The Berlusconi government is trying to close down the web with a law that started off badly and has ended up worse. Because in the attempt to patch it up they have mangled it and made it unfeasible. Below I’m publishing the interview I gave to the daily paper La Repubblica.

”It wasn’t enough to gag the press and that’s still all there, but now they even want to close down Google.” Antonio Di Pietro has no doubts and he is announcing harsh obstructionism on the law.

LA REPUBBLICA:Rectifications on the Web within 48 hours. What do you think?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “Just as a veneer they want to have us believe that the regulation is useful for privacy, but in reality it is a way to turn off the Internet whose strength is in its capacity for self-regulation allowing each one to give their own comments. An example? The Internet was flooded with the news that I had been placed under investigation. But if I had insisted that, given that I had received no official notification, that news should be wiped out, the only solution was to close down the Internet, because by then the news had spread like wildfire.”

LA REPUBBLICA: Is it not right that the victim of false information insists on correction given that he has suffered damage?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “Now that the case has been closed, I have straight away issued my response. The democracy of the Internet lies in the fact that each one supplies his own version so that everyone can get an idea. But the idea of insisting on the removal of an item of news within 48 hours is not only impossible, because you would have to close down Google, but the consequence is that no one would ever publish anything because of the fear of penalties.”

LA REPUBBLICA: Is it not too much to start getting worked up about the bogeyman of putting a gag on Google?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “The Internet is a motorway where loads of vehicles travel, even the ones of the robbers, but to get them, you can’t close down the motorway, but you chase after them and arrest them. Berlusconi’s objective is to gag the Internet, an impossible objective.”

LA REPUBBLICA: Alternatives?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “Just one, close down the Google motorway. It’s a 360 degree censorship, that’s in fact not do-able. I publish an item of news. Blog posts follow on, these are linked and transmitted in thousands of mailing lists. I can’t remove the first news item, but I can respond through the civil courts and through the criminal courts. I can’t run after the communication ether, the cyberspace where I no longer have ownership. But the freedom of the Internet allows me to spread my version of the immediate news about the issue.”

LA REPUBBLICA: What is unacceptable in the draft law?

ANTONIO DI PIETRO: “It’s a law that started off badly and has ended up worse because in the attempt to patch it up they have mangled it and made it unfeasible. The jewels. The first: the request for a hearing in front of three judges. With tribunals below their staffing levels and because anyone who has already dealt with the case is barred, the thing will get blocked. The second: to have suppressed the Falcone regulation that allowed for wiretapping on satellite crimes. Now there are just the crimes of the mafia that are the final act of a progression of investigations that start from a “non-mafia crime”. The third: the possible environmental bugs in the private living space only if a crime is being committed. It’s an absurd logic because if I have caught someone in the act of committing a crime, I arrest them; I don’t go and listen in.”


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