Current Italian government and politicians are leading the war to free-speech. Recently Franco Frattini – EU Commissioner – publicly advocated the need of a filter on words used online, with the usual “terrorism excuse”. Here is the commentary published on the EDRI online magazine written by Giancarlo Livraghi on behalf of ALCEI. Continue reading ““Frattinising” isn’t the only threat”
EU Censorship Italian Style…
Here we are. Words are spreading that EU will push to enforce “censorship on words”. On 10 Sept., 2007 Reuters quoted a statement made by EU Commissioner Franco Frattini (Italian, sadly) who claimed:
?I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector … on how it may be possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism ?.
I can think of no better comment on that, but the one made by ALCEI:
Mr. Frattini’s suggestion is unacceptable, extremely dangerous and a serious threat against free speech. The “internet-teaches-how-to-make bombs” nonsense has been around since the net’s early years. Along with “copyright infringements” and misrepresented child protection urges – as ALCEI denounced over ten years ago. The “internet-bomb” issue has always been one of the excuses to invoke censorship and repression.
It is obvious – and largely proven by facts – that “filtering” or “prohibiting” words or concepts is totally useless against criminals, while it turns into a weapon to kill freedom of information and expression. Preventing all citizens from discussing controversial topics doesn’t reduce violence, murder or terrorism.
Peter Fleischer’s answer (Google’s Global Privacy Counsel) – as quoted by the Italian newspaper Repubblica.it – is not less concerning:
“There are a lot of reason why sombody might want to search on the Internet a word like “genocide”, for teaching purposes, say. According to Fleischer, the problem is to prevent some information to be released on line – such the bomb-making-how-to”. “But if a page is no the web” – he said – “Google must be allowed to search for it” (Translation from Italian by Andrea Monti. Please check the link above for the original text.)
It seems that Google might cope with censorship, as soon as the net is not affected.
Am I wrong?
More on the Iphone unlock legal issues…
In its final judgment n. 33768 released on Sept. 3, 2007, the Corte di cassazione (Italian Supreme Court) Sezion III penale, seems to have overruled the previous decision by Bolzano’s Lower Court asserting the right of a consumer to hack a Sony Playstation. If confirmed – the decision text is still not available – this might negatively affect the conclusion I’ve drafted in my previous post about the Iphone unlock legal issue.
Iphone unlock might be legal in Italy
Iphonesimfree announces the availability of a software able to unlock Apple’s Iphone so that it can be used with any GSM operator wherever in the world. The first question that comes – then – is a legal one: is this breaking any law?
Of course, in Italy there is still no case law directly related to Apple’s Iphone, but a precedent ruling of the Criminal Court of Bolzano dated Dec. 31, 2004, stated that as soon as you are a legitimate buyer of a Playstation, you have the right to hack it because it is a general principle of law that proprietor can do whatever he wants with a purchased good.
Then, it is possibile to conclude that if an Iphone is actually purchased (and not rented of leased by the mobile operator, that in this case would remains the sole “proprietor”), Iphone unlock should be perfectly legal, as the selling of Iphonesimfree software.
At least in Italy.
A comment on Skype’s outage-related official statement
So, at the end of the day, Skype explained the reason for the outage that broke its P2P network. To make a long story short, the point is that Skype relies upon a closed source approach (that slows the bug finding process) and on Microsoft technologies that, in that specific case, create the problem. This reinforces my early assumption, that crash cause was Skype design instead of a unpredictable problem. It simply unacceptable that an outage of that dimension has been provoked by the inability of an operating system to patches itself without always rebooting. And who did that choice should account for it.
Right, Skype is very clear in repeating that Microsoft has nothing to do with the Big Crash. Nevertheless, it raises some suspect, to me, reading statement such as: “The Microsoft Update patches were merely a catalyst – a trigger – for a series of events that led to the disruption of Skype, not the root cause of it.” or “Microsoft has been very helpful and supportive throughout.” or, again, ? “In short – there was nothing different about this set of Microsoft patches.”, “The Microsoft team was fantastic to work with”. But this PR stuff doesn’t change the basic stuff: Skype is the next component of a “vulnerable society”, where problems, risks and damages are created mainly by the ICT companies – instead of the “dangerous criminals” that fall under than unspecified label of ? “hackers”.