European privacy threatens American freedom of expression

An interesting take from the New York Times' Adam Liptak on the Italian google ruling earlier in the week.

He writes that whilst in

one sense, the ruling was a nice discussion starter about how much responsibility to place on services like Google for offensive content that they passively distribute.

in another,

it called attention to the profound European commitment to privacy, one that threatens the American conception of free expression and could restrict the flow of information on the Internet to everyone.

Italian ruling threatens Internet freedoms

Yesterday's ruling in Italy could be regarded as a threat to internet freedom or another step in trying to curb the power of Google.

Three Google executives were convicted of violating privacy laws by allowing disturbing footage of a disabled Italian boy being bullied to be posted on the internet.

The decision stems from back in September 2006 when footage was posted of an autistic teenager and who was being bullied by four other boys, at a Turin school.

It remained online for two months before being taken down but the event was prior to You Tube being taken over by Google in Italy.

Google's defence was that it was nigh on impossible for individual videos to be checked due to the sheer volumes being loaded on a daily basis.


America's ambassador to Italy, David Throne said of the ruling that

This founding principal of internet freedom is vital for democracies which recognise freedom of expression and is safeguarded by all who take this value to heart.

Google executives pledged to appeal, saying if the verdict was allowed to stand, "the Web as we know it will cease to exist."

They added that

"If intermediaries like Google or the person who hosts your Web site can be thrown in jail in any country for the acts of other people and suddenly have a legal obligation to prescreen everything anyone says on their Web site before putting it online, the tools for free speech that everyone uses on the Net would grind to a halt.

Facebook members accused of assassination plotting

Thousands of Facebook users are to be investigated in Italy as part of an investigation into an assassination plot of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

There are 20,000 members of a Facebook group called "Let's Kill Berlusconi"

As the Indy reports

A third of the group's members have joined in the past 48 hours after criticism by the Berlusconi family newspaper Il Giornale raised its profile

.adding that

Angelino Alfano, the Italian Justice minister, said: "I'm waiting for the magistrates to do their duty and investigate, pursue and find the ones, who by encouraging hatred and murder against Silvio Berlusconi, are committing a punishable offence."

Berlusconi looks to the courts for satisfaction

One way of silencing your critics is to sue them and Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is doing just that.

In his sights is the left leaning Italian paper La Repubblica which has been scrutinising his seemingly sleazy private life starting this spring when it emerged that he had attended the 18th birthday party of a model in Naples, giving her with an diamond necklace.

There has been much speculation about his relationship with this girl,not helped by his wife asking for a divorce and reports of prostitutes and sex parties.

Of course Berlusconi's right wing media empire in Italy may be trying to discredit a rival organisation.

However the Italian PM was particularly irked by the paper's 10 questions which it has been asking him to answer since mid May.

La Repubblica’s editor, Ezio Mauro, said: ‘This is the first time in the memory of a free country that a newspaper has been taken to court for simply asking questions.’

Italian news written for a cultural elite

Not much has changed in the 50 years since the political journalist Enzo Forcella declared that the Italian newspaper was written for just 1,500 readers: ministers, parliamentarians, party leaders, union bosses and industrialists. News is reported, he wrote, in an "atmosphere of family discussion, with protagonists who have known each other since childhood, exchanging jokes, speaking a language of allusions."

Italian media takes a bashing in Time magazine this week as the country is portrayed as one where the news is not important to the average person in the street.

The reasons though seem to be as much about the content as the population themselves and according to Paolo Mancini, a professor of the sociology of communications at the University of Perugia

Italy's press has always been written by and for the intellectual élite

The culture pages of the major dailies have the air of an academic journal. Graphics and layout are dense and often confusing. Photos are usually portraits of the same tired faces. When political news breaks, the front pages can feature as many as five articles on the subject by leading journalists providing individual takes. Yet context or background is rarely provided. The reader of the printed press already knows what's going on, They have the news. What they want is gossip.

Ht-Adrian Monck

Images from L'Aquila

There have been countless images from the tragedy of the Italian earthquake but maybe this which featured as the Daily Dish's image of the day sums it up

Pluto, as the plaque on his neck says, looks for his owner through the streets following a violent earthquake two days ago in the Abruzzo capital L'Aquila on April 8, 2009. Hopes faded Wednesday of finding more survivors from the worst earthquake in Italy in 30 years as the death toll climbed to 260 and the country prepared to bury the victims. By Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images.