Dazn warned by Agcom for causing Google Drive to be blocked last Saturday

Dazn has been warned by Agcom for the incorrect reports on Piracy Shield, the national anti-piracy platform. As published by Wired, the measure came after the incident last Saturday that caused the blocking of the Google Drive service.

Piracy Shield is a platform that can automatically block websites within 30 minutes of reporting IP addresses deemed responsible for broadcasting football matches and other sporting events without having the right to do so. But what if the reports are wrong? What if they concern “valid” IPs of important services such as those of Google? What do you do?

The Internal Contention of Agcom

A recent communication from Agcom reveals that

"the Board of the Authority, during today's meeting, in light of the technical report presented by the competent offices on the event that occurred on Saturday evening regarding a blocking report erroneously attributed to Google Drive, decided to warn Dazn, as an accredited reporter on the Piracy Shield platform, to ensure maximum diligence and rigor in presenting blocking requests and in collecting related evidence. The Authority reserves the right to adopt all necessary measures in the event of non-compliance."

In short (Italian only) Dazn has filed an incorrect complaint against Google.  And according to sources consulted by Wired, it is not only Dazn that sends erroneous reports. Agcom's warning to Dazn was also made to protect itself from possible (and probable) appeals by Google.

Speech by the Minister 

During question time at the Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday 23 October, the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, commented on the erroneous reporting of the IP address of Google's CDN. “The platform works”, declared Urso, urging “the full and fair involvement of various interested actors, including internet service providers, rights holders and Agcom".

Regarding the accidents, the minister said: “Any disruptions may be reduced as more operators registered on the platforms contribute to whitelisting legitimate services to avoid them being erroneously blocked.".

The White Lists and Future Challenges

There is also a whitelist, which are lists of Internet resources that should not be blocked, even if they are incorrectly reported by Piracy Shield. However, the Google CDN blackout has shown that widely used resources are not included.

According to Agcom, the white lists contain a total of 11.000 elements, including institutional sites (for example, the Presidency of the Council, ministries, the Bank of Italy), reported by the National Cybersecurity Authority, infrastructures of internet service providers, authorized reporters and VPNs used to access the national anti-piracy platform.

According to Urso, anyone who wants to avoid having their site mistakenly included in the Piracy Shield network should sign up for the whitelist. However, this process is not open to everyone and would require all companies, including the smallest ones, to include their sites and manage the registrations from abroad, making it virtually impossible.

So far, only the 62 participants in the Piracy Shield technical table have been able to access the protection lists, including Amazon, internet and telecommunications service providers, Confindustria, rights holders such as Dazn and RTI (Mediaset group), large telephone companies such as Tim, Tiscali, Vodafone, Wind, Fastweb and Iliad, sports leagues, the National Cybersecurity Agency, Guardia di Finanza, Postal Police, anti-piracy associations and the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy. It remains uncertain how other operators will be able to access.

Giulia Pastorella, a member of parliament for Azione, who in the past voted in favour of Piracy Shield, said: “Minister Urso does not respond to the Piracy Shield disruptions. Indeed, he claims that the platform's problems will be solved only when all operators report that their services are safe. In practice, all websites and web services are presumed to be guilty. If this is the only solution that the government proposes to solve the problems, it is clear that the platform, as it is, must be closed".