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Italian Wikipedia shut down

theatlantic.com

196 pointscoldarchon35 comments

Today, unfortunately, the very pillars on which Wikipedia has been built - neutrality, freedom, and verifiability of its contents - are likely to be heavily compromised by paragraph 29 of a law proposal, also known as "DDL intercettazioni" (Wiretapping Act).

This proposal, which the Italian Parliament is currently debating, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.

Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge - the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website.

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comunicato_4_ottobre_2011

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The situation here is getting more and more anachronistic each day, they are this close to make me seriously angry. The country is run by a mass of greedy, corrupt, paranoid, elderly individuals with chronic sexual disorders who completely lost touch with reality. And the italian equivalent of 'joe the plumber' isn't that much of a good person either. I can trust no one anymore.

I don't really know how to deal with all this. Maybe we should outsource our parliament. We should really hire people from other countries to do the job. Don't worry, the pay is really good, the weather is fine, and you'll always have good food for lunch. Sit in our parliament, you make the laws that helps us grow as a decent developed country while making sure that the justice system works well, and we'll follow them.

+1 for the outsourcing proposal.

On a side note, it strikes me that Americans call 'administration' what we call 'governement'... It speaks a lot about how our politicians see themselves...

That's just a side-effect of presidential vs parliamentary executive bodies. Presidents have 4 year administrations, parliamentary majorities have x-year coalition governments.

I proposed to a friend that maybe Italy isn't ready to be an adult country yet - it needs a foster parent to hold its hand for a little while. He recommended Germany, but I pointed out that it didn't work out quite so well last time.

I was thinking more about Norway, the Netherlands or some scandinavian countries.. I understand your concern with Germany, we're quite some different countries now btw :)

I'd like to see the Scandinavian countries dealing with the mafia... no, not the one you see in movies that cuts horses' heads, but the one that blows up motorways.

There are not many countries better than that, because most politicians become "prostitutes of publicity" sooner or later. And in the parliament then 99% of the time they throw mud at other politicians, it's not about showing the best way to go - it derives to blocking all other ways.

> And the italian equivalent of 'joe the plumber' isn't that much of a good person either.

What? Joe the Plumber was a right-wing patsy who was nothing more than an agent for the GOP to help sell some kind of bullshit "I'm overtaxed by democracts" disingenious message in an especially corrupt election season known for Sarah Palin running as VP and GOP regulars going to debates and asking what McCain will do about Obama hiding the fact that he's a secret Muslim. Is he a hero to Italians? If anything, he would be cheering Berlusconi on.

I wasn't talking about the actual Joe the plumber, I was simply referring to the 'average person', the 'average joe' if you wanna keep the naming reference. Italians just have no idea of who/what Joe the plumber is.

In the US, "Joe the Plumber" isn't a substitute for "Joe Six-Pack" or "Joe Smith," its a specific reference to a famous controversial person. That's like me calling the average Italian a "little Mussolini."

My bad, I didn't know that. Thanks.

It was a general reference referring to no one in particular, before the election of 2008.

No, that was still Joe Sixpack and Average Joe and Joe from Main Street. Joe the Plumber was always a specific person, but it didn't matter while he was a proxy.

Vote with your feet.

Maybe that'd make for a good startup? We outsource your government!

Of course, if things get bad enough, Italy could always adopt a successful country's laws and practices. Just pretend to be a German provice, for example; follow all their laws and proceedings, adopt their charter, etc, etc. Then after a while once things stablize it can be customized to fit Italy.

> Maybe that'd make for a good startup? We outsource your government!

It's been tried, and it was incredibly profitable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_East_India_Company

Indeed, it was in a sense the origin of the modern limited-liability corporation, the foundation of modern capitalism. Not so good for the people whose government was outsourced, though.

I'd be more than happy to run Italy for a few years.

First, I'd lower the costs of creating an Srl (limited liability company) from thousands of euro to at most 100.

Second, I'd get serious about collecting taxes from people that owe them, and try and get rid of some of the ridiculous taxes.

Third, I'd put guys with machine guns at the crosswalks with orders to turn cars that don't stop for pedestrians into swiss cheese.

Get angry?

its really easy to sit about and get angry, perhaps post some stuff on the internet, real change only happens with action.

Agree, but maybe we should just outsource it to normal people: the kind of people that haven't got their tentacles around everything that happened in the last 50 years! Like these http://www.beppegrillo.it/movimento/ although the outsourcing idea isn't half bad as long as they're not all former bankers! :)

I live in Brazil and was hired to work for a company in 2009 and they sent me for a project lasting 2 months in Rome. I was impressed about how the people in general and specially the women hated Berlusconi. And he is still there today.

Only the President can send him home...

Putin in Russia publicly stated that Berlusconi critics are just really envious of Berlusconi (yea, one more thing i too well understand, yet not proud, about my old country)

There are more represive laws in countries like venezuela and cuba.. and Wikipedia has not done anything like this there. Oh i forgot, everything a leftist government does is OK.

My understanding from the last thread on this was that the decision mostly came from the people running the Italian site.

There's only one Spanish Wikipedia, there isn't a Venezuelan Spanish Wikipedia or a Cuban Spanish Wikipedia.

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3072800

to my excuse, from the 30 topics on the first page 28 were about Steve Jobs, on the following pages it was similar ..

It's working, now.

Wikipedia, or the Italian government?

Hehe, wikipedia, of course.

The only way to fix the Italian government would be the equivalent of a 'make mrproper', so to speak.

I prefer 'dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sda'

Whatever you want, as long as it works.

Personally, I think that some kind of 'civil disorder' will happen sometime in the not-so-far future. Not that I would like it, but I fear it's inevitable if things keep getting worse like they're doing now (and have constantly been doing for the past decades).

The government appear to have caved :)

[citation needed] — the Italian Wikipedia still says, "Sono stati proposti degli emendamenti, ma le modifiche al disegno di legge non sono ancora state approvate in via definitiva."

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-Octob...

Modifications have been accepted to the proposal; although it still has to go through parliament.

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