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Italy Floats Official Permission Requirement for Web Video Uploads
An anonymous reader writes with some bad news from Italy, noting that new rules proposed there would "require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web." Understandably, some say such controls represent a conflict of interest for Silvio Berlusconi, "who exercises political control over the state broadcaster RAI in his role as prime minister and is also the owner of Italy's largest private broadcaster, Mediaset."
That's horrific. An extremely oppressive requirement. I expect that anyone who disagrees with Silvio will be denied permission to upload anything. This is also impractical, because you can't expect every single citizen to apply for permission just to post videos of their cat onto youtube.
Thankfully, I think that this could be circumvented easily, by transferring video files to another country in an encrypted form, then getting friends in the other country to unencrypt and upload it for you.
i'm italian. posting AC for obvious reasons.
i can tell you that's funny that they are now seeking for an authorization for internet's videos "similar to that required by television broadcasters" when one of the three tv channel of berlusconi himself doesn't have the permission to broadcast. in fact, that channel is illegally occupying frequencies already assigned to a new competitor in the italian's tv market that can't broadcast because of this. i'm not so much up to date, but the European Union (god bless them to try something against our dictator) already gave us a multi-million euros fine for that.
just for the record, the italian tv system look like this:
analog transmission: 3 public channels (controlled by the parliament, so by mr. berlusconi) with an average 50% share, 3 berlusconi channels with an average 45% share, and 2 channel owned by the local telco giant (about 5%), one of which broadcast the local mtv.
dvb-t: still not everywhere in italy. 3-4 more public channels, other 2 free-to-air and 10 pay-per-view of berlusconi, 1 of murdoch's sky, bbc world, france 24, and almost nothing else apart from a couple of local tv stations airing mainly commercials.
satellite: only murdoch himself. also, if you count that the average income is 1200-1300€/month and the cost for the subscription to the satellite tv is from 45€/month, you understand that the average joe can't afford this.
and remember: when you say that mr. berlusconi was elected so is how democracy works and bla bla bla, keep in mind this fact: when you sum up his control over the televisions and the control over the press (where he controls different newspapers and magazines directly and a lot more indirectly, mainly by _controlling the advertising_) you know how is it possible that a man bound with mafia can win an election. the majority of people in italy are brainwashed and for them is ok that a man had a mafia killer as groom (vittorio mangano) and as co-founder of his party a man strictly tied with mafia (a mafioso himself, i would say: marcello dell'utri). note: berlusconi and dell'utri said that vittorio mangano was a "HERO", long after he died and where everything about him was know. YES! they said that a mafioso killer is a HERO!
also, berlusconi did some illegal wiretapping with men at the lead of the our telco giant (the one with the others two tv channels :blink-blink:) and now he pose the state secret on that stuff so they can't prosecute him or the men that did this for him.
if you count that a lot of opposition to berlusconi comes from the video blogs of beppe grillo, marco travaglio, piero ricca and others, you understand how much in trouble we are. (well, actually they go against everybody, but berlusconi is so dominant in the italian scenario that he takes 90% of the time)
now, can you understand that Italy is FUBAR?