In Italy, the Web is Going to Be a Really Dangerous Place

Italy's mainstream media and politicians are very ignorant about the Internet and new technologies. They really are. The only thing everyone's been talking about in recent months is Facebook, easy to understand and useful to chat, publish pictures of your cat and find old schoolmates. The big community of web users and bloggers is still ignored in newsrooms and considered to be a bunch of kids and rebels by politicians. The Internet is in the news mainly for alarming headlines (pedophiles on the web! mafia on the web! identity thieves! terrorists trading bombs online! bullying at school shown online) or voyeuristic reasons (sex blogs, selling strange things on eBay, funny videos on YouTube). And then politicians and editors Google themselves and can't stand to be hammered and criticized in a way they've never known before.

This ignorance feeds off of itself: politicians read news and hurry to announce something must be done against this and that. In the last weeks Italian blogs have tried to explain the foolishness of two different laws planned by the current majority. One has been presented as a crackdown on pedophiles, but it really focuses on piracy and copyright issues: the lawyer and blogger Guido Scorza opened the file containing the text of the proposed law -- presented as written by MP Gabriella Carlucci -- and discovered it was actually drawn up by the president of the association of video publishers. The suggested law requires nearly every activity -- specifically uploads -- on the web not to be anonymous (how would they obtain it?) and would hold every provider, social network, website responsible for violations of that rule or any other in the pages they host.

The second matter is even more dangerous, since it's a bylaw in a broader bill. It gives any judge the power to ask providers to close or block webpages that applaud or approve crimes or contain hate speech. Last month there had been a lot of talk on traditional media about a few Facebook groups dedicated to mafia bosses, like the mafia didn't exist before Facebook (Facebook in Italy is now "the big thing", like Twitter in the US). Someone talked about a "communication strategy by the mafia". The bill requires providers or social networks to block such pages, or stand accused of the same crimes. Obviously, no rule explains or defines such crimes, so such a law can allow for any interpretation. Since this is part of a broader bill about many different important things, it is difficult to have it removed without blocking the whole bill. The law has already been voted on in one house of Parliament and it's headed for the second with good chances to succeed.

Some of those opposing this foolishness accuse politicians of trying to control the opposition by limiting freedom on the web, but I don't think they are that smart and I don't think that Italian bloggers are fighting a dictatorship like they were in Myanmar. Instead they are fighting human ignorance and arrogance. Not a big dark power but many small minds. Italian politicians simply don't know what they're talking about and what they're doing (and sadly, it's not just about the web): they look for publicity on people's ignorant fears and are obedient to economic interests smarter than them. They think they are the only ones in the world worried about what happens on the web, and don't ask anybody what the hell people are thinking in the other countries. They don't lift the phones and call one or two of the many experts about these things, because they fear them: they speak different languages, they live in different worlds and times. The MP who signed the law said in an interview that if Facebook or YouTube should not respect these rules, "they don't deserve the State's respect", and they should be "closed".
They're not bad people: they're worse.

Comments

[Bernardo Parrella]

of course the current situation in italy is quite critical, not just for net matters and regulations, but in a much more general socio-political context; and of course nobody could disagree about the huge ignorance and willingness to restrict free speech that drive politicians in trying to impose such laws

but before resorting to the usual and so easy game of blaming them, why not trying some healthy, humble, much-needed self-criticism, please?

can we truly say that we tried to build some kind of 'net culture' along these years? can someone name some collaborative, bottom-up projects that were able to glue net.people and citizens together somehow? isn't the italian blogosphere/social media just full of narcisism, self-indulgence, little collective action, no? did we ever try to create a loose but active network of publisher, intellectuals, common citizens, net.people and so on to prevent such situations?

i know exacty what i'm talking about: since early '90s i live in the US but i'm constantly working as a freelance/­transaltor­/activist with and for italian projects, i've translated in italian many books (from turkle to stallman to lessig), etc. - and even if i'm completely simphatetic withsuch frustration and rage going around, i am also fed up with complaining and complaining against everybody else (a typical italian trait, btw :), and never trying to get our hands dirty, to roll up our sleeves to actually do something real...

[Stefano Augello]

Initially I was outraged like anyone else, but then I thought: no big deal.

Technology has always found a way around regulation, and in this case we might even be tempted to hope for this law to pass.
Of course there would be trouble along the way, but eventually it could only result in exposing the ineffectiveness of such an approach, and hopefully suggest a more serious and competent approach to this issue.

For the sake of transparence, I wrote about it here: http://finalburp.wordpress.com/

[Barbara Fiorentini]

They are not bad people? I'm not quite sure. Certainly many of them show ignorance and stupidity. Yes, you're right, they are worse, much worse.
Complimenti, Luca, per il tuo lavoro.

[lina russo]

In Italy there is plenty of people who don't understand how the net works.
To take another example, can you imagine a blog with the possibility to post a comment permanently disabled? We have this "bloggers" too!
This is an example: http://www.wittgenstein.it/

[Laura Beltramini]

With the limited vision of its leaders, Italy will never have the ability to compete with counties like the US, China and India. This is not limited to the Italian leadership. Even the upcoming generations in Italy have no idea how or why they should understand the internet and other new technologies and they are not encouraged to learn by the older generations. My children starting using the internet when they were 3, long before version 2.0. Without a lifetime of experience (they are now at the university in California) they would never be able to compete. Also, all of their competition comes from Asia or India, not Europe. What a shame that the Italian leaders are so blind and intimidated by something they don't understand, and are unwilling to understand, that they would waste their energy on something so absurd instead of trying to stimulate the devastated Italian economy.

[Federico Pucci]

Ignorantia neminem excusat: our government may ignore what the matter is about - even if they shouldn't as long as we live in the same age - but they just can't pass by protests on the internet and on the papers. I call it regime although it does not concern every Italian, cause of our anachronistic DD, since Mrs. Carlucci and her colleagues are somehow conscious that they're going to curb freedom of expression: if they aren't, we are "worse".

[Paolo Bormida]

Luca, you made the right point. Actually a lot of them, but the most important is ignorance. I use the web, email and the internet at large for work and leisure since 1990 and never been robbed of a single dime, never met any pedophiles, never been stolen identity and never been annoyed by any offensive content I wasn't precisely looking for. But I have had the luck to be properly educated (mostly self-educated) in the use of this new way of communicating and wish to do the same with my sons and open their eyes on massive amount of knowledge that is online. Italian laws precisely identify a crime in using someone else ignorance (or better willingness to believe absurd thing) to gain a profit. I suppose not many other countries have a law to protect people from being abused because of their ignorance, they prefer to have educated citizens (and netizens as well). Why do not italian politician invest time and money in educating people to be wise and discerning netizens? Well, set aside not doing any good for lobbies they take orders from, would be risky for their own careers as politicians. And if this isn't properly making a dictatorship, it isn't making Italy a modern country either.

[Rocco Palermo]

The real problem is that here in Italy the people are not so well informed about the new media, the new way of comunication and the web. In a country like this, where our prime minister is almost 80 years old, and still pretend to be in chief for a long time, everything suitable for the young people is seen as dangerous for the stability of the power that is, and unfortunately will be, always in old hans.

Congratulazioni per il nuovo spazio web.

Rocco

[Rocco Palermo]

congratulazioni per la "carriera" internazionale. And by the way, everything new in italy is seen as a danger or something to blame.

[demoniopellegrino]

I couldn't agree more with you. Especially when you point out that in Italy we are not fighting a dictatorship, but stupidity and ignorance. Too often everything about Italy is simplified with the sentence "Italy is a dictatorship in the making". Nope, Italy is just full of incompetent people (and they are not only on one political side...) But then again, we vote for them, so whose fault is it in the end?