"The laws for the Net" by Stefano Rodota L'Italia ha scoperto la Rete. Appena ieri era divenuta evidente per tutti la forza di Internet quando proprio da lì era partita l'iniziativa che era riuscita a portare in piazza un milione di persone per il "No B Day."
is materialized as a novel dimension of democracy for our country. A few days later the image appears inverted. Internet becomes a place that generates hatred, secretes perverse moods. And his sweeping new interpretation of the previous one: "No B Day" is presented as a time of incubation of the virus that would make possible the attack on Berlusconi, the Internet as a tool in the hands of those who incite violence.
Conclusion: The proposal for an immediate crackdown to control the Net, according to a script that turns any abused dramatic fact not an imperative to reflect more seriously, but an excuse to reduce any social and political issue after the fact of public policy, restricting freedoms and rights.
Fortunately, within the same political world was quickly grasped the danger of this approach. Speaking at the Chamber of Deputies, Pier Ferdinando Casini said the wise words: "Woe to promote illiberal measures. The laws already allow for the punishment of all violations. In the U.S., Obama receives continuous harassment on the Internet, but nobody comes to mind to censor the Internet" . And the foundation Finian Farefuturo evokes the "China syndrome", the deliberate intention of preventing that the Internet can be an instrument of democracy. These warnings, along with many others, seem to have found a few plays, judging by the statements at least more cautious Minister Maroni.
The theme of violence is real and serious. But so is the inescapable question of democracy. It is instructive to read the list of countries subject to controls Internet: all totalitarian or authoritarian states (with a special exception for India). Does this mean that democratic countries are distracted, who have surrendered before all'hate speech to hate speech? Or the opposite is true, which is a growing awareness that democracy remains alive only if full freedom to express opinions, however objectionable they may be, and we already have adequate tools to intervene when the freedom of expression becomes the crime new digital world?
There is an old formula well known that those who deal seriously with the Internet: what is illegal offline is illegal online. Translated into everyday language, this means that the Internet is an unregulated area, a Wild West where anything is possible, but that it shall apply the rules governing freedom of expression, and that already exclude that it may be considered eligible when they become advocates crime, incitement to murder, insults, threats, defamation. This is the only ground where it is constitutionally legitimate move, and the peculiarities of the Internet did not prevent the postal police and the judiciary to take action to suppress illegal. The consequences of this approach are clear: no to censorship, however, incompatible with our constitutional principles, not to forms of enforcement entrusted to administrative authorities or referring to practices that do not qualify as crimes, no checks and sanctions are not entrusted to the jurisdiction of ' judicial authority.
look more closely at the peculiarities of the Internet, you must be well aware that the proposals to introduce a 'filter' access to certain sites raises a fundamental question of democracy. Who decides which sites are "allowed"? Where is the line that separates the contents freely accessible and illegal ones? The largest public space ever known humanity is likely to be entrusted to the arbitrary policy that will inevitably attract all that the area of \u200b\u200bprohibited conduct that appears to be dissent, minority thinking, unorthodox views. And the proposal to ban anonymous online overlooks the fact that their anonymity (although not entirely insuperable obstacle in the case of actual misconduct) is the condition that allows the expression of political dissent. As an opponent of the totalitarian regime could lead to its political battle over the Internet, in or outside your country, if he were obliged to reveal their identity, thus exposing himself, his family, his friends in any possible retaliation? You can not bloggers praise the courage of the Iranian or Cuban, and denounce the persecution that affect them, and then remove the shield that, wherever it may be necessary for political dissent. Even in democratic countries. And these days the complaint of American association for the protection of civil rights who accuse the security agency to monitor social networks like Facebook and Twitter to find out who your core initiatives of opposition. It is not the privacy of those who are on the Net to be in danger is his own freedom, and therefore the democratic system in which they live.
course, groups on Facebook to praise Massimo Tartaglia very upset. But you have to know the dynamics that generate these reactions, of course unacceptable, but reveal the way it is structured society, which requires attention and strategies other than the shortcut repressive, dangerous and unnecessary. Useless, because the Net is full of resources to help you get around these prohibitions. Dangerous, not only because it can affect fundamental rights, but because it pushes people affected by the ban to reorganize, giving permanence to phenomena that might otherwise downsize gradually moving away the opportunity that created them.
Only a good culture of the Internet can offer us the tools to ensure cultural fit to the network continuously undermined the democratic potential within itself to new forms of populism, the ability to create enclosed spaces, and to measure their own kind of freeing the same comparison and understanding of others. More than repressive measures is fantasy, one that leads groups around the world to ask for an Internet Bill of Rights or led an American scholar today associate of Obama, Cass Sunstein, to propose that the sites particularly influential in terms of size or content should include a link, an indication that signals the existence of sites with different or opposite, which allows you to connect to them immediately.
Stefano Rodota
www.repubblica.it Internet
