If someone has been thinking that the pronunciation of the Frosinone Civil Court (http://blblex.it/blog.php?id=559&lang=en) has held the lawfulness of the website where it’s possible to find links to download and watch movies, a recent pronunciation of the Viterbo Criminal Court absolutely excluded this possibility.

In fact, the pronunciation of the Frosinone Court didn’t have significant effects on the domestic legal system, but it simply confirmed that it is necessary to "prove a true economical gain".

Consequently, the administrators of a website, where it’s possible to find links to download and watch files protected by copyright, could not be considered responsible in terms of civil liability when it is not sufficiently proved the true economical gain characteristic of any breach of copyright.

In this terms it is possible to explain why, few weeks after the pronunciation of the Frosinone Court, the Viterbo Criminal Court condemned the administrator of the famous website “filmsenzalimiti.it”, according to Article 171-ter, no. 2, lett. a-bis), of the Law 633/1941, to 8 months’ imprisonment and imposed a penalty payment of euros 1.720

The same Court also condemned the administrator of the website – that the year before was declared not liable by the competent civil court – to the compensation for damages suffered in favour of the FEDAV (Federazione per la tutela dei contenuti audiovisivi e multimediali), which will be liquidated in a separate civil proceeding.

The conflict between the different civil and criminal pronunciations about this last event seems to be relevant; nonetheless, it seems to be appropriate to wait the publication of the criminal sentence motivations in order to have an overall view about the juridical matters.