questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union about the advertising time limits. In 2017, Agcom sanctioned three media service providers of the RTI group (“Canale 5”, "Italia 1" and “Rete 4”) for the violation of advertising time limits, pursuant to Article 38, paragraph 2 of the legislative decree 31 July 2005, No. 177 (the Italian media legislation, also known as “TUSMAR”). According to this provision, self promotion of broadcasters' programs is not included...

On 9 February 2021, the Istituto dell'Autodisciplina Pubblicitaria (Italian Advertising Self-Regulatory Body - IAP) passed a new regulation to discipline commercial communications concerning food products and beverages. The approval of this act aims to strengthen the protection of children and ensure healthy eating. The regulation at hand constitutes an attempt to implement some of the provisions of the revised AVMS Directive, that has not yet been transposed by Italy. It largely resorts to a self-regulatory and co-regulatory mechanism, for instance, by suggesting the adoption of codes...

On 21 January 2021, in the wake of the consolidated national and EU jurisprudence, the Civil Court of Rome adopted two important judgments aimed at protecting publishers from several forms of online piracy. The first statement concerns the French portal Dailymotion (controlled by Vivendi), which was ordered to pay Mediaset over EUR 22 million because of the illegal publishing of approximately 15 000 videos, amounting to a total of 30 000 minutes of viewing, taken from Mediaset contents. In addition, it was sentenced to pay a penalty of EUR 1 000 per day for any further illegal dissemination...

By way of an order issued on 27 November 2020 in the context of proceedings brought as a matter of urgency, the Court of Rome had the chance to tackle the first leading case in Italy concerning online disinformation, a very well-debated subject, most notably in the age of the pandemic. The decision of the court arose out of the claim made by the founder of a web channel named InfOrmalTV, allegedly created to disseminate independent information, who complained that YouTube had removed from his portal some COVID-19-related videos because of multiple violations of the terms and conditions of the...

On 16 December 2020, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR Lazio - Roma) delivered Judgment No. 13958, which followed up on the landmark decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union dated 3 September 2020 in Case C-719/18. The case originated from the disputed legal status of Vivendi, a French company holding at the same time a 23.9% stake in Telecom Italia (the leading Italian telecommunications company) and 28.8% of the share capital, as well as 29.94% of the voting rights in shareholders’ meetings of Mediaset (the leading Italian private broadcaster). Through Resolution...