For years, millions of Italians have been reading i free newspapers in pdf. As? Simple: they download the file from one of the channels or groups of messaging apps (Telegram o Whatsapp) than every day make the paper version of all the major Italian newspapers available online in digital form. It is not a legal activity, given that those products have a cost and must be paid for. For this reason, following an investigation by Republic, the Bari Public Prosecutor's Office decided to move seizing as many as 19 Telegram channels on which copies of newspapers and magazines in PDF would have been illegally circulated.
Investigators are still ascertaining the identity of the people who manage the channels on which the free PDF newspapers are published. For them, the hypotheses of crime would be rather heavy: there is talk of laundering, receiving stolen goods, abusive access to a computer or telematic system, theft and violation of copyright law.
As he writes Republic, the Finance has received a mandate from close the 19 seized channels and, if Telegram does not cooperate, of ask the providers directly to prevent access to channels or the messaging platform itself. If this is the outcome, no one in Italy will be able to access the Telegram app anymore.
In recent days, the Italian Federation of Newspaper Editors had asked the Communications Authority to suspend Telegram, in order to interrupt the illicit circulation of editorial products. Fieg herself estimates that the publication of the free newspapers in pdf on digital platforms cause financial damage of 670 thousand euros per day to Italian publishers. This is obviously an excess calculation, because it assumes that without the possibility of reading the newspapers for free in PDF format, all users who use the illegal service would go to the newsstands to purchase regular copies.
After all, the problem of illicit distribution in PDF does not only concern newspapers (national and local), but also weekly and monthly magazines, books and comics (including Mickey Mouse).
