14 DAY TRIAL // Italy is one of the countries where copyright holders have been the most successful in their fight against torrent and streaming sites, but this time, a court ruled that several pirate movie streaming sites were legal.
The decision comes from the Court of Appeal in Rome which overturned a ruling against four unlicensed sites offering streaming movies to the public, TorrentFreak reports. It looks like the Court decided that simply providing links to copyrighted content does not qualify as distributing those same files, even though the sites generate revenue via advertising like pretty much any site under the sun.
Italy is known for wrapping up in the same category just about any type of site that offers links towards copyrighted content, regardless if they're hosting the content or just linking to it. Now, with this new decision, a precedent may have been set for being a little more careful about what sites fall into which category.
The case that got decided on just recently began two years ago when the operator of four sites linking to pirated movies - filmakers.biz, filmaker.me, filmakerz.org, cineteka.org - was found guilty of copyright infringement. He was ordered to pay $600,000 in fines and costs, so he decided to file an appeal.
An interesting precedent
The appeal was actually heard by the court back in February, but the defendant's lawyer Fulvio Sarzana is now speaking out. "The Court ruled that the indication of links does not qualify as making direct disposal of files protected by copyright law," Sarzana said.
Often times, sites are accused of making money by placing ad banners, but this time, the judge ruled in the site's favor. "The Judge has recognized as lawful the portal's activities, and this despite the presence of advertising banners," Sarzana added.
The lawyer says that the Judge ruled that file sharing is a saving of expense and not a for-profit business. Therefore, in these cases, penal provisions of copyright law cannot be applied, along with the resulting administrative sanctions. This should in the end create an interesting precedent, especially since the sites were cleared of all charges and the financial penalties against the operator were overturned, and it might end up affecting not only future decisions taken in Italy, but also across Europe.