The geriatric leaders of the government of Italy are making fools of themselves by trying to regulate bloggers, i.e., get them to register with the government, pay taxes, be liable for what they write, etc.:
The law's impact would turn all bloggers in Italy into potential outlaws. This could be great for their traffic, I realise, but hell on the business aspirations of an Italian web start-up, not to mention any tech company that wants to sell its blog-publishing software in Italy, or open a social network here. In addition to driving out potential tech jobs, the stifling of free speech also can have a dramatic chilling effect on all forms of free expression, the arts and scholarship.
Or, to keep it simple:
Only someone who is utterly clueless on how the internet works, or even what it is, could come up with such an idea.
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That is so idiotic. (Why does the country of my origins constantly embarrass me?)
Posted by: Alex Palazzo | November 17, 2008 9:27 AM
You could become an Australian and be even more embarrassed, what with "clean feed" filtering and all...
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | November 17, 2008 9:54 AM
@Alex: It is simple the person who wanted this law owns most of the media in Italy and was annoyed at people ignoring his control by publishing & reading blogs which he couldn't control.
But by the time the law got pushed through he got thrown out.
Posted by: Who Cares | November 17, 2008 11:28 AM
"Only someone who is utterly clueless on how the internet works"
The internet is a bunch of packet switched networks, mostly running TCP/IP that happen to be hooked up to each other via some gateways and backbones. I'm oversimplifying a bit there but it gets the idea across with out leaving out anything important to anybody who couldn't fill in the blanks for herself.
What the person above is talking about is a set of evolved norms for behavior and expectations of a particular subculture of people using that set of networks to publish stuff. There's nothing inherent in the network that makes that so. There's a strong argument that the an almost omnipresent network naturally encourages a lot of those norms but that's a very different thing from it having anything to do with how that network works. I'd say if you're taking somebody to task for not getting something being precise is a good thing.
For the record. Yeah, they're morons but that doesn't excuse inaccurate criticism. In particular where putting the word "culture" after internet addresses that neatly.
Posted by: sng | November 17, 2008 5:13 PM