Italy Wants to Restrict Blogs

nx writes "Italy wants to restrict bloggers' rights by forcing everyone to register their blogs, pay a tax and have a journalist as a "responsible director". This law is clearly designed to curb critical voices and free speech, although it has yet to be approved by parliament."

In other news

[Every country in the world] wants to restrict entrepreneurs' rights by forcing everyone to register their businesses, pay taxes on undistributed and phantom profits, and get a license for all activities that compete with politically-powerful groups. The law is clearly designed to curb competition with government monopolies and free association, although it has yet to be approved by its legislature.

I just wish y'all would worry about economic regulation *before* it starts getting applied to World of Warcraft and blogging.

Re:In other news

The SUV and the white picket fence are far out of reach.

If you want to stay out of debt, sure. But just looking around, there are a whole lot of people with multiple 6000-lb road monsters and McMansions, who have no business owning either, thanks to easy mortgages.

"Middle class" used to mean a small home and a single car, or a modest apartment if you lived in a city -- plus entertainment/disposable income that's a fraction of what people spend today (as a fraction of their income, but probably in absolute terms when you adjust for inflation, too). Today, people don't consider themselves successful unless they live in a large house, have two or three cars, boatloads of entertainment expenses, eat prepared food constantly, and go on jet-setting vacations: none of that was ever part of "middle class" life a few generations ago.

One of the reasons the 'middle class' has disappeared is because expectations have become unrealistically high as a result of shady credit practices. A person living debt-free and within their means on a moderate income can still be quite comfortable in many parts of the country, but they won't live as well -- to an outside observer, anyway -- as their neighbors who are racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of mortgage and consumer debt. That creates a lot of social pressure to do the same, particularly since it forces class definitions in a community to creep upwards.

This article can be summed up in one word....

.... Censorship.

(What more needs to be said? But since this is /., more will be said)

Coming soon to a government near you...

I expect blogs to be taxed and licensed almost everywhere, eventually. We can't have people saying things critical of the governm....errr...I mean, we can't have people saying anything offensive. Will someone please think of the children????

Blog

So, what is the definition of a "blog" anyway?

Re:Blog

A Blog can be identified via the following characteristics:

1. There is very little traffic to the site other than the bots posting link back comments still trying to fool google.
2. There is a flurry of postings near the creation date of the site waning down to many once a month with the six of the last 10 postings being the message "No time to post today, too much work. Will try to catch up later."
3. The posts with content contain many unsubstatiated statements proclaimed as fact all discussed in an exasperated matter in a hardly subtle attempt to garner emotional support from people they don't know.
4. There are very few comments to postings other than self-posted comments providing clarification or an update.

I'm sure there are other identifying characteristics, but these are the ones that you can count on...

The more things change,

I remember a news story from way back when I was a kid, of some group getting raided in the USSR for possessing an unregistered mimeograph machine.

As this and the current Burma censorware article show, nothing threatens the powerful like a free exchange of ideas.

what's the standard for

Does Italy have some sort of registration/licensing of journalists or periodicals? Are their already laws in place that force professional, mainstream journalists to be "responsible"?

It might go against my USian belief in free speech, but I'd have a hard time arguing against this law if its merely placing blogs & websites under the same scrutiny as other publications. OTOH, I see enforcement of the law as a colossal failure waiting to happen.

Re:what's the standard for

It might go against my USian belief in free speech, but I'd have a hard time arguing against this law if its merely placing blogs & websites under the same scrutiny as other publications.

Actually, that's what a lot of people find objectionable about these types of laws: that stringent regulation of "bad people" might actually apply to them too! (Sort of a variant of "a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested".)

I see this kind of thing all the time:

***

"I think it's HORRIBLE how corporations EXPLOIT all these tax loopholes to avoid paying their FAIR SHARE!"
"To consistently enforce tax law, we will have to monitor MMORPGs like World of Warcraft so as to insure income earned there is taxed."
"WHAT???? That's RIDICULOUS!"

***

"I think there should be STRINGENT regulations on businesses to make sure they don't DISCRIMINATE."
"Excuse me sir, your site, 'Craig's List' has acted in contravention of Fair Housing law so we're suing you."
"Er, what? I mean, those laws are for bad people, not me."

***

common internet discussion:

"Corporations are OBVIOUSLY inefficient. Look how easy it is to make something and sell it cheaper."
"Yeah, but you didn't obey these regulations and pay these taxes."
"Well ... those shouldn't exist!"
"And if they didn't, the corporation could sell for less."
"No, because they're inefficient."
*falls out of chair*

No need to worry.

Like all laws in Italy which are unpopular and/or unenforceable they will be totally ignored by law-enforcement and people alike...

Although I'd be surprised if this law makes it through parliament without being heavily diluted, or at all...

Re:No need to worry.

I am worried. Yes, the law is silly and unenforceable. However, having lots of unenforced and silly laws on the books makes everyone a criminal and subject to capricious arrest anytime anywhere. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, maybe even George Bush love laws like this because they can employ them at a moment's notice against their perceived threats.

Good luck enforcing this

How would they stop some dodgy Nigerian site from hosting Italian blog?

One day soon

PirateBay will have a new torrent section called "thoughts", where one can download all the latest illegal ideas people have uploaded.

Great!

Sounds like a vote for sanity to me....

The EU may come to the rescue

Surely the EU will overrule this law with regard to Human Rights Legislation. UK national law has been deemed illegal on a number of occasions by the EU, so I'd expect the same with this.

Also how are they going to stop it. It'll be difficult to prove as the bloggers can use proxies and the like and how are the authorities going to prosecute 1000's of people.

 

even non-commercial.

I'm in favor of at least taxing that guy's blog. Interesting approach to using boldface he has.

On a somewhat serious note this is regardless of whether the blog is intended to be profitable. Yikes!

Freedom shmeedom!

What we all want is more assurances that we're safe, more flag-waving, and more cores in our CPUS, and more pictures of Britney, Paris and Lindsay stumbling through life.

Can we at least pretend to be unbiased?

This law is clearly designed to curb critical voices and free speech, although it has yet to be approved by parliament."

That's one interpretation, yes, and in fact a good one. Nevertheless, it shouldn't be there. Linking to a blogger with strong opinions about the issue is one thing, but could we at least avoid biased summaries? The summaries are supposed to be about news, not opinion. If I wanted one-sided views, I'd read Digg.

Give us the story, facts-only. Let us decide if it's an assault on free speech. Allowing the reader to come to that conclusion on their own is far more powerful and effective.

I'm guessing links to articles with different opinions would be too much to ask for.

Il Duce

Don't be paranoid. You'll still be able to blog about how great it is that the trains are running on time.

Censorship or unclear thinking

This does not need to be censorship. It could be that the proposed law simply needs to be tweaked to define which sort of blogs need oversight. As the lines between online magazines/newspapers and blogs blurs it becomes important to define the new criteria of what is and is not a "trusted" new source. Although the proposed law seems to attack all blogs, I think it could be tweaked to define a certain type of blog that fits the definition of a news source rather than an opinion source.

The simplest solution is usually short-sightedness or fuzzy thinking rather than an evil plot.

For sufficiently small values of "Italy"

The headline in this rather implies that Italy as a nation is behind moves to limit blogs in general, when it would be more accurate to say that certain parts of the Italian government approve of moves to limit blogs in their country. Can we be a bit less gung-ho with the article titles, please?

USSR?

It seems like every day we get closer and closer to changing the name of the planet from Earth to "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"

Article totally misleading.... get the facts

The post is very inaccurate. Editors, please check the facts before posting sensationalistic headlines.

There is a law being discussed in the Italian parliament which intends to set the rules for online publications, and define their responsibilities.
The goal is to recognize and treat professional online news sites in the same way as traditional newspapers, where there is an editor ultimately responsible and accountable for the information
published. This is not unlike press laws in most western countries: if, for instance, the New York Times publishes unfounded corruption allegations against a politician, its editor is ultimately responsible for those allegations, and the politician could sue him for defamation.

There was some initial concern in the blogging world that this law could also apply to bloggers, but this concern was already cleared by the undersecretary to the Cabinet, Ricardo Franco Levi, which is the main curator of the text of the proposed law. He clearly stated that the new law would only apply to professional journalists, and that it would absolutely not apply to bloggers of any kind.

More information (in italian): http://www.corriere.it/politica/07_ottobre_23/levi_legge_editoria_no_bavaglio_ai_blog.shtml [corriere.it]

Re:Article totally misleading.... get the facts

, for instance, the New York Times publishes unfounded corruption allegations against a politician, its editor is ultimately responsible for those allegations, and the politician could sue him for defamation.

No, not in the US. The US has some of the weakest defamation laws in the world, and they become even weaker when talking about a public figure. In order for an editor to get sued in your example he would have to knowingly and blatantly lie AND do it for the purpose of causing the politician in question harm. If he can point to even a scrap of evidence to show that he could have thought what he was printing was true, he is off free. Even then, the fact that the politician is a public figure means that the burden of proof is so high, he basically has to be caught on camera laughing melavolantly while declaring out loud that his false and horrible lies will finally bring down politician X. You think I am joking, but I am not. It is nearly impossible to get sued in the US for libel and or defamation against a public figure.

Now, the editor might very well get skewed for writing false alligations, but he will get skewered by his boss and adveritsers, not by the law. He might very well find himself out on the street, but the law will have no part in it.

There are a lot of things to not love about many American laws. US free speech law (or lack there off) is not one of them. When it comes to free speech, the US kicks ass and takes names like few others in the world. You will find yourself very hard pressed to find a nation with more liberal free speech laws.

Italy, a person, political party, country?

Who is this 'Italy' you talk of?

Hurray!

Finally. The whole net is clogged with those things.
They all copy each other and some seem to be so popular that they register as top hits on Google when I search for something.
I find it very irritating to find blog posts by some unemployed twat with too much time on his hands seem to matter more to Google (or other engines) than for instance the official company website for a certain product do.
So in stead of finding tech spec for something I find rants on it sucks because they dont make it in pink, sign a petition here
I say hurray to Italy.

Unlikely to pass

The proposed law has very little change to pass unaltered,
or pass at all, most of the ministers already have dissociated
themselves from the law and various parties on the parliament
will not vote the current form.
Pretty dumb, this demonstrates that the governement don't read
their own laws, since the proposal was voted unanimously.
Also, this is not the first time: the preceding government tried
the same trick (registration of all news related site with very
vague terms) but resulted in the same outraged response and the
law being trashed.

They fail.

It has been a long going joke that Italy would not be able to join the EU, if they had to sign up today.
Silvio Berlusconi has done a good job of dragging them back in the hole.

Apparently, the law wil be changed

BoingBoing covered [boingboing.net] the story, too, and the comments on it are rather encouraging.

Especially this one:

For now, I can report that this proposal is apparently not going anywhere: Paolo Gentiloni, one of the ministers involved in drafting the law, admitted of "not having thoroughly read the proposal" because he thought that "it was not going to alter the status quo". He is now declaring that this law will certainly be changed in order to keep blogs out of the picture, and
that he's sure that Mr. Ricardo Franco Levi is the first who will be willing to take action to change it.

Missing a tag ----Mussolini

some things never change

Come on...

Come on, it's Italy after all. Do you really think this is going to pass? And should it pass, do you really believe anybody's going to actually enforce this law? Italians are comendians, and this comes from an Italian.

Wouldn't you know

Italy seems to have this vicious circle about it when it comes to these sort of things, huh.

This is false NEWS!

First, this is not a law, but an already discarded law proposal.
Second, as already cited elsewhere among the replies, an interview with the law proponent
has already clarified the situation saying that it does not apply to blogs or personal sites
but just to internet newspapers.

Actually there is no Mussolini in Italy at the moment.
He's just waiting in the right opposition side...

Franco Levi wrote a public email to Beppe Grillo

Franco Levi already replied to Beppe Grillo, you can read it here (it's in italian): http://www.governo.it/GovernoInforma/Comunicati/dettaglio.asp?d=36855 [governo.it] but of course Beppe Grillo doesn't show it on his famous Blog.

Probably...

...to avoid unpleasant scenes like this [penny-arcade.com].

Re:BUSHITLER

Back under your bridge troll.

Not the truth

The statement about blogs is not true, and the source of the information is questionable. As you can read on this article of Corriere della Sera, http://www.corriere.it/politica/07_ottobre_23/levi_legge_editoria_no_bavaglio_ai_blog.shtml [corriere.it] (sorry, it's in Italian), where Mr Levi has been interviewed, the law you're discussing about refers to the editorial market, which means newspaper, magazines, books. As a consequence it only affects professional operators who produce them. Personal sites and blogs are excluded from these categories. The law only wants to extend to Internet newspapers the existing rules for the editorial market. Regards

Re:Not the truth

what sort of site would Slashdot be if not for the sensationalist headlines and trumped up accusations?

Something like this [archive.org]

Re:Not the truth

Yes, the original post was basically vaporware, and "questionable" in origin in the sense that who has written it (http://www.beppegrillo.it/ [beppegrillo.it]) has a personal interest to make things worse then they are.

But it is true that the law text was extremely generic, and so prone to every kind of interpretation, pessimistic or optimistic.

The basic problem is that italian laws are often very badly written (in the sense that are basically and fundamentally unclear). And in the confusion, everyone can say everything...

Re:Not the truth

What is a professional operator?

Example 1:
I make 100 Euro per month with Google ads on my blog. It means that my blog or web site is "profitable". I guess like anywhere in Europe, you can keep it "as an secondary source of revenue" without any company registration until it reaches a max. turnover.
Should I register my web site to this administration?

Example 2:
I have a popular video game news web site: It makes a relatively serious turnover, let's say 50.000 Euro. Enough for me to live, not enough to hire a professional journalist.
I guess this time I will be forced to register my web site to this administration and to hire in some way a profesional journalist.

In this case it hurts "very badly" entrepreneuship. As usual European European internet small/young entrepreneurs will be "forced" to stay undercover (using various techniques like a paypal account, offshore address etc.) until they reach a decent turnover and when they can face the high burden of running an "official" activity in this highly bureaucratic
continent.

The only ones who won't be hurt is the establishment or those who have moved to a more business friendly country (one click away)

Actually it is: here's the text

The source of the information is not just Beppe Grillo's blog, since that redirects to this article [repubblica.it] by La Repubblica, the main Italian newspaper, and the text of the proposed law [beppegrillo.it] itself.

In the text of the proposed law, I read: (Art. 2:1)

Per prodotto editoriale si intende qualsiasi prodotto contraddistinto da finalità di informazione, di formazione, di divulgazione, di intrattenimento, che sia destinato alla pubblicazione, quali che siano la forma nella quale esso è realizzato e il mezzo con il quale esso viene diffuso.

This means, in brief, that any product with purpose of information, formation, diffusion and entertainment meant for publication is actually targeted by the law, with no exception for no-profit sites. You only need to be a provider of information to be required to register your activity (Art. 6:1). Mr. AlbertoP, you are talking out of your ass, and Mr. Levi in his interview is lying (or he's incompetent, or both).

Now, some background for you Americans about what is happening over in Italy: there is mounting dissatisfaction with the current political class, which is seen as highly corrupt and mostly busy with covering its ass. I voted for the current government (Prodi, centre-left), and there is no way I am going over to the other side (which would be Berlusconi's), but I am myself very dissatisfied with the current bipartisan climate, and it seems I am in good company. Last year the parliament passed a general pardon to solve an overpopulation problem in jails (you read right: too many criminals, let's put them back on the streets!) which caused a spike in crime rate; the actual reason for a pardon instead of building more jails was that the pardon covered also crimes committed by certain politicians [wikipedia.org]. This, the fact that the government is more busy with infighting that with maintaining the promises given in their 280-page program presented at the last election, the personality of jackass-politician Clemente Mastella [wikipedia.org] (who attended a mafioso's wedding and is now fittingly minister of Justice) and many other things caused a general discontent.

Enter Beppe Grillo [wikipedia.org]. A well-known comedian with a history of getting banned and censored for jokes on politicians since the '80s, he started a blog a few years ago and, in the current climate, decided to organise a "Fuck-off day" [wikipedia.org] ("Vaffanculo day", V-Day as in V for Vendetta), a series of national rallies all over Italy and abroad. 4-letter words aside, the idea was to gather signatures for some popular-initiative law proposals (no felons can run for office, two-term limit in parliament, and so on). About a million people participated, and 300,000 signatures were gathered (even on an Italian scale, this is quite a success).

Politicians got scared and started to attack Grillo almost in unison; this law is an effort to silence Grillo and anybody who would take his place.

For the good news: infrastructure minister Antonio Di Pietro (yes, I voted for his party and I'm damn happy I did) said that if this law proposal is not retired he's torpedoing the government [antoniodipietro.com] and forcing new elections. Nothing straightens out politicians like the threat to lose their post... Grazie Tonino!