Americans, who are tragically wrong on the issue of capital punishment, get constant reminders of the magnitude of their mistake when the world points out the company America keeps. Among the few remaining practitioners of this semi-barbaric practice are democratic stalwarts such as China, North Korea, Iraq, ad nauseum.
Now Italy can judge itself by the company it keeps. Other countries attempting to control or limit the use of the Internet include China, North Korea, Iraq, ad absurdium.
Internet censorship is not as serious an issue as capital punishment. In the end, it is more serious—for the maintenance and evolution of a modern democracy. Italys law requiring registration of online information sites and acceptance of liability by site sponsors is dead wrong. The center-left, full of pious reformist rhetoric, is attempting to Stalinize the online media. It is being helped by monied interests, ranging from corporations who want to maintain their too-cozy relationships with journalists (ask the next automotive journalist you see where he got his car) to a journalists medieval guild that limits membership and is heavily politicized. But the state bears the bulk of the blame.
Its not so much that the state wants to muzzle all information available online. They just want to retain that option as a threat. Online sites will have to go along to get along. This typical Italian law, vague and subject to judicial interpretation, leaves the state with a powerful club in its hand. Its part of the grand Italian government philosophy – if everyone is a criminal, then the state always has the upper hand. Hence the archaic Roman code of law, the Byzantine tax regulations, etc. If every Catholic is a sinner, then the Church is essential. So everything becomes a sin.
The Net effect will be the further decline of already mediocre journalistic standards. Already, half the readership of the International Herald Tribune in Italy is Italian, and you can bet that these Italian readers arent just looking to improve their English. With almost all the media being propaganda organs of one political party or another, the IHT is valued for its independence. Now this can continue on the Internet, apparently (think www.iht.com).
In an over-polluted country with organized crime still dominant in certain regions, in a country where corporate power is vested in a salotto buono and politics is the dirtiest game of all, in a country where the poorer half has 20% unemployment and the richer half has a jobless rate of 4.6%, where the government is incapable of providing the essential services required by its citizens but taxes them at a rate of 46% of gross national product, a free and independent community of journalists is vital – but dangerous to the powers that be. It doesnt exist at present in Italy, and this law makes it more unlikely that it ever will. Muzzling the online information world is necessary to the maintenance of the gray curtain that hides how Italy works.
Im just lucky that the people Im writing about dont read English.
Thomas Fuller is an independent Internet analyst based in Turin.
originally posted by: Thomas W. Fuller
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