A new bill has come before the Italian Senate, giving the interior ministry the power to order Internet providers to remove criminal content within 24 hours or face a fine of up to 250,000 euros.

Senator Gianpiero D’Alia introduced the measure after the Italian press reported on the existence of Facebook fan groups for convicted Corleone-born Mafia bosses Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, who have been convicted of dozens of homicides and are serving multiple life sentences in prison.

After Facebook expressed its concern about Italy’s proposed law to force Internet providers to block access to websites that incite or justify criminal behaviour, D’Alia replied that the aim is not to block sites like Facebook or YouTube in their entirety if they contain criminal content. Rather, the senator explained, the law is intended to force them to remove individual pages or groups.

However, the text of the bill is misleading, as it does not distinguish between blocking pages and entire websites. This makes the law extremely flawed, as Marco Pancini, the European Public Policy Counsel for Google, which owns YouTube, has said. Internet providers are not able to eliminate single elements from websites, and this means blocking entire platforms in a situation where Internet providers themselves are not left with any choice but to respect orders for the removal of an unlawful site.

Italian bloggers went on strike in July to protest against government measures that they claim could kill the internet. They say the Alfano decree restricts the rights of bloggers to express their opinions without fear of comeback.

Demonstrators online and on the streets say the Italian government is trying to muzzle the internet.

If the Alfano decree becomes law, it would put websites on a par with newspapers, giving a right to reply to anyone who believes their reputation has been damaged by something published on the internet.

Alessandro Gilioli, a journalist and organiser of the blogging strike, says the measures could deter people from going online: They are discouraging the use of the internet, forcing all the bloggers to rectify any opinion that anybody thinks is hurting his honour or reputation and they are creating big fines, more than €10,000 (£8,500), if you don't publish your rectification in two days.

So that means that if a teenager stays two days away from the computer and he doesn't rectify his opinion, he is going to pay €10,000. That's stupid and that's incredible and overall that's discouraging people to use the internet.

It is not clear if the law Italy's senate will be voting on in the autumn will extend to bloggers, or, for that matter, who to ask about it. However Francesco Pizzetti, the president of Italy's Data Protection Authority says he does not believe the law will apply to bloggers: I don't believe they create a new obligation, so I don't believe they concern bloggers. It concerns the websites of newspapers and of the press generally.

Supporters of the law say it is unfair that bloggers can dole out a verbal bludgeoning online without regulation or any journalistic obligation to be fair and balanced.

As the Alfano decree suggests, Italian  attitudes to the web are fundamentally out of step with other Western countries. You need an ID, for example, to log-on at a wi-fi hotspot, and there has even been talk of banning anonymity online and obliging bloggers to register with the government.

The Italian government has proposed introducing new restrictions on the Internet after a Facebook fan page for the man who allegedly attacked Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Sunday drew almost 100,000 users in under 48 hours.

But the planned clampdown on Internet hate speech sparked a heated debate over censorship and freedom of expression, leading Interior Minister Roberto Maroni to execute a partial U-turn Wednesday.

Maroni and Justice Minister Angelino Alfano promised swift action to punish those who instigate violence on the Web, suggesting the government might pass an emergency decree Thursday to create new sanctions for the offense. But Wednesday, Maroni was at pains to reassure the public that any new legislation would be fully debated in parliament and would not curtail freedom of expression.

The controversy followed the creation of several Facebook pages praising Massimo Tartaglia, the mentally disturbed man accused of hitting Berlusconi in the face with a statuette of Milan's gothic cathedral, sending the prime minister to the hospital with broken teeth and a broken nose.

Lawmakers from Berlusconi's People of Freedom party argued in parliament that the attack on the prime minister was the result of a climate of hate generated by virulent opposition criticism and expressed outrage that so many Italians could justify such a serious physical assault.

Maroni originally indicated the government was considering measures that would speed up the removal of offensive material -- by allowing police to appeal directly to a judge without passing through a prosecutor -- impose fines on hate crime offenders, and introduce filters to prevent access to sites that instigate violence.

Members of his own party, however, were quick to warn against any curtailment of Internet freedom, suggesting that current laws already provide sufficient protection against the criminal use of the Web.

Update: Government Back Off

23rd December 2009.  Based on article from nytimes.com

Italy has dropped plans to black out Internet hate sites despite a pledge for radical measures after fan pages emerged on the Internet last week praising an attack on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, who had proposed blocking such sites following the assault on the prime minister, said after meeting with executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other Internet service providers he would seek a solution through a shared code of conduct rather than new legislation.

The road to follow is to find an agreement with all those involved and avoid forcing through new measures, Maroni told reporters: If this agreement is found, it would be the first of this kind in the world, he said, adding that more talks will be held in January.

Silvio Berlusconi's government is exploiting the violent attack against him in order to restrict internet freedom.

Early last month, at a political rally in Milan, Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was hit with a plaster statue by a man with a long record of mental problems. His injuries were minor, he suffered a broken nose and lost a lot of blood.

Following the violent attack, Berlusconi's opponents took to social networking sites and Kill Silvio briefly became a popular Facebook group. Italian ministers blamed bloggers for creating a climate of hatred and made calls for tighter regulation. The government is now pushing for a bill that would restrict internet freedom by making it compulsory, even for blogs, to get a government permission before posting political comment on the web.

Such a measure was first envisaged in August when the press revealed that prominent members of the Lega Nord party — part of Berlusconi's ruling coalition — had created a Facebook group inciting Italians to kill illegal immigrants.

New rules to be introduced by government decree will require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web, opposition lawmakers have warned.

The decree is ostensibly an enactment of a European Union (EU) directive on product placement and is due to go into effect at the end of January after being subjected to a nonbinding appraisal by parliament.

Opposition lawmakers held a press conference in parliament to denounce the new rules -- which require government authorization for the uploading of videos, give individuals who claim to have been defamed a right of reply and prevent the replay of copyright material -- as a threat to freedom of expression.

The decree subjects the transmission of images on the Web to rules typical of television and requires prior ministerial authorization, with an incredible limitation on the way the Internet currently functions, opposition Democratic Party lawmaker Paolo Gentiloni told the press conference.

Article 4 of the decree specifies that the dissemination over the Internet of moving pictures, whether or not accompanied by sound, requires ministerial authorization. Critics say it will therefore apply to the Web sites of newspapers, to IPTV and to mobile TV, obliging them to take on the same status as television broadcasters.

Italy joins the club of the censors, together with China, Iran and North Korea, said Gentiloni's party colleague Vincenzo Vita.

The decree was also condemned by Articolo 21, an organization dedicated to the defense of freedom of speech as enshrined in article 21 of the Italian constitution. The group said the measures resembled an earlier government attempt to crack down on bloggers by imposing on them the same obligations and responsibilities as newspapers.

The group launched an appeal Friday entitled Hands Off the Net, saying the restrictive measures would mark the end of freedom of expression on the Web. The restrictions would prevent the recounting of the life of the Italians in moving pictures on the Internet, it said.

Update: National strike

19th January 2010. Based on article from variety.com

Google has announced it will counter regulations being drafted by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government that would police content on Google-owned YouTube.

The Internet measures are contained in a radical package of TV legislation now being pushed through parliament. The sweeping bills are also drawing fire from TV and film industry workers, who have called a national strike today to protest against other aspects of the package, including the elimination of quotas that support local indie productions.

Google's European public policy counsel, Marco Pancini, has requested an urgent meeting with Paolo Romani, the communications undersecretary who drafted the decree designed to give the government control over video content uploaded onto the Internet, similar to the authority it already has over broadcasters.

We are concerned over the fact that Internet service providers, like YouTube, that simply make content available to the general public, are being bundled together with traditional television networks that actually manage content, Pancini told paper La Stampa. It amounts to destroying the entire Internet system.

Italian lawmakers on committees in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies (upper and lower houses of parliament) have requested sweeping changes in a proposed broadcasting law, particularly in the section governing the internet, which had aroused widespread condemnation.

Deputy Communications Minister Paolo Romani, who was responsible for promoting the broadcasting  law, said the government would take rigorous account of the lawmakers' suggestions.

Blogs with amateur videos, online newspapers, search engines and the online versions of magazines are free, and editorial responsibility does not fall on providers who host content generated by others, Alessio Butti, the government lawmaker who drew up the text approved by the Senate committee, told reporters.

The Chamber and Senate Commissions have proposed significant and positive changes to the draft broadcasting law, Marco Pancini, senior European public policy counsel for Google Italy, said in a prepared statement. Under the original draft of the broadcasting law, which the government says enacts a European Union directive, YouTube risked being treated as a conventional television broadcaster, requiring a special licence from the government and assuming editorial responsibility for all material uploaded to its website.

Paolo Nuti, president of the Association of Italian internet Providers (AIIP), said he welcomed the change of heart expressed by the parliamentary committees but pointed out that their recommendations were not binding on the government.

Bloggers were also quick to welcome the government's apparent U-turn. This is a new U-turn made necessary by the incompetence of the geriatric ward that, unfortunately for us, on both sides of the political spectrum, occupies Italy's seats of power, said Andrea Guida, writing on the blog geekissimo.

One of the provisions of the Media and Wiretapping Bill currently being discussed by the Italian Parliament is that all those responsible for information websites will be required to issue corrections within 48 hours to any complaint regarding website content, whether blogs, opinion, comment and/or information in general.

Corrections would need to be in the same form in which the contested content was originally put online, whether text, podcast or video. Failure to do so will risk a fine of up to 12,500 euros.

This law seeks to apply to online opinion/information/news – whether professional or amateur, commercial or individual – the same rules as those applied to the traditional media as established in the law of 1948, namely Article 8 relating to the so-called obbliga di rettifica or requirement to issue corrections. Media law will thus henceforth make no distinction between mainstream media and the multifarious world of information and/or opinion on the web.

Is it right for bloggers, content-sharing websites or any other online information-providers to have to publish a correction within 48 hours if any of their content, whether direct or indirect, is considered false or slanderous? The web is not the press. Rules should be different for mainstream media and online information. To manage any request for correction is time-consuming and complex - just to evaluate whether the complaint is justified might require professional expertise which the vast majority of online information websites don't have. At stake is the very existence of the website - a heavy fine would for many constitute closure.

What's the likely result of this proposed law? Many bloggers and amateur participants in web debate and information-gathering will simply decide it's not worth the risk and the hassle. They'll retreat to the position they may well have started from, namely passive consumers of news. Or continue in an active online role but only on issues of low media visibility so as to avoid drawing attention to themselves. All of this is inimical to a healthy democracy of well-informed and actively involved citizens.

Consider the practicalities of request for correction to a social networking website: first see the request (a day at the beach or illness might become very expensive indeed), then locate the author (ditto), then check the content (how can second-hand information be quickly and effectively verified?), then decide whether the request for correction is justified (natural tendency to issue corrections each time just to be on the safe side?), then (having carefully weighed all the relevant issues) perhaps issue the correction. All within 48 hours. Power cut? Tough luck! Server down? Your problem! A post on my website by someone I don't know on an issue I'm not interested in while I'm off scuba-diving and I'm on the hook for 12,500 euros? This isn't law-making worthy of a modern democracy, it's robbery with intimidation.