Mese: Luglio 2023

On Agenda Digitale, an in-depth article by Daniela De Pasquale focuses on Directive 790/19 on copyright and related rights in the digital single market, and the so-called ‘value gap,’ which refers to the disparity between the perceived value by creators of journalistic content and the value obtained by intermediaries who distribute such content online.

As evidenced by the recent clash between Meta and SIAE, the relationship between content providers and online platforms remains challenging. Back in 2019, Directive 790 was met with great controversy, having to establish a delicate balance between the needs to protect freedom of information, expression, and creativity and those of content provider businesses; similarly, protests followed the implementation decree of the Directive in 2021, which definitively established a principle of liability for platforms that, after being informed, used copyrighted content without authorization due to their users’ public communication of protected works, risking potential content censorship as a result of abuse of remedies available to rights holders.

In this article, we delve into the procedures for calculating fair compensation for media editors proposed by platforms.

For further reading, the full article is available here.

On Global Competition Review, an article by Filippo Mazza about the use of “golden power” by the Italian government in the current historical period.
Italy seems to be experiencing an unprecedented wave of national protectionism to curtail foreign investments by means of the Golden Power Legislation, which came into force in 2012 and allows the government to limit or stop investments involving strategic assets in defence and critical infrastructure sectors.
Despite being operational for more than a decade, the legislation has significantly expanded its scope in recent times, following the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
While Italy is steadily recovering from the covid-19 pandemic and is currently the leading EU country in terms of GDP growth, foreign investors are expressing concerns over unprecedented government control. The Italian government is using in fact this legislation to more effectively protect Italian strategic assets from potentially hostile actors during a period of significant geopolitical challenges.
The full in-depth analysis of the procedures and areas of application of the golden power, as well as key interventions by the Italian government, is available to subscribers here.

Starting from the second half of 2020, due to the pandemic, climate change and the energy crisis caused by the Ukrainian war, the energy sector, especially renewable energy, has acquired a leading position in the Italian legislative landscape.

An important input can certainly be ascribed to the opportunities provided by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), which, in dedicating a significant chapter to Energy, mandated the implementation of several reforms aimed at harmonizing and simplifying the authorization procedures for the construction of energy production plants.

Our Tiziana Fiorella, interviewed by ItaliaOggi on the topic of Energy, PNRR, and the green transition, commented: “[…] Despite the declared intention of simplification, the rapid succession of numerous decrees (Simplifications, Aid, Energy, Bills, PNRR), through which the regulatory framework for renewable energy has been modified and supplemented, has resulted in fragmented legislative interventions that are not always consistent, often difficult to understand, and challenging to apply for operators. The current regulatory framework, far from achieving actual simplification, appears to have become considerably more complex due to the lack of an organic and coordinated body of regulations. We hope that in the near future, the legislator will intervene once again, standardizing the applicable laws in the Energy sector in order to facilitate operators in entrepreneurial initiatives that require clear, unambiguous, and certain rules they can rely on.”

The full focus is available here