Apparently there is a new law in Italy that demands a Blogger or web publisher to be registered with the government and pay a fee, even if your blog doesn’t have anything to do with making money, that applies to a teenager writing on his/her hobby as much as a problogger.
This is called the Levi-Prodi law (legge levi-prodi) and, as I understood it, its draft was officially approved in october 12. You can see Beppe Grillo’s (the most famous blogger in Italy) post on this, in english or in Italian.
It is absurd that a country decides to chose by a professional title those who are allowed to publicly express themselves and try to government control what is the right and relevant information from what is not.
Besides the obvious fascist censorship problem, I question myself how are they going to:
- Decide what is a blog from what is a non-blog page? The line between them is often very thin. Do profiles on social networks count? How about a youtube playlist?
- Count contributions you make to other blogs, like relevant comments and guest posts. Would count you as a blogger? Would you need a license to make relevant comments?
- Hunt down the enormous amount of people that will be in the illegality from one moment to the next and those who (hopefully) will refuse to accept this.
- Apply it to a foreign blogger that writes in his blog while he visits Italy
- Apply it to an Italian blogger writing on a blog completely unrelated to Italy
20 Comments
This law is an absurd indeed! Next step is to demand a visa for the people who wants to leave the country…
@Anna –
I hope this is not as close as it indeed seems.
A while ago such a law was also proposed in Malaysia. That was when the Government sued two Malaysian bloggers — it was the first time bloggers were sued by the Malaysian Government.
But of course, after all those talks of registering Malaysian bloggers as well as bloggers whose blogs are registered with any Malaysian company, we hear nothing more after that.
@pelf – Blogging this days, is like speaking in a normal tone of voice in a bar, where other people can hear you. One thing is to be a media professional, a different thing is to be a regular blogger.
I do think it is absurd to require bloggers to register, but I find it even more absurd to have a prison instead of a fine as a penalty.
Not registering as a blogger is treated closer to the case of a doctor with unethical behavior than not paying your car plate fee.
Moreover, in theory, you can go to jail if you don’t control what your blog show. This is a serious attack over freedom of speech.
Seems than you have to enable comment moderation and enforce censorship yourself, or be considered as “guilty” as the author comment, or more.
By the way… Guilty of what? Isn’t this a democracy?
“Guilty of what? Isn’t this a democracy?”
Exactly! A lot of Malaysian bloggers blogged against the “suggested law”, mostly on the grounds that requiring bloggers to register so that they could be monitored beats the purpose of promoting freedom of speech in a fully-democratic country.
But then we all know that there’s no way the Government could “monitor” the bloggers. There are far more important issues that needed to be tackled urgently than tracking down bloggers, LOL.
It always amazes me when governments propse laws that are clearly not enforceable…
I am not sure what the legislative process is in Italy, but it sounds like what happened on Oct 12 was that the draft law was, as we in Canada, would say, approved to “go forward to the House” [for voting by members of Parliament]. Is that more-or-less right?
It seems unlikely that anyone could expect such a bill to be passed by elected representatives, or that such a law could possibly be enforced if it were to be enacted.
There has to be something else behind this — I’ll bet there is another planned piece of legislation, for which this one is a “trial balloon”:
Get everyone in an uproar by proposing an extreme piece of legislation, then withdraw or amend it — and another, slightly less repressive, similar law is likely to slip through quite easily, without a loud public outcry, because it seems so benign by comparison.
What do you think of that theory?
@pelf –
Exactly. Democracy, roughly speaking, means that we elect a government to represent our will. While it is a simplistic definition addresses the point that politicians are not there to control people thoughts and expressions since you need them to elect politicians in the first place.
@Jen / domestika –
Exactly, I would even add: even if it were enforceable, how can you make a country walk forward when you put into jail a considerable for just not fulfilling bureaucratic requirements.
I am not sure what the legislative process is in Italy(…) It seems unlikely that anyone could expect such a bill to be passed(…)
Neither I am, I moved to Italy just a few months ago. But seems correct that there is something behind this.
I’m glad I live in Canada where we don’t have any laws like this. Why would the Italian Gov’t even try to do this? They obviously can’t expect to fully enforce it and it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose.
A law to be ignored.
A pretty much secure way to do that is to open a ssh connection and use it as a proxy. The server should be in another country, like Brazil ;). Has anybody said socrates?
@Adam Mckerlie –
@little brother –
Yes, I could use a VPN instead, so I don’t need to blog through a terminal, but as you said, it doesn’t seem necessary :-)
Is the moral question that is the problem.
This kind of ruling is pretty over-the-top and completely unnecessary if you ask me. This law would kill several blogs I read.
@ses5909 – It is a clear sign of politicians that think they should control everything if I may say, very scary.
I don’t thing the blogs you read are really going to shut, but it is good to say it aloud that we don’t want it to happen :-)
An addednum, the opinion of Bernhard Warner on the Times Online.
As somebody who has actually done some time in jail I have to say that this is ridiculous – I’m glad that as crazy as the laws here in the US seem at times they are better than some alternatives (I’m looking at you, Italy).
@Former Inmate – Hi, Well, I have to agree with you that this law is beyond any reasonable thought, but this is one of the strange things here in Italy, there are certain laws that just can’t be enforced and this is one of them.
So as terrible as it might seem, I don’t believe anyone will ever go to jail for blog here, it’s plain stupid.
This is typical italian law! It is not about going to jail but to squeeze more money from common people to pay even more the best paid politicians in the world and in the galaxy as well. So to write a few words you have to open your own company, spend 2000-3000€/year in taxes, insurance, bookkeeping… It is not imporant that you do not earn anything or maybe few hundred bucks from adsense. So it is there to shut you up in democratic way, and to get more money for the bureaucracy.
Bloggers are not journalists in general, except for what we report about our own lives, and then there is no verification, there is no fact-check, there is no responsibility to anyone but ourselves. To compare bloggers in general to the print newsmedia is just… apples and oranges. Now, bloggers who report the news? Sure. Hold them to account, ask the big questions. But the woman in Sheboygan writing about her pansies? She could n’t care less about her “mandate” or the “group voice” or “undermining the mass media.” She’s just telling stories the way her grandmother did. It’s just that now — and this seems impossibly lovely to me — others can benefit besides her intimates, if they wish.
It may be amateurish, but giving individuals a voice is never a bad thing.
Source: Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment, “Blogs: threat or menace?”
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