Category: Free Speech

As every country with “something to hide”, Italy (better, the Italian government) is concerned of what might be soon disclosed on Wikileaks.

As a preemptive strike against possible Wikileaks’ fallback yesterday an official press-release said – without explicitly mentioning Assanges’ website – that “the forthcoming pubblication of confidential reports about the USA politics, with possible negative side effects on Italy tooo – imposes a though determination to defend the Italian reputation as well the protection of economic and political interests of the country” (the translation is mine, I apologize for any mistake.)

I bet my ten cents that when the Italian File will be disclosed the first reaction will be to call for a new law to control the flow of information that endanger “national security” or whatever they name it.

Another interesting issue to remark is the (non)role of the Italian journalists in the whole story. It is, at least, odd that a remote-located website news service, with no apparent connection with the country, is able to get sensitive information about the Italian government, while the local journalists – and especially those who write about politics – don’t.

This is a bad blow to the role of the press as powers’ watchdog.

Right wing minister of Home Affair (Maroni – Lega Nord) and undersecretary of economic development (Paolo Romani – Forza Italia) are pushing aggressively ISPs and Telcos to adopt a self-regulation on illegal content basically meaning: the gov wants ISPs to shut down “illegal” content upon “simple” notice, to protect “human dignity” and “privacy”.
What’s wrong with that?
First: although the label is “self-regulation” it isn’t actually so. Self regulation is (or should be) a set of rules that a specific sector freely choose to adopt. On the contrary, the gov arranged a “definitive draft” (so they called it) with no actual room for discussion.
Second: in Italy all the crimes involving human dignity and political freedom can be prosecuted without the need of a specific claim. If a public prosecutor believes that a such a crime has been committed, he can start the investigation on his own. Thus, if a content is illegal, it is a prosecutor business, while if the content is strong although not illegal, like it or not is just free speech.
Thus, there is no (legal and technical) need for the ISPs to become a “private court” telling the right from wrong. But this is exactly what this alleged “self regulation” wants to achieve: just shut down those “annoying bugs”.
So, if there is no need for such “self regulation” why does the gov try to enforce it?
The main reason is that they wants people to believe that industry itself chosen this solution, because the gov hasn’t the courage to pass such third world legislation.
So, with the excuse of protecting privacy and human dignity, what the Italian goverment is actually doing is pushing ahead the quest for censorship.

After the attack against Berlusconi several Facebook groups supported this insane action, while several others blame it. To this, Berlusconi’s political faction reacted in an hysterical way announcing legislative measures to prevent and block the “flourishing” of “hate speeches”.

As matter of fact, while in first instance the ministry of Home Affair announced some sort of “emergency legislation” to be quickly passed, the final choice has been to follow the standard – and quite longer – procedure. No public statements have been released to actually justify this shift, while a few background elements can help to understand why this happened.

Current Italian legislation consider as criminal offenses actions like: libeling, insulting, advocating or expressing support for a crime, inciting somebody to commit a crime, stalking, moral violence, illegal interference in somebody’s private life.
Public prosecutors have the power – on the snap of a finger – to seize and shut down whatever network resources located in Italy. Furthermore, a (questionable, admittedly) interpretation of “preemptive seizure” coming from the Criminal Court of Milan extended the legal concept of “seizure” up to allowing the release of an order against ISP to block the traffic directed toward a network resource located outside the Italian jurisdiction. The result is that to achieve what Berlusconi’s party aims, no new legislation is actually needed.

Nevertheless, at least to show some coherence, a draft law has been announced that should follow the path of previous right-wing made bills aimed at banning online anonymity.

The hidden – while clear – implication of this political strategy is to overrule the e-commerce Directive principle of non mandatory preemptive duty of control, thus forcing ISP and provider of Internet-based services (like Facebook or Youtube) to become automatically liable for the actions of their users.