Slashdot Mirror
After Berlusconi Attack, Italy Considers Web Censorship
An anonymous reader writes "The Italian government has proposed introducing new restrictions on the Internet after a Facebook fan page for the man who allegedly attacked Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Sunday drew almost 100,000 users in under 48 hours. However, the planned clampdown on Internet hate speech sparked a heated debate over censorship and freedom of expression, leading Interior Minister Roberto Maroni to execute a partial U-turn."
I'm sorry to say this, but there's an astonishingly high number of facts that show that your forecast is just wishful thinking. The first that comes to mind: the sex scandals of Noemi Letizia, D'Addario, the infamous Lodo Alfano. And these aren't nearly the worst ones, just the ones people know about, and just go "meh, we can't do anything about it".
Just so that you know: with astonishingly perfect timing, the "assault" helped covering the privatization of the Italian Army, hidden in the Finanziaria. No television obviously has spoken about it, and a google news search brings up four (4) results about it.
If this Internet censhorship thing goes on, I'm confident it will easily be worked around by anyone with a little bit of computer knowledge, because they're too stupid to do things with the help from people that know what they're doing. But that's a puny consolation, because most of the people won't be willing/able to do what will be necessary to work around it.
I f$%&/n' hate being italian.
Are you a completely moron, a troll or did I just get whooshed? Nobody owns the internet. Some people may own "pieces" of the internet, but nobody owns the Internet.
America gets critized for a lot of things, many justifiably. But its so-called Bill of Rights is mroe firmly followed than in most other countries, inlcuding "liberal Europe". Cults like Scientology and Mormonism are banend in parts of Europe. "Pre-trial publicity" and "reasonable doubt" are not as entrenched in other places liek the during the recent Italian trial of the the Seattle woman.