AGCOM Piracy Shield Critic Receives Ominous Warning, Comes Out Fighting

Despite a series of failures concerning Italy's IPTV blocking platform Piracy Shield and the revelation that the 'free' platform will cost €2m per year, telecoms regulator AGCOM insists that all is going to plan. After breaking ranks, AGCOM board member Elisa Giomi called for the suspension of Piracy Shield while decrying its toll on public resources. When she was warned for her criticism, coupled with a threat of financial implications, Giomi came out fighting.

elisa giomi-1 In the 1978 movie Midnight Express, there’s a scene where prisoners walk slowly around a wheel in a dark, stone room. Performed instinctively in a clockwise direction, the ritual brings calm and unity to an otherwise nightmarish existence.

When the protagonist suddenly displays free will in an anti-clockwise direction, defiance of the unspoken rule causes confusion and then descends into chaos. At AGCOM headquarters in Italy, Commissioner and board member Elisa Giomi has stood alone in opposition to Piracy Shield’s direction for the last two years. That too has descended into chaos.

After publicly criticizing its failings, including spiraling costs and its apparent toll on public resources, Giomi is now under pressure to return to the officially designated direction while keeping her opinions to herself. That hasn’t happened yet, far from it.

Opposition Was Inevitable

In the wake of the blocking blunder that wiped out Google Drive last month, Giomi called for Piracy Shield’s suspension. Her colleagues all voted in the opposite direction, just as they’d done for the previous two years. With official rhetoric continuing to extol Piracy Shield’s virtues, Giomi publicly distanced herself from the party line. And how.

After criticizing how quickly the platform was approved by politicians, Giomi slammed the absence of transparency pertaining to external consultancy. With mounting blocking blunders on top, Giomi’s evisceration of Piracy Shield and the surrounding culture was unprecedented.

A source familiar with the situation virtually guaranteed there would be consequences for that outburst, but in what form was anyone’s guess.

Distancing From Comments Made to the Chamber of Deputies

In the wake of a hearing at the Chamber of Deputies, during which the president of AGCOM spoke about Piracy Shield, Giomi made her feelings known once again.

“I find myself once again having to make my position on the #PiracyShield platform transparent and distance myself from the statements made by the President of Agcom during a hearing at the Culture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, statements that were never discussed and much less shared with the rest of the Agcom Council, which the President can represent but certainly not replace,” the Commissioner wrote on LinkedIn. Then point by point, Giomi systematically aired her grievances.

To ensure authenticity, the comments below are unedited and translated from Italian as plainly as possible. Note: Lega Calcio refers to Lega Nazionale Professionisti Serie A, Italy’s top-tier football league. The Authority refers to telecoms regulator AGCOM, where Giomi is a Commissioner and sits on the board.

Five Devastating Statements

1. Contrary to what the President declared, the re-engineering of the platform for blocking (most well-known) pirate sites and IP addresses was not necessary to optimize the existing system and adapt it to technological evolution, but because it generated a significant and constant percentage of errors that were not compatible with regulatory requirements.

2. These errors are not attributable to defects in the reports, as claimed by the President, but to the functioning of the platform itself, and have led to long resolution times and significant costs for the Authority and for the parties involved.

3. I distance myself from the claim that the donation of the blocking platform by Lega Calcio responded to “the public interest in providing for the provisions of the law in an extremely rapid manner.” It would have been possible to respect these deadlines by also contacting CONSIP, the national purchasing center of the Ministry of Economy, which would also have allowed the identification of a specialized supplier not in #conflictofinterest with the blocking of sites, thus ensuring greater impartiality of the administrative action of the Authority.

4. As a #referee I find myself uncomfortable in contrasting interests that are equally legitimate before the law, but it is worth remembering that the interest of Lega Calcio in combating #piracy contrasts with the equally legitimate interest of the providers of information society services and #platforms , called upon to adapt their networks according to the Piracy Shield standards and to try to prevent erroneous blocks of sites and IP addresses not involved in piracy. There is no charity in the donation of Lega Calcio but rather the desire to pursue private interests in the most effective way possible.

5. The Authority has entrusted the company that created the platform for the Lega Calcio with the evolutionary maintenance service for 12 months. True, but for a fee. Let’s start from a fixed point: the blocking platform pursues the important purpose of combating piracy, however blocks on the #web cannot be implemented by trampling on #fundamentalrights of owners of legitimate sites and IP addresses. The blocking platform should operate, in full, respecting both the right of defense before the block, and the right to immediate restoration of what has been unlawfully inhibited by the Authority. It is unacceptable that a legitimate site is closed in 30 minutes by the platform and that the removal of the block may take even more than 30 days.

Neutral Professionals Support Giomi. Those Involved Do Not

On LinkedIn, professionals overwhelmingly came out in support of Giomi’s unprecedented public airing of her grievances. Several commenters noted that it would’ve been better to have disclosed this information sooner, but the majority expressed their support nonetheless.

In a fresh announcement this week, Commissioner Giomi revealed that her post on LinkedIn led to her receiving “a warning to rectify” and a “threat of a possible compensation action.”

Who sent those threats isn’t made clear, but they don’t come as a surprise.

Contrary Opinions and Criticism Increasingly Unwelcome in Italy

“It is not the first time that I have found myself exposed to similar initiatives when I express a #dissenting opinion in the face of a contrary vote,” Giomi notes.

“I wonder if this does not constitute undue #pressure … a bit like what happens to journalists when they are subjected to #QuereleTemerarie for having reported something inconvenient.”

At the time of writing, the European Centre for Press & Media Freedom has ten articles on its front page, all of them related in some way to attacks on Italian journalists.

Media freedom in Italy has been steadily declining in recent years, marked by unprecedented attacks and violations often initiated by public officials in the attempt to silence critical voices. Political interference in public media and the systematic use of legal intimidation against journalists by political actors have long defined the media-politics relationship in Italy. However, these dynamics have reached alarming levels over the past two years.
Report Launch – Silencing the Fourth Estate: Italy’s Democratic Drift
The full post is available here but regardless of whether people oppose or support Piracy Shield, Giomi says that this dispute comes down to the benefits of diversity to a society where differences are allowed to coexist.

“The Piracy Shield affair brings us back to the importance of giving space to minority voices on issues of collective interest. That is, protecting #pluralism,” Giomi concludes.