ROME — Italy will begin enforcing a new, experimental directive from online regulators on Tuesday, requiring that all phone providers install a default filter for certain kinds of content, including all adult content, on SIM cars registered to minors.
The directive from the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) were approved in January and published on Feb. 21, allowing telecom companies 9 months for full implementation.
AGCOM stated that the directive was their “response to the growing concern linked to the digital practices of young and very young people.”
AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio told Italian media that the measure is “a testing ground to verify the real desire of adults to take an active part in the digital education of their children.”
The filtered material includes a variety of content includes, besides adult content, sites that provide information or promote: gambling or support online gambling and/or betting; the sale of weapons and related items; violence or personal injury, including self-inflicted injury, suicide, or that display scenes of gratuitous, sustained, or brutal violence; hatred or intolerance towards any individual or group; and practices that can damage health like anorexia or bulimia, the use of drugs, alcohol or tobacco.
Another blocked category is sites that provide tools and ways to make online activity untraceable, including VPNs.
The most peculiar kind of content the filters block by default is sites “that promote or offer methods, instructional means, or other resources for influencing real events through the use of spells, curses, magical powers or supernatural beings.”
The adult content category includes all “websites for an adult audience, showing full or partial nudity in a pornographic sexual context, sexual accessories, sexually oriented activities, and sites that support the online purchase of such goods and services.”
The telecoms were instructed to make these filters available to customers free of charge.
According to news reports, some telecom operators such as Kena, have. Mobile and WindTre have already started promoting the service to consumers.
If a SIM card is registered to adults, however, the filter will not be installed by default, but parents can activate it free of charge by sending a request to the provider.
Christian Network Europe is already celebrating that this experimental measure will result in “Italian minors no longer being able to encounter pornography on their smartphones.”