Italy's First Steps in Censoring the Internet

mijio writes "It's not the first time that Italy discusses Internet censorship. The last year, after some guys appeared in a video punching and blaming a kid with Down syndrome, Minister of Education Fioroni brought in to trial two of Google Italy's managers and then proposed and strongly sustained his idea of censoring the Internet to protect the young. Now Ricardo Levi, the prime minister's right hand, is finally successful in promulgating his law on internet censorship. With the goal of "promoting and enriching the pluralism of information," the law rules that everyone involved in "editorial activity" must be subscribed to the "Registry of Operators of Communication" to be prosecutable in case of defamation, where "editorial product" is defined as "any product with purpose of information, education, divulgation, entertainment, aimed at publication, no matter the form it is realized in and the mean it is distributed with." When inquired about the effects of this rule for bloggers, Levi responded, "We have no interest in touching amatorial or personal sites, it would be not feasible". The Times speaks about this paradox as well."

Comments

Re:How's this for defamation?

[ncc74656]

"The dark night of fascism is always descending on America, but it always seems to land in Europe."

-- Tom Wolfe

Re:There are good sides of censoring the internet

[lahi]

Nonsense. If you don't want teens exploited, have laws that forbid *that*. Then, when a site posts porn showing girls who didn't consent to this, use that law instead. No need to have carte blanche laws to rubber stamp whatever type of censorship you would like.

I notice your .il website. So let me ask you a question directly. I presume it is forbidden in Israel, just like it is in Germany and a couple other European countries, to deny holocaust. Now the question: Is it also forbidden to say that water isn't wet? If no, why not? Why is the absurd denial of one known fact allowed, and the equally absurd denial of another, forbidden? I never understood the logic behind that. Insult? I can't see how anyone could be insulted by someone demonstrating extreme stupidity. If someone would try to insult me, for example by saying my mother was a prostitute, it would be pointless. It would be like trying to insult me by saying 2+2=5.

In my opinion, censorship of nazism is itself nazism. The creeps thrive far better underground, so by all means let us keep them out in the open, where we can watch them, ridicule them, and above all be aware of them.

Censorship is bad, end of story. That is not to say that there should be no penalty for publishing certain things (child porn being the obvious example), but that these matters can be dealt with without (preemptive) censorship. There is no red line.

-Lasse Hillerøe Petersen