Perhaps they should ask Ted Stevens about a series of tubes...

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.

More like this

France vs Italy eh, could be good, could be not good... Italy did well to hold off Germany, their defence+goalie look invulnerable. They're good on the counter, but the first goal looked like a defensive error by the Germans, looked like someone missed their assignment.
A woman was stopped at Munich airport after baggage control handlers found the skeleton of her brother sealed in a plastic bag in her luggage, police said Wednesday.
--Known as the “Lady of the Cells” for her Nobel Prize-winning discovery of NGF (nerve growth factor) which helped unlock mysteries of both normal and abnormal growth of nerve cells in the body --Died recently in Italy at age 103
I've decided that as much as I want to see Germany win on their home turf, I'm still rooting for Italy. I want a France/Italy rematch/revenge for 1998. Hear that, LeBleu-sers? You're going down!!!!

@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.

By Who Cares (not verified) on 17 Nov 2008 #permalink

"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.