On November 28th, 2012, the Public Prosecutor of the Court of Milan, addressing a complaint lodged by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A. last June, ordered the pre-emptive seizure on the Italian soil of the website Avaxhome.ws, for years a reference point for piracy of newspapers and ebooks around the world, and that collected many daily publications from Italy as well as from many other Countries, along with videos, music and software in ten languages​​, all strictly without permission of the legitimate rightholders. The main Italian ISPs are already complying with the order, blacklisting the website and preventing their users to access it.

The so-called “DNS poisoning” and the blocking of data exchanges with the IP address of a certain web site are confirmed to be the favoured methods adopted by Italian
judges against digital piracy; for the first time, however, the operators of a piracy-dedicated website are not only charged with violation of copyright, but also with the crime of receiving stolen goods, as per article 648 of the Italian Criminal Code. This allegation allowed the Public Prosecutor to issue the pre-emptive seizure of the pirate portal, while waiting for the designated court to rule on the proposed case.

We will wait with interest, to see the findings of the court on such pre-emptive seizure, as well as the decision on the case.