Friday, October 19, 2007

Italy’s Plan to Shut Down the Internet

Utterly amazing.

Ricardo Franco Levi, Prodi’s right hand man , undersecretary to the President of the Council, has written the text to put a stopper in the mouth of the Internet. The draft law was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October. No Minister dissociated themselves from it. On gagging information, very quietly, these are all in agreement.

The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money.

Blogs are being born every second, anyone can start one without a problem and they can write their thoughts, publish photos and videos.

In fact, the route proposed by Levi limits access to the Internet.

What young person is going to submit to all these hoops to do a blog? The Levi-Prodi law obliges anyone who has a website or a blog to get a publishing company and to have a journalist who is on the register of professionals as the responsible director.

99% would close down.

The lucky 1% still surviving on the Internet according to the Levi-Prodi law would have to respond in the case of the lack of control on defamatory content in accordance with articles 57 and 57 bis of the penal code. Basically almost sure to be in prison.

Please go over to Beppe Grillo’s blog and use the email at the botttom of the post to register your complaint. Maybe you can use some short phrase of disapproval and put it through one the language translators.

Or perhaps our Italian readers can come up with a few polite words of dissent for Ricardo Levi.

What's the Italian word for TYRANNY?

[basta!]

13 comments:

The Anti-Jihadist said...

This, if true, would be quite alarming.

Is there any confirmation of this through other sources?

Dymphna said...

If you click the link, he provides lots of sources. You just have to be able to read Italian...read his whole post.

falcon_01 said...

I never would have thought my "Internet Warming" crusade would have kicked off this successfully!

http://sheepdogsblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/new-crisis-internet-warming-purchase.html

I'll take that Nobel now, Mr. Goreacle.

atheling2 said...

Big Brother watching in Italy...

Or should I call it "Fratello Grande"?

Too many folks in America take our First Amendment rights for granted. They ought to live in Europe for a while.

M said...

Where's kepiblanc? Hasn't he been warning about this for years now?

Zerosumgame said...

Won't people just get around this by putting their weblogs on US hosting sites?

Félicie said...

If and when this eventually happens, how am I going to find my political soulmates, to whom I have been led by blogs? We will once again become isolated from each other. We need some sort of an arrangement.

Dymphna said...

kepi blanc is in Brussels, making changes...

Yes, people will get around this, as the blogger I linked to says. However, they could outlaw that too. China has.

Fleicie...the sense of isolation may return...we live in shi**y times.

Profitsbeard said...

China has its "GREAT FireWALL".

These fools want an Italian clone?

Not a chance, since the hackers and bloggers are ahead of them by light years.

Let them try, and be laughed out of cyberspace.

Captain USpace said...

This is maddening, a friend wrote a letter to this communist thug. Everybody should send their thoughts to this evil and misguided soul.

Mr. Levi,

Are you evil? You are against Freedom of speech. You are not a champion of democracy. You should be ashamed of yourself. You obviously must admire Mussolini and other fascist totalitarianists.

You are also obviously a pie-eyed communist with no real understanding and belief in free markets, free expression and human nature.

Your foolish Internet Suppression law will not be passed and even if it is, it will be overridden in the
courts by not only the people but by the corporations.

Among other things, You will be trying to stop billions of web pageviews daily. The corporations
will not let you do this.

You are an enemy of Italy and of freedom, you are a disgrace to the human race.

You should be deeply ashamed of yourself. Your reputation is ruined.

Unless of course you really are evil.

Then you should just be angry, because this will never fly you silly, stupid man.

Thanks to you, I'm canceling my trip to Italy and will spend a couple thousand Euros somewhere else.

Do you really want Italy to eventually be ruled by Taliban types? Are you trying to protect Islamofascist terrorist monkey thugs from being exposed?

What are you trying to accomplish?

Why do you want to destroy Italy?

Enjoy retirement Sir. It is surely time to put yourself out to pasture.

Sincerely,

CN

....

absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
destroy the internet

fools must not be exposed
protect EVIL Fascists
.

Steven Luotto said...

Relax folks, the law doesn't have the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of passing. Half the parties forming Prodi's leftwing coalition have already come out against it... and all it takes is one to walk out for the Govt. to fall. Not to mention that the Govt. will probably collapse this November and there will be early elections.

Too many people both leftwing and righwing are enamored of the Internet for such a law to pass. It would be like commanding computer users to get rid of their fast and super-duper CPUs and install old-fashioned motherboards.

And then of course, the very nature of the net, makes such a law unenforceable.

But here you see the level of some of the idiots presently governing Italy!

Dymphna said...

The level of "some of the idiots presently governing Italy" are not qualitatively different from the governing class in the US.

Unfortunately.

Yorkshireminer said...

Stop worrying about Italy start worrying about the E.U. What you read below is just a few snippets I clipped out of proposals for new regulations from the supreme soviet in Brussel. These proposals are to combat the rampant xenophobia and racism that is such an integral part of the white mans makeup. Read it and cry, because if this becomes law we are screwed. The devil is in the small print. I think the buzz word to describe the paragraph below would be proactive. Put in plain language, it means that we decide what is racist and xenophobic and if we don't like what you have to say we will prosecute you. Look out Vlaams Belang and the BNP the end is neigh.


(8) It should be ensured that investigations and prosecutions of offences involving racism and
xenophobia are not dependent on reports or accusation made by victims, who are often
particularly vulnerable and reluctant to initiate legal proceedings.

If you can disentangle the legal jargon in Article 10, it means that if you are a European Blogger and post on an American server we can still get you.

Article 10
Jurisdiction
1. Each Member State shall take the necessary measures to establish its jurisdiction with regard
to the conduct referred to in Articles 1 and 2 where the conduct has been committed:
(a) in whole or in part within its territory; or
(b) by one of its nationals; or
(c) for the benefit of a legal person that has its head office in the territory of that Member State.
2. When establishing jurisdiction in accordance with paragraph 1(a), each Member State shall
take the necessary measures to ensure that its jurisdiction extends to cases where the conduct is
committed through an information system and:
(a) the offender commits the conduct when physically present in its territory, whether or not the
conduct involves material hosted on an information system in its territory;
(b) the conduct involves material hosted on an information system in its territory, whether or not
the offender commits the conduct when physically present in its territory.
4. A Member State may decide not to apply, or to apply only in specific cases or circumstances,
the jurisdiction rule set out in paragraphs 1(b) and (c).


This by the way is the most disgusting part of the proposals the sanctions are nothing more than Draconian. They not only turn you into a non person but punish your family, as well. I presume ( that a judicial winding-up order) is nothing more than a posh name for forced bankruptcy to pay for the inflated compensation to the dress wearing camel herder you decided I had insulted


Article 6
Sanctions for legal persons
1. Each Member State shall take the necessary measures to ensure that a legal person held liable
pursuant to Article 5(1) is punishable by effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions, which
shall include criminal or non-criminal fines and may include other sanctions, such as:
(a) exclusion from entitlement to public benefits or aid;
(b) temporary or permanent disqualification from the practice of commercial activities;
(c) placing under judicial supervision;
(d) a judicial winding-up order.
2. Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure that a legal person held liable
pursuant to Article 5(2) is punishable by effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions or
measures.