Child Pornography Decree
Italy - The Ministry of Communication and the Ministry for Reforms and Innovations in the Public Administration has passed a decree on child pornography.According to this decree, the National Centre for the fight against child pornography on the Internet will communicate to connectivity suppliers (i.e. access providers) a list of websites that they have to filters. ISPs are expected to block the access to these websites within six hours from the receiving of the communication from the Centre.Afterwards, ISPs have to communicate to the Centre that they have blocked the websites. The formalities concerning this communication are not regulated yet. The decree holds a double-filtering. ISPs must be equipped in order to block the listed websites: a) within 60 days after the publication of the decree in the Official Gazette at the minimum the relevant “domain name”;b) within 120 days starting from the same date the relevant “IP address”.Anti-child pornography associations welcomed the decree. However, they underlined that this decree can not be considered as a definitive resolution of the problem, considering the other forms of sexual enticement of minors online (e.g. chat rooms or newsgroups) which can not be avoided by filters.On the other hand, ISPs stressed that blocking IP number will cause some troubles. In fact, ISPs assign the same dynamic IP number to 5,000 users. It means that, pursuant the indications of the Ministry of Communications, they threat to block thousands of websites.
