ItalyDecreto legislativo 107/2023, Terrorist Content Online: Competent Authorities, Administrative Fines and Criminal Penalties (Articles 3 to 7)
Decreto legislativo 24 luglio 2023, n. 107, artt. 3-7
In force since .
A specific illegal content rule binding public and private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Prohibition, Reporting, Governance
As of .
What it requires
- Remove terrorist content, or disable access to it, within one hour of receiving a removal order from the public prosecutor's office. Where the content is user-generated and hosted on a platform attributable to a third party, the order covers only the specific unlawful content.
- Inform the authority that issued the removal order, promptly and on the form in Annex II to the Regulation, that you have executed it, stating the date and time.
- Designate or establish a point of contact to receive removal orders electronically and execute them immediately, and make the information on the point of contact available to the public.
- If your main establishment is not in the Union, designate in writing a natural or legal person as your legal representative in the Union, who resides or is established in a Member State where you offer your services and who has the powers and resources to comply with removal orders and cooperate with the authorities. Inform the Interior Ministry body and the competent directorate of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy of the designation and make the representative's details public.
- Meet the other duties of the Regulation that Article 6(1) backs with an administrative fine: report the execution of a removal order on the Annex II form, take the measures the Regulation requires to restore content or access that you removed or disabled, preserve removed content and related data as the Regulation requires, meet its transparency obligations, set up and operate the complaint mechanism, and give content providers the information the Regulation requires.
- If you are exposed to terrorist content, include in your terms and conditions, and apply, provisions against misuse of your services for spreading terrorist content, adopt specific measures to protect your services, and report them to the Interior Ministry body within three months of a decision of that body and at each annual interval.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Article 7(1) punishes with arrest of up to six months or a fine (ammenda) of EUR 100,000 to 400,000 a failure to designate a point of contact or a legal representative. Article 7(2) punishes with arrest of up to six months and a fine of EUR 100,000 to 400,000 a failure to remove terrorist content, or to disable access to it, within one hour of the removal order. Article 7(3) punishes a systematic or persistent failure under Article 7(2)(a) with arrest of up to one year and a fine of EUR 250,000 to 1,000,000 or, if higher, up to 4 % of worldwide turnover.
Penalty structure
The highest tier is Article 7(3): where a failure to remove terrorist content within one hour is systematic or persistent, a fine (ammenda) of EUR 250,000 to 1,000,000 or, if higher, up to 4 % of worldwide turnover in the last financial year closed before the finding, with arrest of up to one year. Article 7(1) and (2) carry a fine (ammenda) of EUR 100,000 to 400,000.
- Rule
- Higher of
- As of
- Minimum
- 250,000
- Currency
- EUR
- Fixed cap
- 1,000,000
- Turnover percentage cap
- 4
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
The territorial inspectorates of the competent directorate of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy, which impose the administrative fines under Article 6(4) after the Ministry of the Interior body for the security and regularity of telecommunication services, which ascertains and contests the violations, communicates them.
What this law does
Article 3(1) makes the public prosecutor's office competent under the code of criminal procedure the authority that issues a removal order to a hosting service provider where the terrorist content is attributable to an offense committed for terrorist purposes. In other cases the removal order is issued by the public prosecutor's office at the court of the district capital that first learned of the presence of terrorist content on publicly available telecommunications networks.
Where the content is user-generated and hosted on platforms attributable to third parties, only the specific unlawful content is removed. Article 3(8) provides that, in case of non-compliance, access to the internet domain is interdicted in the forms of Article 321 of the code of criminal procedure, preserving where technically possible the use of content unrelated to the unlawful conduct.
Under Article 3(9), a hosting service provider that received an order and a content provider whose content was removed can lodge an opposition before the judge for preliminary investigations within ten days of learning of the measure. Article 4(1) makes the judge for preliminary investigations at the court of the district capital where the provider has its main establishment, or where its legal representative resides or is established, the authority that examines cross-border removal orders.
Article 5(1) makes the body of the Ministry of the Interior for the security and regularity of telecommunication services the authority that issues the decision under Article 5(4) of the Regulation and supervises the implementation of the specific measures adopted by hosting service providers exposed to terrorist content.
Article 6(1) sets an administrative fine of EUR 25,000 to 100,000 for a hosting service provider that, among other failures, does not report execution of a removal order on the Annex II form, fails to preserve removed content as the Regulation requires, does not meet the transparency obligations, or does not set up the complaint mechanism.
Article 6(2) sets a fine of EUR 50,000 to 200,000 for a hosting service provider exposed to terrorist content that, among other failures, does not include in its terms and conditions provisions against misuse of its services for spreading terrorist content or does not report to the Interior Ministry body, within three months of a decision and at each annual interval, the specific measures it has adopted and intends to adopt.
Article 6(3) sets a fine of EUR 75,000 to 300,000 for an exposed provider that fails to adopt specific measures to protect its services or fails to adopt the measures a decision imposes. The territorial inspectorates of the competent directorate of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy impose these fines under Law 689/1981, after the Interior Ministry body, which ascertains and contests the violations, communicates them.
Article 7(1) punishes with arrest of up to six months or a fine (ammenda) of EUR 100,000 to 400,000 a hosting service provider that, among other failures, fails to designate or establish a point of contact for receiving removal orders electronically or to publish its details, or, having no main establishment in the Union, fails to designate a legal representative.
Article 7(2)(a) punishes with arrest of up to six months and a fine of EUR 100,000 to 400,000 a hosting service provider or legal representative that fails to remove terrorist content, or to disable access to it, within one hour of receiving the removal order.
Article 7(3) raises the penalty to arrest of up to one year and a fine of EUR 250,000 to 1,000,000 or, if higher, up to 4 % of the provider's worldwide turnover in the last financial year closed before the finding, where the failure under paragraph 2(a) is systematic or persistent.
Under Article 7(4), the judicial authority may order the interdiction of access to the internet domain where, in the cases of paragraph 1, the provider does not perform the omitted acts within fifteen days of the finding and the contestation of the violation.
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