Italy Wants to Restrict Blogs 242
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."
Re:This article can be summed up in one word.... (Score:1, Informative)
"The alarm is justified, and the law proposed has to be corrected because it leaves room to absurd and restricted interpretation".
The law is just proposed, not yet approved, and it is not going to be further pushed in the current form.
For sufficiently small values of "Italy" (Score:4, Informative)
Article totally misleading.... get the facts (Score:5, Informative)
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]
Not the truth (Score:5, Informative)
Not the white picket fence part... (Score:3, Informative)
US home ownership has been increasing for years and continues to do so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_States#Historical [wikipedia.org]
Apparently, the law wil be changed (Score:4, Informative)
Especially this one:
that he's sure that Mr. Ricardo Franco Levi is the first who will be willing to take action to change it.
Re:Not the truth (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re:Actually it is: here's the text (Score:3, Informative)
Also, a minor correction: the main Italian newspaper is "Il Corriere della Sera", not "La Repubblica" (important, but not the main).
The rest of the post is off-topic, although debatable, so I'm not going to comment on it.
Re:Actually it is: here's the text (Score:3, Informative)
Article 5 of the proposal defines "publishing activity" as production, distribution and collecting advertisement revenue. Did you mean article 6, the one that makes it compulsory for anyone with a "publishing activity" to register?
As for the Constitution [wikisource.org] articles, let's flesh them out one by one:
So, again, I do not see what is directly unconstitutional about this law proposal. Of course, my opinion is that this means there is a problem in the Constitution, not that the proposal is fine. Feel free to elaborate.
Re:Actually it is: here's the text (Score:3, Informative)