Italy: Government seeks control over online videos
Italian authorities do seem to be paranoid about the net. There are already some very strict regulations in place about other aspects. Fortunately in this instance, Italy is a nation of scofflaws and law enforcement is lackadaisical. This law in unlikely to be enforced except where somebody does something really egregious.
"Italy's government is drafting a decree that would give it control over online video content... Italy's right-wing government is going far beyond its European partners with the decree that would require Web sites with video content to request authorization and would mandate the vetting of copyrighted videos before they're uploaded. Such measures are unprecedented in the West.
The regulations are also seen as a challenge to Google's YouTube and other online video-sharing Web sites. Google's European public policy counsel, Marco Pancini, told the daily La Stampa last month that "it amounts to destroying the entire Internet system." Since then, Pancini has met with Romani to press for changes. "We want to be sure that in the final text," Pancini says, "these rules are not applicable to a broadcaster using YouTube only to show archive videos or short extracts from a TV show, because in this case this would make it almost impossible to provide YouTube services in Italy."
The decree mandates vetting of video content to ensure it isn't considered pornographic or harmful to national security. Violators face fines of up to more than $200,000. It would create an administrative authority that will decide what can go online and what can't.
Alessandro Gilioli, a journalist and blogger for the magazine L'Espresso, says the decree will lead to censorship by means of red tape. "The way Italian government strangles the Web is through bureaucracy, not like in China — through bureaucracy, permissions, bureaucratic obstructions."
Source
The story above is from NPR so it blames Italy's conservative government but suspicion of the net seems to be widespread among Italian authorities. As ever, Italians go their own way. Italians are not big users of the net and the older generation who are in power probably fear what they don't understand.
6 comments:
This is just an extension of EU wide regulation being planned which would require censorship of ALL written content posted on the net (including comments on blogs and forums).
Italians have not yet lost their fascist and bureaucratic mindset.
I'm surprised a law like this hasn't already been passed everywhere. It is logical. If I was to set up a TV-station similar to youtube, I doubt it would be operational for long. Yet when it's done online they only need to remove content when someone actually complains to them. Everyone knows that youtube is filled with copyrighted material from background mp3's to footage from NFL games. Personally I don't care but like I said, it is logical.
I don't see this becoming a problem in Italy, since most Italians simply ignore laws that are clearly wrong or that they don't like. The real problem here is, if this gets the attention of other nations, all of whom are "actively" looking for ways to, not only control web content, but tax it!
The Finn: this isn't about preventing breach of intellectual property laws. It's about preventing anything critical of established authorities from being published at all.
Newspapers and TV stations are controlled through business licenses, unionisation of workers, etc. etc..
The internet isn't, so needs actual censorship instead.
Please realize that today is February 21, 2010.
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