Italian Blogs: Levi’s Law, The Beginning Of The End?

Recently, Beppe Grillo highlighted a new law that was proposed by Ricardo Franco Levi, undersecretary to the President of the Council in Italy, which was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October. There is extensive coverage of the issue in la Reppublica (Italian only).

From Beppe Grillo’s post; “The proposed law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC (Registro degli Operatori della Comunicazione), a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money.” The law has to be passed by Italian Parliament, but it’s causing somewhat of a storm both inside and out of the blogosphere alike. I spoke with some of Italy’s notable players in the blog world to gain some insight on the controversy.

Marco Montemagno - Co-Founder of Blogosfere and the well known presenter on Sky 24’s popular TV show, Reporter Diffuso:

“Technically it’s madness; theoretically, it’s an embarrassment.

The information world is more open than it ever has been. We create and collaborate together with content that’s distributed online at an unprecedented speed. The platforms on which users can create and distribute information is equally large and growing fast. For every Italian publishing content on sites like YouTube, Facebook, blogs and wikis - it’s just technically impossible to propose a law whereby you register and pay a tax to publish. It’s against the very concept of the Internet and technically impossible, not to mention an embarrassment for Italian politics.”

Nicola Mattina - new media and communications consultant, blogger:

“It doesn’t make sense to force a teenager to fill in forms just to publish his personal blog”

The bill must be discussed in Parliament, however since it isn’t included in this government’s electoral program, it’s highly unlikely that it will make the agenda.
Nevertheless, the bill is controversial and is seen as an attempt at repression by many Italian bloggers and commenters. In fact, it begins by defining an editorial product as “any product aimed to inform, educate, divulge or entertain and which will be published regardless of its form or distribution”. This law does not affect advertising, music or video. This is a very broad definition and could include every page on the Internet, except company websites. As such, it can become dangerous because it can be interpreted in many different ways. Beppe Grillo wrote that you need to have a publishing company and an editor in chief even if you publish a blog. This isn’t the case: the bill clearly says that a single person can be registered and delegates the Communication Authority for the determination of who must register at the Roc. The text is ambiguous and it’s likely that the Authority will not ask millions of bloggers to register for the simple fact that it would have to deal with so many requests. It also doesn’t make any sense to force a teenager to fill in forms just to publish his personal blog.”

Deirdrè Straughan - Beginning With I

“This kind of farce harms Italian business prospects outside Italy

Italians have a high tolerance for ambiguity and assume that things will work out more or less in their favour. For example an inconsequential law which should result in a fine will in fact not be applied in the end. However, foreigners are more law-abiding and nervous, so when they see laws like this they hesitate to get involved in anything in Italy. This has a direct effect on international business - as recent examples: lack of bids for Alitalia, AT&T’s withdrawal from bidding on Telecom Italia…”

Andrea Toso - new media expert and blogger:

“This just highlights a general problem of Italian political culture, politics surrounding the internet and the dynamics of online editorial. An obvious example to cite is the case of Italia.it, which showed an outdated communications strategy unconnected with real life - in particular social media. Levi has made a huge mistake not because he wanted to put blogs under threat, but because he just hadn’t thought of blogs or other forms of free publishing when drafting the bill.”

One of Beppe Grillo’s readers, Ilaria Meloni, also submitted an open letter to both the LA Times and the NY Times, stating:

“I thought I was born in a democratic state where freedom of thought and speech were unalienable rights of a human being, but now following examples we all heard of Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam bloggers in exile, here comes the modern Roman Empire of convenient truths.”

Beppe Grillo has certainly made it clear how he stands on the issue; “If the law gets passed, it’ll be the end of the Internet in Italy. My blog won’t close. If I have to, I’ll transfer lock stock, barrel and server to a democratic State.”

In a country whose population - certainly those involved with the internet - are battling to overcome many laws which already make it difficult to start up a business and a taxation system that does not favour the entrepreneur, a law like this, even suggested, seems ludicrous.

Surely it would be good to hear about laws being proposed which actually help push the economy forward, assisting young people and first generation entrepreneurs to kick start business instead?