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In its Decision of 16 February 2011, No 70/11/CONS, the Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni (Italian Communications Authority - Agcom) surveyed the measures to protect pluralism set out in Decision 136/05/CONS and repealed the obligation imposed on RTI to rely upon an advertising agency other than Publitalia for the sale of advertising for its digital terrestrial transmissions. According to Agcom, RTI has fulfilled that obligation by establishing Digitalia and entrusting to that company the sale of advertising for pay-TV programmes broadcast on digital terrestrial networks. The sale of...

On 16 June 2011 the Intellectual Property Section of the Italian Court of Appeal overturned the Court of Rome’s recent decision in the Yahoo! Case regarding the removal of links that infringe copyright (see IRIS 2011-7/30). The Ninth Section of the Court of Rome had found that Yahoo! acted as an accessory in the proliferation of pirated links, establishing for the first time liability for contributory infringement of search engines that do not take an active role in combating online piracy. The Court of Appeal has now accepted all the requests submitted by Yahoo!. According to the Court, Yahoo!...

On 19 July 2011 the European Commission sent requests for information in the form of letters of formal notice, the first step in the process of an EU infringement procedure, to 20 EU member states. The member states in question, namely Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain, have not yet notified to the Commission measures to implement the new EU Telecoms Package, formally adopted after two years of heated negotiations at the end of 2009...

In its judgment of 28 July 2011 the Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed an appeal by Mediaset SpA, a digital terrestrial programme broadcaster, against a judgment of the General Court of 15 June 2010 in Case T-177/07. The judgment reaffirmed that subsidies granted to consumers in Italy for the purchase of certain digital terrestrial television decoders should be qualified as unlawful State aid, as the subsidy was favouring Mediaset’s terrestrial programme over its rivals’ satellite programmes. According to Italian legislation, transmissions in analogue TV broadcasting mode should have...

The Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni (the Italian National Communications Authority - AGCOM) has published a number of press releases and official statements stating the conditions that the media need to follow in order to preserve media pluralism. Italy is currently in the throes of elections, as the provincial and municipal elections were held on the 15 and 16 of May, while a Referendum on four matters will also take place on the 12 and 13 of June. AGCOM recalls that equal treatment (par condicio) is mandatory in the run-up to an election. This applies to TV, radio and newspapers...