Re: [microsound] this is what happen in Italy.

[Gianluca Foglino <gianluca_foglino@xxxxxx>]

this's not the only disgusting thing that happen here.
consider that the minister that purpose this horror is left oriented .
sadness.

gl


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "mic" <nodolby@xxxxxx>
To: "microsound" <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 10:26 PM
Subject: [microsound] this is what happen in Italy.


Hello to all,
I post for you this article by Bernhard Warner for the TIMES ONLINE about an 
Italian law
that want  reduce the freedom of the italians blog and website.
Immediately I thought to all the little italian web-label, web-zine, the 
people (like me)
that used the Net to connect themselves with the world for trading music 
(not for merely businnes) but
for have a relationship with all the people from different culture.
I'm afraid  and angry of this italian situation and i think that the best 
thing I can do is to
inform all the people I can.
thank you

mic

_________________________________________________________________________________
A geriatric assault on Italy's bloggers
Italy's leaders barely understand word processors, let alone the web. Now 
they've turned against the country's bloggers
by Bernhard Warner
By G8 standards, Italy is a strange country. Put simply, it is a nation of 
octogenarian lawmakers elected by 70-year-old pensioners. Everyone else is 
inconsequential.

Romano Prodi, the Prime Minister, is a spry 68, knocking off 71-year-old 
Silvio Berlusconi in last year’s election. President Giorgio Napolitano, 82, 
has six more years left on his term; his predecessor was 86 when he called 
it quits. In the unlikely event that Italy declares war, the decision will 
come from a head of state who was a month shy of 20 when the Germans 
surrendered at the end of the Second World War.

This creaky perspective is a necessary introduction to any discussion about 
Italian politics with outsiders, I find. If the Italian Government seems 
unable to adapt to the modern world, the explanation is quite simple. Your 
country would operate like this too if your grandparents were in charge.

Recently, Italian lawmakers once again took aim at modern life, introducing 
an incredibly broad law that would effectively require all bloggers, and 
even users of social networks, to register with the state. Even a harmless 
blog about a favourite football squad or a teenager grousing about life’s 
unfairness would be subject to government oversight, and even taxation – 
even if it’s not a commercial website.
Outside Italy, the legislation has generated sniggers from hardly 
sympathetic industry observers. Boingboing cleverly reports Italy is 
proposing a “Ministry of Blogging.” Out-law.com plays it straighter, calling 
the measure an “anti-blogger” law.

I understand the lack of alarm in their tone. We’ve been down this road 
countless times. Panicky government officials, whether they are in Harare, 
Beijing or Rome (yes, this is the second time it’s been proposed here), 
pronounce a brand new muzzle for the internet, and clever netizens simply 
find a way around it. Even that agitated teen probably has a foolproof way 
of masking his IP address. And besides, it could easily be argued that a 
Blogger or Typepad blog is hosted on a server well outside the bel paese, 
making a stupid law virtually unenforceable. And finally this is Italy, a 
place where plumbers and captains of industry alike are serial tax evaders. 
Don’t sweat it, amico. Enjoy the sunshine, vino rosso and tagliatelle.

Maybe it is because of all these obvious points that the draft law is 
already going through some revisions. If it is ratified – and at the moment 
it looks frighteningly likely – the Ministry of Communications would decide 
who must register with the state.

This is hardly comforting. The intent of this draft law, as it was written 
when it breezed through the Council of Ministers, would be to gag bloggers 
who, for those in power, have become a particularly problematic force of 
late. They are lead by the crusading (some say “populist”) Beppe Grillo, a 
comedian-turned-activist-turned-blogger. Grillo is one of the best-read 
commentators on Italian life, both in and, thanks to his English-language 
blog, outside the country. He agitates on behalf of the disenfranchised 
(code for: Italian youth), campaigning for more transparent government and 
business.

Grillo believes the law is directed at him. Whether it is or not doesn’t 
really matter. The law’s impact would turn all bloggers in Italy into 
potential outlaws. This could be great for their traffic, I realise, but 
hell on the business aspirations of an Italian web start-up, not to mention 
any tech company that wants to sell its blog-publishing software in Italy, 
or open a social network here. In addition to driving out potential tech 
jobs, the stifling of free speech also can have a dramatic chilling effect 
on all forms of free expression, the arts and scholarship.

I am thinking specifically here of my students. I teach an introductory 
journalism course at John Cabot University in Rome. My students cover the 
city and university affairs in an online blog-style newspaper called The 
Matthew Online. If this law is to pass, we could not simply move the blog to 
an offshore server. We’d be one of the few who would be forced to abide by 
this crazy law.

Each semester, I’d have to get 20 or so students registered with the 
Ministry of Communications, a bureaucratic nightmare that would no doubt 
take more than a semester to complete, and would turn a generation of 
idealistic journalists away from the field forever, perhaps into something 
more rewarding like the assault rifle lobby. So, instead of teaching 
aspiring journalists about news reporting by having them do some actual news 
reporting, we could spend three months doing intro-writing exercises from a 
textbook.

And so I appeal to Italy’s Communications Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, a 
former journalist himself, and Ricardo Franco Levi, the lawmaker who 
conceived of this wrong-headed bill. Is silencing the youth of this country 
really the best solution to dealing with a few squeaky wheels?



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