The law is still not clear, and there is a strong movement here to cancel it: a petition, banner on sites, requests for _official_ explaination of it, etcetera. We are working against this law, in this moment.
The law says "ANY publication, either on paper or electronic form" means multimedia, cdrom and ONLINE (not just webpapers!).
Also, all "publications", but those with a "periodic" (what does this mean?) are forced to comply the law. Again, the problem is to understand what the law means.
There is not a yearly tax, that is not a problem. Such (any) publication MUST have a responsible selected from the Italian Journalist Guild (founded during the fascism so to control the press, now it is still a strong association).
Those who won't have it will be fined up to 250 u$a and 2 years of jail.
You must also publish on the webpages the address of the "publisher" (server?) and the name and address of the editor. Hard to explain.
You can't also move your webserver out of Italy, as the law checks that the upload started from within Italy. This problem can also hit web servers anywhere in the world, because they are accomplices to the criminal; the problem is that the Italian (as any national law) is not easily valid outside our borders.
The old law, against the clandestine press, can be used to control the information online: it is not clear when (or against who) this law can be applied so (theorically) anybody is guilt but this will be used to enforce any dissident voice during a trial.
This law ALSO (why not a specific law about this) gives funds to legally registered newspapers (paper and online), in a moment where information portals are in economic trouble; maybe the real target of the law.
That's why on www.punto-informatico.it/petizione.asp there are 30K email signatures and thousands of websites who adhere with banners and ads etc to this campaign. Many politicians and representatives also joined the petition.
Unfortunately, there aren't many links or documents in English language to explain the situation.
Slashdot Mirror
The law is still not clear, and there is a strong movement here to cancel it: a petition, banner on sites, requests for _official_ explaination of it, etcetera. We are working against this law, in this moment.
The law says "ANY publication, either on paper or electronic form" means multimedia, cdrom and ONLINE (not just webpapers!). Also, all "publications", but those with a "periodic" (what does this mean?) are forced to comply the law. Again, the problem is to understand what the law means.
There is not a yearly tax, that is not a problem. Such (any) publication MUST have a responsible selected from the Italian Journalist Guild (founded during the fascism so to control the press, now it is still a strong association).
Those who won't have it will be fined up to 250 u$a and 2 years of jail.
You must also publish on the webpages the address of the "publisher" (server?) and the name and address of the editor. Hard to explain.
You can't also move your webserver out of Italy, as the law checks that the upload started from within Italy. This problem can also hit web servers anywhere in the world, because they are accomplices to the criminal; the problem is that the Italian (as any national law) is not easily valid outside our borders.
The old law, against the clandestine press, can be used to control the information online: it is not clear when (or against who) this law can be applied so (theorically) anybody is guilt but this will be used to enforce any dissident voice during a trial.
This law ALSO (why not a specific law about this) gives funds to legally registered newspapers (paper and online), in a moment where information portals are in economic trouble; maybe the real target of the law.
That's why on www.punto-informatico.it/petizione.asp there are 30K email signatures and thousands of websites who adhere with banners and ads etc to this campaign. Many politicians and representatives also joined the petition.
Unfortunately, there aren't many links or documents in English language to explain the situation.
Roberto Odoardi, odo@micronet.it