Italian Public Prosecutor Says Project Gutenberg's Collection Of Public Domain Books Must Be Blocked For Copyright Infringement | Techdirt

"Back in 2013, we made clear our concerns with the Italian communications watchdog AGCOM setting up new administrative copyright enforcement powers that would allow them to simply up and declare sites to be infringing, at which point ISPs would be ordered to block websites. Soon after that Italy's public prosecutor seemed to decided that part of his job was also to order websites blocked based solely on the public prosecutor's say so.

In the latest such order from the Public Prosecutor's office declaring a list of sites to be infringing, apparently Italy has decided that the famous and wonderful Project Gutenberg website, which is a repository of public domain books, must be blocked. I don't know about the other 27 sites listed in the order, but Project Gutenberg is no piracy site. Yet here it is ...."