[davidw]

Yes, the websites would come under the authority of the government. That's plenty bad, but what the original article in English says is:

> New rules to be introduced by government decree will require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization

[crocowhile]

That is wrong. What this law says is that content providers are directly responsible for what users publish or upload. The reason to this decree is that one year ago Mediaset (Berlusconi's TV group) sued youtube for publishing a lot of copyrighted material and asked for 0.5 Billions ( see http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/italian_tv_company_medi... or google "mediaset yotube").

If this new bill will pass (and it will) then youtube will be deemed responsible for copyright infringement. This has nothing to do with users asking for authorization.

[ErrantX]

I think there is some slight sense in amongst this, if only slight.

(Assuming we can drop any argument of copyright being right/wrong for the moment.. for the record I believe it is broken)

It makes sense that sites like Youtube (who after all are actually the ones making most of the money here!) are given some of the responsibility for making sure whatever rules we insist on are not broken.

As I read it this law goes too far; but I think it is more a misguided move in the roughly right direction more than anything else. If we can get a really serious revision of what copyright means (this is important, and I think it is coming if slowly - but it has to be done next I think for the rest to work) and force the content hosts to take some culpability for whatever rules we eventually decide on then I think things would be on the right track.

edit: Im not shocked at the downvote: but Im interested in hearing counter arguments / what specifically seems illogical?

[blueben]

Why is it Google's responsibility to become the Internet Police? Is Italy going to pay for those policing costs? Would you be happy if your government press ganged you into police service without compensation?

Lets call this for what it really is. This isn't about copyright. This is about dismantling a free media system which competes with a corrupt Italian government's ability to control public opinion.

[ErrantX]

As I said this kind of thing goes way too far. But it would be nice to see server providers realising they also have to make reasonable effort to prevent abuse of their own system. Especially if they make money from it.