Italian Government Cracks Down On Piracy With Block Order

Italy is cracking down on piracy in a mass shutdown of websites — in the form of blocking at the Internet service provider level — that are related in some way to file sharing. The move will see 46 sites blocked to Internet goers in the nation, perhaps the largest move of this nature to happen in Italy.

This isn't the first time Italy has targeted file-sharing websites. Back in 2013, more than two dozen file-sharing websites were targeted by the small nation, which had taken down many applicable domains — a mixture of bittorrent, file-hosting, and related websites that can be used for piracy.

In this latest digital punch, the Public Prosecutor of Rome issued an order to proceed with the crackdown, seized under a Preliminary investigation order. Anyone on an Italian ISP will be unable to access the targeted websites by domain name or DNS, it is being reported, expanding the already large list of domains that inaccessible.

Websites dopinatorrent, filmxtutti, universfilms, watchfreemovies[dot]ch, mondotorrent, and have all been blocked, among others. It was Italian law enforcement that carried out the blocking action, not doing so on the behest of copyright owners, a lawyer that spoke to the folks at TorrentFreak says.

SOURCE: TorrentFreak