[EURO-Discuss] WG: Draft Law on inrenet governance in Belarus - assistance needed

[Vittorio Bertola]

Wolf Ludwig ha scritto:
> Dear all,
> 
> my colleague from Diplo's ECBPIG sent me this message which 
> I would like to share with you. May be you can help to spread 
> this message as wide as possible.

It's not much different from the draft law that the Italian government 
has announced as a "crackdown on terrorists who attack Berlusconi". The 
text isn't out yet, but a minister said that all uses of Internet video 
streaming to broadcast street rallies and political events should need 
advance authorization by the government. Also it will be forbidden to 
express dissent or boo politicians speaking in public, as it "disrupts 
the political discourse in a violent manner". Moreover, judges will be 
able to require ISPs to blacklist websites (by IP, domain or URL) that 
"promote violence and crime" with an urgency procedure not requiring any 
kind of proper trial; something will also be done for Facebook groups 
(Facebook is now being used here as Twitter in Iran, it is the most 
pervasive uncensored media that we have) but it is unclear what - today 
an upcoming meeting between Facebook's Richard Allan and top politicians 
from Berlusconi's party, to discuss "better policies for Facebook", has 
been announced.

For the moment, the government decided to defer discussions of these new 
measures and it might be that they will be watered down before approval 
- apparently the Berlusconi government is divided on them, with 
Berlusconi's loyals pushing in favour and others resisting. Certainly, 
the degree of political freedom in Italy (the only Western country where 
the press is "not completely free" according to Freedom House) is now 
extremely concerning to everyone - almost comparable to Belarus.

(By the way, this is perhaps the main reason why I have been less and 
less involved with IG in the last times - the Italian situation is so 
much troubled that work needs to be done here.)

Ciao,
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->        now blogging & more at http://bertola.eu/   <--------