Italy Expands Piracy Shield to Live TV, Begins With ‘The X Factor’

Following its launch early 2024, Italy’s Piracy Shield blocking system was rarely out of the headlines for long.

Promoted as the ultimate solution to online piracy, hype and excitement soon gave way to the practical realities of a notoriously difficult working environment.

Despite a series of legal tweaks somehow managing to worsen already strained relationships with the country’s ISPs, the platform’s early demise proved as elusive as the end of piracy itself.

With seemingly little progress to report in the face of highly credible reports of collateral damage, fresh legal amendments in the summer signaled an expansion of Piracy Shield and new content to protect.

Not Just Football, All Live Events Become Eligible

Since the launch of the platform, blocking has mainly concerned the protection of Serie A football matches. However, there was always a plan for Piracy Shield to do more and at the end of July, amendments to expand availability of dynamic blocking injunctions to rightsholders of all live events were finally given the green light.

“With these measures, it will be possible to disable access to illegally disseminated content, during the first thirty minutes of the transmission of live content and premieres of cinematographic and audiovisual works or entertainment programs, as well as similar audio works,” AGCOM confirmed.

A big movie premiere seemed a likely candidate to get this new phase of blocking underway. However, among a trio of live blocking applications from broadcaster Sky, is a call to protect a live family TV show known all around the world.

Sky Hopes Piracy Shield Has the X Factor

The application seeking Piracy Shield protection for ‘X Factor 2025’ was filed September 12. According to AGCOM, Sky highlighted a serious, ongoing, and systematic violation of its rights due to illicit broadcasting of its Sky Uno channel. The focus was on the high-value X Factor franchise, to which Sky owns the exclusive broadcasting rights.

The systematic and illegitimate provision of the Sky Uno channel (EPG no. 108), published by Sky Italia srl, was detected at the internet addresses/URLs of the reported pirate service. From 11 September 2025 until 4 December 2025, Sky will broadcast the entertainment programme “X Factor 2025” on this channel for the first time […].

There is therefore a threat of imminent, serious and irreparable harm to Sky Italia srl, the exclusive owner of the rights to the programme in question.

Furthermore, given the timeframe for making the work available and the need to safeguard the economic value associated with these rights (which would inevitably be jeopardized in the absence of intervention to protect the first event from competition), the Authority is asked to order, as a precautionary measure, the cessation of the illegitimate conduct.

As always, AGCOM carried out an investigation of its own. The service’s domain (dtsinc.cc) was registered with US-based NameCheap but the registrant reportedly remains anonymous. The service uses Cloudflare as a reverse proxy but according to AGCOM, no information about hosting services is available.

In parallel, however, a separate live blocking application to protect Sky’s rights concerning the US Open tennis tournament, targeted the same pirate domain with a different sub-domain. In that case, Cloudflare provided details that identified Romania-based hosting company NexonHost Srl.

AGCOM Issues Precautionary Blocking Order

After considering the circumstances of the complaint and satisfying itself that the IPTV provider in question is in breach of Italian law, AGCOM granted Sky’s blocking application, including Sky’s request for a dynamic injunction.

“The applicant has also requested that the recipients of this provision proceed, through subsequent reports, to block any future domain names, subdomains, or IP addresses, including variations of the name or simple declination or extension, attributable to the same content and through which the violations occur,” AGCOM noted as it gave the request the green light.

The fact that the X Factor TV series is broadcast live receives several mentions in AGCOM’s decision. Sky’s argument that the bulk of the value lies in the live broadcast is just as compelling as the arguments made to protect football. When combined with the rest of the evidence, which showed that infringement goes far beyond a single TV series, obtaining an injunction was just a formality.

“The Directorate believes that the requirements for initiating the precautionary procedure pursuant to Article 10 of the Regulation are met. Specifically, regarding the periculum in mora (danger in delay), this is proven by the economic value of the infringed rights, whose value lies precisely in the first broadcast of the audiovisual content,” AGCOM’s order reads.

Scope of the Order

A blocking order against a single IPTV provider to protect one TV series seems somewhat inadequate given the limited lifetime of an X Factor series and the prevalence of alternative pirate suppliers. However, in common with similar blocking orders granted in Italy, there’s no attempt to specify narrow blocking windows to protect only the content specified in the application.

As a result, the injunction likely means persistent 24/7 blocking of an entire pirate IPTV service that will continue for as long as it takes, regardless of new domains, IP addresses or fresh identities it subsequently adopts. A liberal interpretation of the phrase “the same content” could mean authorization for blocking beyond a single service and most likely does, given the absence of follow-up requests in similar cases previously.

If Sky is able to keep up, and there’s every reason to believe that it will, blocking seems likely to continue until AGCOM removes the blocked domains and IP addresses from the master list. Unless absolutely necessary, that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.

AGCOM’s blocking order is available here (pdf, Italian)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.