Italy's piracy rate drops to 37% as Piracy Shield blocks 100,000 sites
Italy's audiovisual piracy rate dropped to 37% in 2025, a 4% year-over-year decline attributed to the new anti-piracy law and the Piracy Shield blocking tool, though piracy still cost the economy €2.3 billion. Over 100,000 sites were blocked in the past year, and awareness of sanctions is changing behavior, especially among youth.
Key Takeaways
- Piracy rate dropped to 37% of the population (20 million Italians), down 4% YoY and 7% from 2023
- Over 100,000 sites blocked via Piracy Shield in the past year, with 70% of adults considering the tool effective
- Youth aged 10-14 saw piracy fall to 37%, the lowest recorded — down from 45% in 2023
- Economic damage persists at €2.3 billion, including €902M in GDP losses and 11,100 jobs
- Movies remain the most pirated content at 28%, followed by TV series (23%), TV programmes (19%), and live sports (14%)
Why It Matters
Italy's data offers the most concrete evidence yet that a rapid site-blocking regime — Piracy Shield requires blocking within 30 minutes — can measurably reduce piracy at scale, with over a million users dropping the habit in two years. For streaming platforms and rights holders across Europe, the Italian model is becoming a reference point, particularly as AGCOM extended Piracy Shield to films, TV series, and music in September 2025. Watch whether the European Commission's June 2025 concerns about the system's lack of oversight lead to formal action that could constrain or reshape the framework.
Additional Context
AGCOM expanded Piracy Shield's scope beyond live sports to include films, TV series, and music premieres effective September 15, 2025, per Telecompaper (August 2025) and Piracy Monitor (August 2025). The extension requires ISPs, VPN providers, and public DNS resolvers to block infringing domains and IP addresses within 30 minutes of a rightsholder report. The amended regulations also obligate search engines and "Information Society Service" providers to comply with blocking orders, significantly widening the net of entities subject to enforcement.
Piracy Shield's expansion comes amid sustained legal and technical challenges. AGCOM fined Cloudflare €14.2 million in January 2026 for refusing to block domains on its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver, a penalty Cloudflare called disproportionate and appealed on March 8, per Ars Technica (March 2026). Cloudflare argues the system operates without judicial oversight or transparency and is incompatible with the EU's Digital Services Act. The European Commission echoed concerns about the framework's lack of safeguards in a June 13, 2025 letter, according to Cloudflare's March 2026 blog post. Separately, a September 2025 University of Twente study found hundreds of legitimate websites were inadvertently blocked, with collateral damage persisting for months due to indiscriminate IP-level blocking.
While overall piracy declined, live sports piracy tells a different story. Per Il Sole 24 Ore (June 2026), lost sports viewings rose 8% year-on-year to 13 million, with economic losses reaching €419 million — up 19% from 2024 and 47% over two years. This contrasts with films and TV series, where direct economic losses fell to €450 million from €530 million in 2024. The divergence suggests rapid blocking may be more effective for on-demand content than for live events, where pirated streams migrate faster than enforcement can track.
Read full article at advanced-television.com
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