The Internet is the last communication media that is still free in Italy. Politics knows this and is not renouncing its attack after having occupied newspapers and TV channels. At the time I disassociated myself from the Levi-Prodi draft law that aimed to get bloggers to register with the Register of Communications Operators (Registro degli Operatori di Comunicazione = ROC) and the extension of crimes relating to the press. The contents of the Levi draft law In relation to the Internet were worthy of a dictatorship. Luckily the 2007 draft law did not get passed and everything seemed to remain as before. But then on 6 November in the most absolute silence, this proposal with new text (C-1269) has been assigned, to the Eighth Culture Committee of the Lower House.

The contents and the attack on the freedom of information are not changed, apart from some useless details, put in place by Levi himself, that are present in this second version. On this draft law there will be no discussion margin with either the Centre Right or the Centre Left. If it were to get past it could produce civil disobedience as its only result.
I am publishing some passages from the draft law that have been highlighted by “Punto Informatico”:

“Art. 2.
(Definition of a publishing product)

1. For the purposes of this law, the term “publishing product” means any product aimed at providing information, training, broadcasting or entertainment and destined for publication, whatever the form used to realize the product and the media used to make the product available.

Any blog comes within this definition.

Art. 8.
(Publishing activity on the Internet)

1. The act of signing up to the Register of Communications Operators by people who carry out publishing activity on the Internet is relevant to the application of the regulations related to the crimes for the printed word.

3. Excluded from the obligation to sign up to the Register of Communications Operators are those who make use of the internet or who operate on it in forms or with products, such as personal websites or for the use of the public, that do not constitute the fruit of an entrepreneurial work organisation.”

It is clear that the law has been done and modified by those who do not know the Internet or by those who know it too well and for this very reason they fear it, given that most blogs contain advertising banners, for example from Google Ads. These bloggers would thus be for the Tax Collecting Agency, similar to “entrepreneurial activities” and should thus sign up to the ROC thus risking to bump into the crimes of the press or if they don’t sign up bump into the crimes of clandestine printing.

Italia dei Valori will offer all the legal assistance to those who are prosecuted for such violation. Rules should be respected, but not those that put democracy at risk and that are obviously anti-constitutional. And this is because these are not rules but abuse of power. This draft law is pure censorship. Italia dei Valori will get busy straight away with a series of initiatives against this freedom-killing draft law also by appealing to the international institutions and to the foreign media.