Published on November 30^th, 2021, Law 82/2021 regulates the supervision, removal, and denial of access to contents protected by copyright and related rights and the administrative procedure that should be adopted when such contents are unlawfully made available.

Under this law, the person responsible for the unlawfully available content must cease that availability and remove the respective service or content from the Internet within 48 hours, after the Appointing Authority in this matter (IGAC) notifies them.

An unlawfully available content is perceived as:

1. communicating, placing at the disposal of the public or storing copyrighted content without proper authorization;
2. providing services or adjacent means to third parties with the purpose of infringing copyrights or interfering with the regular operation of the market;
3. providing services that aim to circumvent effective technological measures designed to protect copyrights and other related rights. 

 When respecting the time span is believed to substantially reduce the utility of the operation or the person’s identity and contact details cannot be obtained, the IGAC isn’t required to notify them.

In these cases, or when the person responsible doesn’t comply within 48 hours, the intermediate service providers are notified to remove or block access to the content in question, namely through denying access to certain URL addresses, associated DNS servers or content made available through a specific IP address. They must also act within 48 hours from the notification. The violation of these rules and non-compliance with the IGAC’s determinations by the concerned intermediate service providers constitutes an administrative offence and can be punishable by a fine from €5.000 to €100.000. 

This law enters into force 60 days after its publication, on January 29^th, 2022.