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Next G8 President Wants To "Regulate the Internet"
antispam_ben writes "The President of Italy, which will have the Presidency of the G8 starting January 1, says he wants to use the future position of Italy to 'Regulate the Internet.' Italy's President Berlusconi appears to be a cantankerous character, prompting riots when Italy last had the G8 presidency in 2001. This will no doubt be a serious effort, but knowing the fundamental design of the Internet involves routing around damage, the efforts could be more amusing than threatening."
Update — 12/5 at 00:04 by SS: Reader fondacio noted that Silvio Berlusconi is Italy's Prime Minister, not its President. He is Italy's G8 representative, and Italy will hold the presidency in 2009.
Actually Berlusconi IS with the mafia.
There's quite a lot of books and articles about how he's associated with mafia and how his father was in the past.
It's just that information is not free anymore...
But you just have to look for something in order to find it.
Uh, and for the records, also the minister of the Senate (Renato Schifani) is connected with mafia and he was declared guilty by a court.
Sincerly,
an Italian
P.S. One of his ministers (Berlusconi's) told to the press that he wants an "unique IP address for every citizen"... LOL!
That's exactly what it means. Berlusconi is a crooked Media Proprietor. "Regulating the Internet" is code for "eliminate competition for my business interests". The Internet is a major thorn in the side of those, such as Berlusconi, who own media companies which rely on obsolete business models. So yes, the starting point really is is "regulate the internet" and the intended result really is profit.
I'd recommend "Gomorrah", written by a Camorra... 'expatriate', so to speak, in hiding in Sweden (or England?); the Camorra bosses stated he'd be dead by Christmas. It's been translated to English. The Camorra is easily the strongest, the most modern, as they evolved to a focus on sheer business and not the older trappings of the other 'clans' or organizations. All that aside: the AC above me is correct, as far as my observations since I've been here.
There are over 36 million lines of COBOL code in the world, and they are all raping children.
It is as if Jeffrey Archer or Robert Maxwell got to be prime minister of Britain.
He got rich by a combination bending the rules and having scantily dressed young women present the weather on his TV channels. Now he is in power he just stops all investigations into his activities.
He will just regulate the Internet so that no one can criticize him using it.
I guess he wants to own the internet, just like he owns most of the mass media in Italy. Good luck with that!
-- Cheers!
Not at all.
Italy is a strange country. Basically every city is a different country, with different traditions, people behavior, food, dialect (which is unintelligible from italian). You can travel 30 km and find a completely different kind of Italy. The traditional image you have of Italians is mainly the one of the south, made popular by the emigration and movies. The productive North is seldomly known, and the administrative Center, with Rome, is in the news for political reasons.
So, when you speak about Italy and italians, you should keep in mind that it is a very strong generalization. Despite this, what can I say? I'm italian, I moved abroad since years, I won't go back, ever. I think Italy is a very nice country with all its arts and good food, but there are too many idiots and bigots.
The old media moguls like Berlusconi and Murdoch are obviously pissed off at the internet. Advertisers now split their revenue between old and new media and there is now a voice outside of what the old media tells us.
Here in Australia, the home of Rupert Murdoch, we have a government trying to destroy the internet at every opportunity. I see in Italy they have a similar thing happening.
I guess i can take comfort in the fact it won't work.
the internet regulates dictators.
Did the person who originated that quote about routing around damage, anticipate countries the size of China literally making continent-wide firewalls and controlling communications with penalties of summary execution?
Italy is a strange country. Basically every city is a different country, with different traditions, people behavior, food, dialect (which is unintelligible from italian). You can travel 30 km and find a completely different kind of Italy.
One of my professors in Ireland was always fond of saying that an Italian's loyalty is to his bell tower -- meaning, local as possible. I've never heard an Italian admit to it before though.
Yes, it is true. And this is due to our history.
Suppose that for more than one thousand years your country was the size of a big city of today, and you were frequently attacked by nearby cities. Also suppose that your lord is quite ok, and interested in culture and ideals and stuff. Here you have the North.
Suppose now that you are invaded for a thousand years by different people. Greeks, danes, spaniards, arabs, and each of them does his shit and leaves you in the dirt, until a band of 1000 people from the north kick the spaniards out. Here you have the south.
a little ting to add,
berlusconi already ceded to mafia's pizzo and menaces (if not been entirely his pawn) 35+ year ago, before it entered in politic,
the only proved (in tribunal) thing is that he accepted as stablemaster on his residence a mafia assassin...
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Mangano for details.
that mean that berlusconi will never take huge paces versus the mafia (if not some to please them!)
it's a huge embarrasment that this kind of "man" reign over italy and expecially over the minds of the tons of weak willed and utterly uninformed italians
only hope he does not create more disaster to you all in his role of the G8.
for more info on berlusconi criminal career see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi#The_.22judicial_persecution.22
The people from the North of italy are very different, and they dont' like the southeners at all. Some actually consider them Italian-speaking africans.
You got almost everything right, but this broad generalization does not give the rest justice. I come from the north of Italy, even though I now emigrated to Germany. It is not that I do not like the southerners - I do not like the culture many of them have, and I do not identify myselfs with their values: A form of catholicism bordering with paganism, no sense of state, more respect for the mafia than the laws of the state, a sense of family so strong that you cannot "escape" it without being rejected by the whole local community, with obligations that go beyond the laws, ad so on...
:-) and even in Sicily, the people of the town of Ragusa are proud to have a clean, efficient public administration and very little Mafia influence.
An example: in Agrigento, 97% of the families do NOT pay the tax on tv sets, used by the state to fund the state TV, in my home town, Rovigo, however, 97% of the families DO pay this tax - and we are called "fessi", i.e. "dolts", or "nitwits", because of this and many similar examples.
But many notherners that did not fall to the rhetoric of the Lega Nord (The Northern League, our own "Parti Quebecois") can discern. People from Puglia are hard workers and have similar values to the north (they speak a VERY weird and interesting dialect, though, that can drive linguists crazy
I do not consider them italian-speaking africans, even though sometimes I ask myself why the State did not agree with the Sicilian separatist movement that was active 1943-1948, then briefly again in the sities!
You know, sometimes it is easy to fall to rhetoric. Recently, in Germany, some calabrian people, connected with the Ndrangheta, have been brutally massacred. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Luca_feud
I just happen to live 20 km from the german town of Duisburg, and for a few weeks the Germans looked at us italians with suspicions, like we all traveled with our "lupara" (a kind of rifle originally conceived to kill wolves threatening sheep) and ready to kill. I was deeply ashamed of my people and almost (almost) muttered "maledetti terroni" between my teeth ("maledetto" means "damned" and "terrone" literally means "peasant", but refers now in a derogatory way to southerners - like they call us notherners "polentoni", i.e. "polenta eaters").
But there is a deep difference between disliking them as a whole or finding some aspects of their culture at odds with the own concepts and ideals of a civilised, organised state. It is the difference between racism and identification with a set of values with no pretense at all of superiority.
Roberto
Just one small thing. I am from Sardinia, and the kidnapping is dead from almost 10 years. There's no mafia in Sardinia like in southern Italy :)
Interesting, I read both the slide show and the article, you should write an article of this on Slashdot.
I'm from a developing country (Mexico) where there's a telecom monopoly ruled by Carlos Slim, one of the richest men in the world.
Mexico is a great example of this since US lobbying and local private interests are quietly passing bills to censor critical media.
This, added to a tech illiterate population turns into a perfect storm.
Berlusconi is a smart criminal. Don't be fooled by its idiotic appearances and gaffes, they're often staged moves played in front of cameras to reinforce the public opinion that he's an innocuous goof.