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

How's this for defamation?

[Associate]

Italy sucks!
Regulate that.

step back

[l3mure]

Riccardo Levi already stepped back: There was a misunderstanding, he said, we don't want to censor anything and actions will be taken to clarify the law on this point.

Dupe, and disinformed to say the least.

[lbbros]

First of all this is a dupe. The original story has already been published. Secondly, this is just (again!) a sensationalistic spin on a law that:

• It is uncostitutional: see here (link in Italian);
• It won't be proposed in this form due to the huge debate it has raised.

Please, Slashdot editors... do at least some basic research before posting stuff like this.

Re:Dupe, and disinformed to say the least.

[lbbros]

But it means it won't pass or it will be struck down. Don't forget it's just a proposal for a law.

Re:Dupe, and disinformed to say the least.

[Tim C]

Please, Slashdot editors... do at least some basic research before posting stuff like this.

From the FAQ:

How do you verify the accuracy of Slashdot stories?

We don't. You do. :)

The answer was last modified 7 years ago. People have been complaining about this sort of thing for as long as I've been on the site. It's not going to change; they don't care. They are far more focussed on getting stories up quickly than on checking for factual correctness.

This is happening in Germany as well

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

A German court recently forced one of the larger ISPs to block access to the Youporn site. Originally they (the ISP) tried it by blocking access to the IP-Address but since Youporn is hosted by GoDaddy, that blocked their customers' access to thousands of other sites as well. Now they have tried it at the DNS level.

The background to this is that a German porn site had to implement stringent controls to make sure the underage did not manage to sample their wares. Youporn did not bother with this and so had an unfair advantage. I read that Youporn is something like the 14th most popular site in Germany.

Several other organisations apparently have similar plans to shut down access to some site or other.

Re:This is happening in Germany as well

[jotok]

Youporn did not bother with this and so had an unfair advantage.

Interesting to note that this was more about economic competition than "Save the Children!"

I've been living and working in Germany for about a month now and this economy doesn't really like "competition" or anything like that. Anyone selling you anything (car, TV, apartment) first asks you how much you are willing to spend; you have to pay all kinds of outrageous extra fees for really no service (it's not uncommon for the realtor/property manager who finds you a place to demand ~3000 euro for their 1 day of work); and businesses collude to keep prices up (nobody is "allowed" to sell for lower prices).

So it's not suprising to me that that this was an issue of halting "competition" rather than protecting young minds.

They have it backwards.

[thehatmaker]

Surely if censorship of the internet is to "Protect Children" then why not simply ban children from using the internet? This proposal would be like seeing children in a pub, then making everyone drink water, so the kids dont get drunk. what i never understood is, why try to keep children "innocent" only to viscously corrupt them with the hideous reality of their pathetic lives at 18?

Re:Sure is lots of censorship going on in Europe

[whoever57]

Why do so many Europeans need to be protected from themselves and why do they allow it?

Europeans wonder why Americans need to be protected against seeing human skin and natural acts between consenting adults.