Italian Wikipedia May Shut Down Due To New Legislation 292
An anonymous reader writes "Proposed legislation under debate in Italy has Wikipedia warning of a shutdown for the Italian version of the site. They say the law would create 'a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.' They further explain. 'Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge — the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website. Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia can directly request the removal of such contents and its permanent replacement with a "corrected" version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.'"
Problem solved (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why are countries like this... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is definitely an issue, but their justice system is a joke and their politicians have immunity from prosecution IIRC. As long as those facts remain facts there is little hope of Italy joining the modern world. I mean hell, they still try people in absentia and expect to extradite the convicted afterwards.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously - don't host in Italy, and who cares?
Do you think the Wikipedia page on North Korea confoms to the laws of North Korea? The wikipedia article itself, in the span of two sentences, shows that it's not a legal article there:
In its 2010 report, Reporters Without Borders ranked the freedom of the press in North Korea as 177th out of 178, above only that of Eritrea.[136] Only news that favors the regime is permitted...
I don't hear anyone threatening to pull it down.
The law itself is abysmal, but there's no reason for it to affect Wikipedia. It strikes me that in making this claim, Wikipedia is taking up a political fight. Wikipedia is not in any danger from the law, they're theatrically threatening to pull out, despite being unaffected, in order to draw attention to this. I'm against this abhorrent and ridiculous law, but I'm not in favor of Wikipedia making exaggerated claims and throwing its weight around on political issues.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Interesting)
I am overwhelmed at the potential for electronic mayhem that this law provides. There are so many ways, so many things. Its like, Italy is making the Internet Troll an official part of their government!
Re:Why are countries like this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually in most countries the politicians in parliament have immunity, but will take a vote on removing it on a case by case basis. This means that the immunity is more or less symbolic in these cases, but if you do like the Italians do and never vote on it, the immunity becomes very real. Berlusconi had a law added that makes it impossible to remove the immunity on the prime minister (himself) or a former such (again himself), but this law might be eliminated when he loses power.
You can think that Berlusconi is dirty and corrupt and abuses his power to avoid prosecution, but the other side of the coin is that his enemies fight equally dirty and use every means to impeach, accuse and obstruct, and any leader needs some form of protection against things like this or we end up with mob rule and chaos.
Italy is a very polarized country. They have a decent sized Communist Party (one of the last in Europe) and at least two extreme-right fascist parties, one of which is the very one that was aligned with Hitler and which is headed by the granddaughter of the very man that partnered with Hitler: Benito Mussolini. Her name is Alessandra Mussolini. The polarization is only surpassed by the amount of corruption as Italy is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Perhaps that's why a civil war hasn't broken out yet - people haven't been bribed enough to take up arms... ;)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with this proposition, that the language being edited is irrelevant. The issue here is how it impacts collaborative writing projects involving Italian citizens rather than simply a particular language edition of Wikipedia.
What is significant here is that the Italian language version of the the project generally already conforms to Italian law in part because the policies have been established by people who are familiar with that country's laws. The threat here is that the volunteers are suggesting a nuclear/scorched earth option that if they are not going to be legally permitted to edit or maintain Wikipedia, that they simply want to get rid of the whole project altogether. At least that is my gist of what the threat listed on the Italian language edition [wikipedia.org] of Wikipedia is trying to say.
Even more significant, the volunteers at the Italian language edition of Wikipedia hosted a 24 hour "blackout" after considerable discussion [wikipedia.org] that was supported by the greater Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees [wikimedia.org] that essentially gave a blank check support to the Italian language volunteers as well as the "Wikimedia Italia" local chapter in their fight on this particular issue. While it may not be strictly necessary to shut down the project in America, the net effect is essentially the same if the volunteer community simply pulls the plug.
Since many people in Italy use Wikipedia as a resource in their native language, the volunteers want the Italian people to realize just how serious this issue is to them, and how a very valuable resource can simply disappear if this law is allowed to stand. In that sense, I think this "blackout" was a very good idea. The real "news for nerds" isn't the law... even if that is the trigger... but the fact that Wikipedia blanked itself out yesterday and this morning (depending on what time zone you live in) with the Italian language edition.
The fact that legally speaking it seems like we are moving into a world where the lowest common denominator seems to be prevailing in terms of how you conduct yourself with international projects on the internet, this is an issue even with other language editions of Wikipedia or for that matter even Slashdot.... assuming Italian citizens participate with posts here. In the case of Slashdot, they are going to be forced by the Italian law to respond to any potential slander or "misrepresentation of fact" by removing content in a fashion similar to the DMCA. Note that the DMCA only covers blatant copyright violations, where as this law covers much more (hence the slander or "misrepresentation" issues) where take-down notices can be filed for practically any reason at all and must be dealt with or you will be facing international legal injunctions that might be recognized by American courts due to "intellectual property" treaties.
There is some real teeth in the issue here, and one that sadly might start impacting other websites over time as well. Even worse, there seems to be a tendency for laws of this nature to spread to other countries, where there certainly are several Europhiles in the American government who love to adopt laws like this into American society once they have been established "over there". This is a canary in a coalmine, so to say, and the canary is dying. At stake here is the concept of free speech altogether, especially for such a seductive concept for the expansion of government authority over the printed word.