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The Court of Rome handed down an interesting judgment in a case involving Reti Televisive Italiane S.p.A. (“RTI”) - the major Italian private broadcaster - and Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso S.p.A. (“L’Espresso”) - an Italian publisher, which publishes, among other things, the online version of the national newspaper “La Repubblica” (“Repubblica”). Starting from 2012, several excerpts of RTI TV programmes have been published in a specific section of the website of Repubblica without the authorisation of the broadcaster. RTI then filed a legal action against L’Espresso. The plaintiff sought a declaratory...

On 4 August 2016, the Ministry of Economic Development (Ministero dello sviluppo economico - “MISE”) issued a decree which sets forth the contribution to be paid by digital terrestrial television network operators for the exploitation of frequencies (the “Decree”). The Decree has been published in the Official Journal on 21 September 2016, numbered 221. According to s. 208 of the Stability Law 2016, MISE is in charge of determining the amount of the contribution, to be paid by both national and local network operators. According to the law, such amount shall be determined in a transparent, non-discriminatory...

On 19 July 2016, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (Ministero dell’Economia e delle Finanze) issued a decree to identify the “specialised media” to which the general prohibition of gaming advertising on television and radio broadcasts between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. does not apply. The Decree has been published in the Official Journal on 8 August 2016. Restrictions on gaming advertising were introduced by Legislative Decree no. 158 of 13 September 2012 (“Decreto Balduzzi”). In addition, Section 1, paragraph 939 of Law no. 208 of 28 December 2015 sets forth the prohibition on “generalist radio and...

The legality and acceptability of some controversial practices by journalists was at the heart of a recent case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The case concerns the conviction of three journalists in Italy who intercepted radio communications between police officers (carabinieri) in order to arrive quickly at crime scenes and report on them for their local online newspaper. Stressing the notion of responsible journalism and noting that the decisions of the domestic courts had been duly reasoned and had focused primarily on the need to protect national security and prevent crime...

On 13 July 2016, the Italian Data Protection Authority issued a decision ruling that the processing of users’ personal data by the Italian satellite pay-TV operator Sky Italia, aimed at providing targeted advertising to some of its subscribers (Adsmart project), is in line with the Italian Data Protection Code (legislative decree No. 196 of 30 June 2003). Targeted advertising is a new advertising technique that enables the broadcaster to replace the advertising spots included in the linear feed with different, targeted advertising spots that are stored in the user’s decoder box. Thus, broadcasters...