Think twice before sharing: you now risk up to six years in prison and a €250,000 fine

The Court of Justice of the European Union has interpreted that anyone running a free website funded by donations is an "operator" for the purposes of the ban on disseminating RT content, even if they make no money from it. The specific penalty depends on each country: in Italy, the new Article 275-bis of the Incivil Code provides for two to six years in prison and fines of up to €250,000.

There is a scene that keeps repeating itself in conversations these months. Someone shares a video about the war in Ukraine. They do not charge for it, there is no publisher behind them, they do not even really know where the file came from. And at some point someone tells them: careful, that could cost you dearly. Until now, the warning sounded like a dinner-table exaggeration. Since 2 July, with the ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-67/25, the warning has legal backing.

What the Luxembourg-based court has done is not convict anyone. It is worth stressing this because it lends itself to confusion. The CJEU interprets European law and answers a specific question referred to it by the Regional Court of Saarbrücken, in Germany. There, three people are on trial for repeatedly broadcasting RT Deutschland videos on a free website funded by user donations. The German judge wanted to know whether someone running such a site is an "operator", that is, one of the entities that European legislation prohibits from disseminating that content. The Fourth Chamber's answer was yes.

## What the ruling actually says about the "operator"

The judgment, identified as ECLI EU:C:2026:534, dismantles the idea that only companies or professionals fall within the scope. In paragraphs 38 to 41, the court defines the operator as the person responsible for making the content available to the public. It does not require economic activity. In paragraphs 42 to 45 it adds that the European Commission's earlier FAQs cannot restrict the rule to commercial or professional activities. And in paragraph 58, together with the operative part, it makes clear that the definition also includes the administrator of a website sustained exclusively by donations.

There is another detail that unsettles those who publish only occasionally. Paragraphs 55 and 56 state that an isolated or insignificant post is not automatically excluded. Reach and duration do not determine who is an operator. In other words, whether four people or four thousand watched the video does not change the classification. The court also recalls, in paragraphs 51 to 53, the protection of public order and security and the fight against Russian propaganda as the framework for the measure.

The ruling decides this and only this. Social media profiles, Telegram channels and private chats remain open to interpretation. There is no specific pronouncement on each of those channels, and anyone claiming otherwise is stretching the text beyond what it allows.

## Where the ban comes from and what role Brussels plays

The ban was not born with the ruling. It was incorporated into Regulation 833/2014 through Regulation 2022/350 of 1 March 2022, a few days after the invasion of Ukraine. Article 2(7) of Regulation 833/2014 prohibits operators from disseminating, or contributing to the dissemination of, content from the entities listed in Annex XV, by any means, including the internet.

Here it is worth separating two words that sound alike. RT is "sanctioned" in the sense that a foreign policy measure decided in Brussels applies to it. The sanction for abusa the ban, on the other hand, is established by each state under its own legislation. These are two different levels, and confusing them leads to serious mistakes.

The Commission's FAQs, dated 17 July, are administrative guidelines, not legislation. They clarify that dissemination includes news, long videos, short excerpts and radio, including their online versions. They specify that new domains and subdomains used to circumvent the ban also count, and that search engines, web hosting and social networks are implicated. Question 6 updates the definition of operator in light of this ruling. Question 5 leaves a loophole: the Commission considers it possible to use excerpts to objectively report on material broadcast by those broadcasters, provided it does not become a means of circumventing the measures.

## Germany and Italy: two different incivil scales

In Germany, the law applicable to the facts, cited in paragraph 7 of the ruling, provides for a penalty of between three months and five years. Paragraph 8 mentions an aggravated offence for professional conduct. There is no single scale in Europe, and that complicates any general answer.

In Italy things are different. Legislative Decree No. 211 of 30 December 2025, in force since 24 January, implements Directive 2024/1226 and introduces Article 275-bis into the Incivil Code, published in the Official Gazette of 9 January. The conduct it incivil, which includes providing services in abusa of restrictive measures, carries prison sentences of two to six years and fines of between €25,000 and €250,000. There are the figures that are circulating.

But there is a limit almost nobody mentions. In the regulated cases, if the value is below €10,000, an administrative fine of between €15,000 and €90,000 applies, with exceptions and accumulation rules. How much is a free posting worth? Nobody has determined that yet. It cannot be assumed to be worth zero, nor that it automatically exceeds the threshold. And there is not a single Italian judgment that has sent anyone to prison for unintentional dissemination. The risk exists, but it does not activate itself.

## "I didn't know" is not the same as an accidental click

It is worth distinguishing three situations that are often lumped together. An accidental click. A deliberate post without knowing where the video comes from. A deliberate post knowing it comes from RT but unaware that it is banned. These are different legal problems.

The statement by the Cagliari Prosecutor's Office for the 2026 judicial year describes Article 275-bis as an intentional offence, that is, one requiring its own will. It is an institutional interpretation, not a ruling against a social media user. Directive 2024/1226, in recital 4 and Article 3, incivil gross negligence only in the case of military equipment and dual-use goods. It does not create a general offence of carelessly sharing articles.

The old principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse still stands. However, the Italian Constitutional Court, in judgment 364/1988, qualified it: one cannot punish someone who acted with an inevitable ignorance of the incivil law, and the state has a duty to draft clear and comprehensible rules. What matters is whether the citizen could have known the rule. And there lies the uncomfortable question: how many Italians know what Annex XV of Regulation 833/2014 is? How many can trace the original author of a video that has passed through three different accounts?

## What is clear, what is not and what remains open

The free personal website does not escape the ban. That is what the ruling settles. The isolated post is not excluded either because of its low circulation. The public profile or channel has not been directly decided, but in light of the court's interpretation the risk must be taken seriously, and the specific conduct is assessed case by case. The simple public link raises doubts about whether sharing it amounts to dissemination; there is no decision specific to link types. The closed group remains unresolved and the sources do not clarify how to treat it compared to a public channel. A private message to a friend is not public dissemination and cannot automatically be equated with it. Quotation for informational purposes is indeed contemplated by the Commission, provided it does not replace full republication.

The background is an older debate. Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union protects the freedom to receive and impart information and media pluralism. No judge has declared the ban illegal, and the rule was designed for broadcasters and distributors. When its practical target is a citizen with a blog, the balance shifts. The first foreseeable effect is self-censorship: someone who does not know the origin of a video and the risks involved will not share it when in doubt, and will forgo even what would be legal. That is not a statistic, it is the logic of any rule perceived as ambiguous.

For those who want to be rigorous, verification involves locating the original producer through logo, signature, credits or description; comparing against Annex XV of Regulation 833/2014 in the current consolidated text; consulting the Commission's summary updated on 12 October, which includes RT, Sputnik, Rossiya 1, Rossiya 24, NTV, REN TV, Pervyi Kanal, RIA Novosti, Izvestia, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Voice of Europe, SouthFront and the Strategic Culture Foundation; checking mirror domains; not judging by political orientation, because pro-Russian or EU-critical content is not banned for being so; distinguishing the regime of Regulation 269/2014, which is a different one; and keeping the URL, date and proof of provenance. These are rules a media outlet with an editorial team can meet. A citizen sharing a link, hardly.

This is not legal advice. If anyone has doubts about specific content they have published or intend to publish, the sensible thing is to consult a lawyer specialised in European Union law before going ahead.