A major violation of internet freedom is expected to arise in Italy, should the Chamber of Deputies approve a draft bill aimed at subjecting web services to the same rules that apply to the television industry. The Romani decree (after the name of Italy’s Vice Minister of Communications, Paolo Romani) transposes the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive into the Italian legislative system, but in doing so it pushes several troubling provisions.
Under the current proposal, websites like YouTube or Vimeo that stream video over the internet would be required (1) to seek a Government license beforehand and (2) to prevent users from uploading illegal content through their infrastructure.
As is widely known, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is a former media tycoon and developed the first private television network in the country. Mr. Berlusconi’s family still controls and runs the company. The critics contend what we are seeing here is an egregious manifestation of Berlusconi’s conflict of interest.
What’s undeniable is that the Italian government fails to recognize the specificity of the internet: on the contrary, the regulatory culture they affirm is strictly linked to the world of old media, to which many of the current Government members used to belong (Mr. Romani himself is a former broadcasting entrepreneur).
Before the internet revolution, assigning liability for particular pieces of content required very little effort, because “editorial responsibility” was embodied in the structure of the media. But things are different on the internet. The decree shows no understanding whatsoever of the way user-generated content works and misses the crucial point: that is, the huge difference between actively selecting content (as a newspaper would) and merely enabling content dissemination by providing a platform for it to happen.
What should we expect now? It may be true that the surveillance and licensing requirements won’t affect bloggers and amateur creators–although the ambiguous phrasing of the proposal would leave excessive room for interpretation. But this doesn’t address the concerns about freedom of expression and the internet economy.
Services such as Youtube, Vimeo or the France-based Daily Motion are now the first and foremost source of competition for traditional broadcasting. Imposing an excessive administrative burden on them will hamper their growth and thus put Italy at a competitive disadvantage with other European countries. Moreover, the web has gained a preeminent role in empowering all sorts of points of view to be heard: restricting this opportunity would amount to major wound for individual freedom and the public discourse.
Finally, one further reason for revising the proposal relies on its open violation of the EU’s E-Commerce Directive, which excludes any UGC-related liability or preliminary scrutiny obligation can be imposed on internet service providers; confirming the bill will most likely expose Italy to an infringement procedure under EU law.
Mr. Berlusconi risks being remembered in the future as the person responsible for giving Italy a Chinese-style regulation of the internet: certainly not a brilliant legacy for someone who freed the country from the monopoly of state-owned television.
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