Italian Proposal To Ban Anonymity Online Written By DVD Industry

from the pass-through-legislation dept

Thu, Mar 12th 2009 1:08pm — Mike Masnick

Boing Boing has a post talking about a variety of rather ridiculous anti-internet laws being proposed in Italy. There's a proposal that would require bloggers to register with the government, and another that would require ISPs to block access to certain sites for publishing content it doesn't like. Nothing like repressive governments not wanting to allow freedom of speech to people.

However, even more interesting may be some of the details on the final piece of legislation mentioned in the post: banning any anonymous posting online. Despite all of the problems with bad laws in the US, at least (for the most part) there's been a respect for the right to anonymous speech. An anonymous (ha ha!) Techdirt reader sent in some other details about that anonymity bill. Specifically, the politician who put forth the legislation, posted the details via a Word document on her site, which allowed people to download it and see who created the document. Turns out it wasn't the politician -- but the president of the DVD production association. In other words, it certainly has appearances suggesting lobbyists from the entertainment industry wrote the law, and this politician just put her name on it. In some places people might call that infringement, or at the very least, plagiarism... But, apparently, the entertainment industry has no problem with politicians plagiarizing the legislation they hand over.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: anonymity, bloggers, dvd production, italy

16 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Pitabred, 12 Mar 2009 @ 2:23pm

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to
What you call "infringement" or "plagiarism" I call "lack of ethics" or "conflict of interest"

Where's the corruption investigation?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymoose, 12 Mar 2009 @ 2:27pm

Anonymous speech...
They'll have to pry anonymous speech from my cold dead.. well, er. keyboard? I say let them bite upon my shiny metal #$% instead. If they can find me, that is.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2009 @ 3:00pm

DMCA takedown notice?
The recording industry lawyers must be sick. They should have issued the DMCA takedown notice by now for the legislator violating the copyright of DVD industry.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2009 @ 3:09pm

"An anonymous (ha ha!) .."
What's the joke ?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2009 @ 3:13pm

Wut is this?
I have a few problems with this.

First, how does preventing anonymous speech increase DVD sales or is this really about suppressing dissenting reviews and/or opinion?

Second, if dissenting opinion is so harmful to DVD sales, why are crappy movies approved for production?

Third, within 5 years, DVDs will go the way of the Dodo. Why are they spending their last waning moments worried about such banal things?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mechwarrior, 12 Mar 2009 @ 4:05pm

I think the Italians should be equally concerned that their politicians seem to be on the payroll of almost every industry in Italy (both legal and illegal it seems).

With the state of Italian politics, and its court system, Im afraid that this may very well be passed.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
david, 12 Mar 2009 @ 5:00pm

Re:
I am so depressed about italy that I launched a tag sad_italy to aggregate similar things. The worst thing is that this was not seen as a scandal in Italy, didnt even make it in the newspapers. And the infamous MS word document is still posted on the MP webpage.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2009 @ 5:14pm

Re:
I agree Mech. Italy seems to be a pretty messed up place right now just like Australia. I must admit though, most countries seem to be having a problem with the Soapbox that is the internet.

As a US citizen I feel like I have the right to express my opinion anytime and anywhere I feel like it as long as it isn't Libel or Slanderous. If what I am spouting from my soapbox isn't illegal then there is no reason my identity should mater. If anything being anonymous would actually weaken my argument because most people would like to know the source of the information they are receiving.

The reason why anonymity is so important is that is gives a prole like me the ability to stand up to a Goliath who could easily crush me otherwise. For instance, if I want to speak out against the lack of health care in the US I should be able to do so without the fear that the industry will let me die if I get run over by a drunk driver.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2009 @ 6:39pm

Well, at least the trains are on time
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Autonomous Coward, 12 Mar 2009 @ 7:56pm

Wait - we have trains?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Benito Mussolini, 12 Mar 2009 @ 9:33pm

are you mocking me?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Shawn, 13 Mar 2009 @ 11:54am

understand this
"Nothing like repressive governments not wanting to allow freedom of speech to people. "

No government wants to allow this freedom, its messy and troublesome and people in power will almost always attempt to limit it as much as they can. This is why as citizens we need to remain diligent about keeping it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
CommieCowboy, 15 Mar 2009 @ 2:06pm

I guess that's what the Italians get for being stupid enough to bring back a bunch of right-wing douchebags who wank to Mussolini's corpse back to power.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Amerigo Vespucci, 15 Mar 2009 @ 8:38pm

Scandal
In a nation that elected the bad-copy-of-Rupert Mudock: Silvio Berlusconi, it is easy to understand why no one is concerned. What, me worry?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
italian guy, 17 Mar 2009 @ 7:12pm

no, you not understand... and i'm very worried for this. many italians aren't blind or stupid.. but :

in italy there is a bad voting law (someone says 'fraudolent').. and so-called left-wing is actually a broken-center-left-wing.. And more.. both right and left wing are full of jerks.. so the choice was : i vote jerksright or jerkleft? an hard choice, u understand.

jerkright actually is worst than jerkleft, BUT owns many newspaper and many televisions.. so manipulate information very well and win..

if you add bad law system (broken basically from rightwing, but also leftwing not jokes) ,high corruption level.. and lazyness of (not few) italians ... u will understand because more and more people seems sadly to say 'resistence is useless..'
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Guido, 26 Mar 2009 @ 3:58pm

I don't know if I will be able to read techdirt in the future. as you can guess, I'm from italy. there are a LOT of strange things happening nowaday in my country, innocent people who get killed (Niki Gatti), the government that is striving to ban internet and so on. I just don't know what to do, somenone must help us
[ link to this | view in thread ]