It happens. You wake up and the first item of news is about the death of someone. Yesterday Steve Jobs died. You feel a bit low as though a friend has died, a friend that you haven’t seen for some time, but whom you thought about every so often. You start to think that if he didn’t manage to conquer death, no one will manage to. And you feel more fragile. It’s a thought like that on an October morning like this. Good bye Jobs.

Address to new graduates of Stanford University 12 June 2005:
“I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: " We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him? " They said: " Of course. " My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: " If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right. " It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: " If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? " And whenever the answer has been " No " for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes .
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.”
Steve Jobs

Perhaps we have got to the crunch, to the settling of accounts. This riffraff want to close down the Internet. They cannot do it by a decree and so they are creating laws upon laws to limit, to circumscribe, to black out. The announcement by Wikipedia that has closed its website for consultation in Italian is a reaction to a really serious action that limits the freedom of opinion. The Alfano law, known for some time as the “la super porcata del Lodo Alfano” {bit of super filth of the Lodo Alfano}, is an act of war against the freedom of information, worse than the fascist laws, worse than everything. If they close down the Internet, no dialogue will ever be possible again and there will be no alternative to the streets.
Make your opinion known to Minister Alfano by sending him an email.

WIKIPEDIA ANNOUNCEMENT
Dear reader,
at this time, the Italian language Wikipedia may be no longer able to continue providing the service that over the years was useful to you, and that you expected to have right now. As things stand, the page you want still exists and is only hidden, but the risk is that soon we will be forced to actually delete it.
Over the past ten years, Wikipedia has become part of the daily habits of millions of web users looking for a neutral, free-content, and - above all - independent source of Knowledge. A new, huge multi-lingual encyclopedia, freely available to all, at any time, and free of charge.
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.
Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia can directly request to publish a "corrected" version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.
During all these years, the users of Wikipedia (and we want, once more, to point out that Wikipedia does not have an editorial staff) have always been available to review - and modify, if needed - any content deemed to be detrimental to anyone, without harm to the Project's neutrality and independence. In the very rare instances it was not possible to reach a mutually satisfactory solution, the entire page has been removed.
The obligation to publish on our site the correction as is, provided by the named paragraph 29, without even the right to discuss and verify the claim, is an unacceptable restriction of the freedom and independence of Wikipedia, to the point of distorting the principles on which the Free Encyclopedia is based and this would bring to a paralysis of the "horizontal" method of access and editing, putting - in fact - an end to its existence as we have known until today.
It should be made more than clear that none of us wants to question safeguarding and protection of the reputation, honor and image of any party - but we also note that every Italian citizen is already protected in this respect by Article 595 of the Criminal Code, which punishes the crime of defamation.
With this announcement, we want to warn our readers against the risks arising from leaving to the arbitrary will of any party to enforce the alleged protection of its image and its reputation. Under such provisions, web users would be most probably led to cease dealing with certain topics or people, just to "avoid troubles".
We want to be able to keep a free and open-to-all encyclopaedia, because our articles are also your articles - Wikipedia is already neutral, why neutralize it?
The users of Wikipedia

”In front of our eyes, we have everything that has happened in recent days with the case of the Val di Susa, you have seen and heard all the news, the traditional news on paper, on TV completely outside reality with a completely distorted view. Today we have confirmation that the only true news, the truth, starts and is propagated on the Internet. The world of TV is finished. The world of paper, apart from the odd rarity, that could be “Il Fatto Quotidiano”, is finished. True news, plausible and credible, is found on the Internet. This is the reason for the creation of this service desired by JP Morgan and by the world Freemason movement to control all the information on the internet. TzeTze is an extraordinary service that brings together in this portal all the news in real time that is found and created on the Internet, thus blogs and websites. Everyone surfing online can create news. Every half hour it is updated, on the basis of the positioning, the level of interest, the type of topic.
This service comes about using a little fly, a symbol to be inserted in your websites, in your blogs. The symbol of the fly will give you the opportunity to appear on both the TzeTze portal and on the website beppegrillo.it. I believe this is something new in the sector, because for the first time, we will be able to have independent news if JP Morgan allows us to do so. With these quips I am trying to forestall the losers who will say "Here we’ve got Casaleggio Associati about to place its long arm on information". Think what you will. I personally think that this is an extraordinary and interesting portal. It costs nothing, apart from the cost to Casaleggio Associati for its schemes of taking control of all the world’s news. Above that, there’s the freemasons, Bildeberg and the WTO. Then however, the occult mind of everything is that of the chambermaid, the one that had herself fucked by Strauss-Khan. She is the mind of everything. So I embrace you and say connect to tzetze. Ciao!". Beppe Grillo

Paris has been the venue for the eG8 dedicated to the Internet with the “World’s Greats”. The event was dreamed up by the French bomber Sarkozy, veteran of the endeavours in Libya and in Ivory Coast, for the regulation of the Internet at an international level, in particular for the publication of content. France has approved a censorship law, called "three strikes and you are out", that puts a lifetime ban on internet access via an ISP for anyone who connects three times to P2P websites to download content considered to be illegal. For this purpose they have even created an agency that sends two warning emails and then pulls the plug. Lawrence Lessig, author of "Free Culture", a United States lawyer and an expert in issues concerning copyright defined the law “a solution by brain-damaged people” that instead of developing new sectors, was protecting activity that’s in decline. The company McKinsey has calculated that for every job lost in France in the last 15 years because of the Internet, 2.4 new ones have been created thanks to the Internet, with a total of 700,000 jobs. (*). The main protagonists of the internet were invited to the summit. Many of them went away; like Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow who considered the eG8 to be an attempt by the governments to put their hands on the Internet. Sarkozy opened the proceedings with a threatening speech aimed at those who use the Internet “The world that you represent is not a parallel universe where there’s no thought of legal and moral laws and the principles that govern society”. What are the rules and what interests are they protecting? The copyright law goes back to the Statute of Anne in 1710, a law tailor-made after the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg. It brought in the idea of the intellectual property of the author, a period of 15 years and political protection. Over the centuries, the law has become more restrictive, copyright is getting extended to 100 years, and the penalties are ever more severe. In fact, copyright, has become a barrier for the development of the Internet. At the meeting of the “Great” at the Tuileries ,two prominent people from Italy were invited, the novelty that moves forward: Telecom’s Bernabè and il Gruppo L'Espresso’s Carlo De Benedetti. The latter had to say that Google is a parasite on information and he upped the ante by saying “We think that it is unjust that Google and others take our content without paying for it”. I think the same. I’m suggesting that Google eliminates La Repubblica from its search engine.

(*) source: FT

"Grillo, stop. Will you stop, please? Stop, Grillo. Do you want to stop? Grillo?” The blog, started in January 2005, let’s confess, has upset the apple cart for everyone. Many internauts have not coped with the daily liver complaint and they have given up. They have lost their sense of judgment. Perhaps they are smoking hashish on Mount Athos or they’re reading books by Veltroni and by Renzi. I understand them and I feel responsible. I hear them in my night-time nightmares “Grillo, my mind is going”. “I can feel it; I can feel it, goodbye.” How many victims has the blog got on its conscience? “No living organism can keep a sane mind for long in conditions of absolute reality.” Shirley Jackson.
The blog should be prohibited. I know. The collateral affects are first of all angriness and then apathy, resignation, loss of self respect, signing up to the first party you bump into in the street. You get overcome by reality and you take refuge in madness. As soft as the “news items with four veils” of the TV news, pure toilet paper. Light, light, like the headlines in the newspapers, what is there today, Bungashima or Fukubunga? The news items have to be like Gaber’s “shampoo”, like your mother. Information “is a good thing, like a mother, that caresses your head when you are sad and tired, an enormous mother, a mother in white!” The journalist has to protect you from reality, not destroy your neurons. Each one of us has only one life. It’s tiring having to think. It’s more restful to go along with the opinions of others. Legitimate defence by the news media is the removal of the blog. I understand them. They have to do it. They are not doing it for themselves but for their readers. L'Espresso in a long article: "Internet, the information battle" does not mention the blog among the websites of the dailies and not even in the publications that come out only online. It’s not there. And in its piece called “Blog, this is how the economic crisis deletes the free voices from the Internet” Il Fatto Quotidiano does a preventive deletion of the blog by attributing it 250,000 visits a month. And that is what’s right. The blog hurts the newspapers and also their editors. Five million two hundred thousand visits a month cannot be tolerated. And not even more than 80 million visits to the YouTube Channel, second in Italy only to the RAI in the category "Notizie e politica" {News and politics}. Or a tiny presence on Facebook with 575,000 members and a ridiculous number on Twitter with about 80,000 followers or a daily newsletter sent to more than 500,000 subscribers. How many people have I got on my conscience? Too many for a blog that doesn’t exist.

Goldman Sachs has invested 375 million dollars in Facebook while valuing it at 50 billion dollars. The value of 100 dollars has been attributed to each one of the 500 million Facebook users. Without members, Facebook would be worth zero. For example if me and my son were to cancel our profiles, the value of Facebook would immediately fall by 200 dollars. The capital is in the users, in their content and their relationship network and not in the platform itself, but Facebook is a closed world within the universe of the internet, anyone who enters can no longer exit. "Abandon hope ye who enter here." If in the future, other companies were to offer a social network with better services, the Facebook user should in theory be able to migrate his own content without asking permission from Mark Zuckerberg. In reality today he cannot do that. The financial value of Facebook depends on the billions of personal bits of information that have been inserted there. Who is the owner of this data, of the “digital identity”? Facebook or the user? It should be the user, the identity is his, the photos, the videos, the text are fruit of his labour, they are “him”, they are “her”. However, this information is usable only within Facebook. Anyone who registers on another social network has to put in all the stuff again. Every “digital identity” is basically the property of Facebook or of the social network where it has been entered. For some time there has been research into a standard for a “universal digital identity” to be able to have access to every social network where contents and relationships remain the property of the user. Our “digital identity” is always more important for our social relationships, but it can be deleted at any time by Facebook and we would be cancelled too. Facebook should distribute the money received from Goldman Sachs to its users who are working at a piece rate and for free by supplying information that can be used for marketing activity. With these thoughts up front, if the de facto monopoly by Facebook were to end, the capital from Goldman Sachs would have created the umpteenth Internet bubble. And who is it that pays back money in the bubbles? The small scale shareholders or the big banks? Certainly not Goldman Sachs who will be able to guide the launch of Facebook on the stock exchange in 2012 with enormous returns. I could be making a mistake, but just to be safe, I won’t be buying Facebook shares.

PS. Meetings for the creation of 5 Star Civic Lists have been scheduled in the following cities:

Campodarsego, Canino, Capoterra, Cassino, Castelmella, Ciriè, Corigliano Scalo, Crotone, Eraclea, Morlupo, Oderzo, Pontinia, Rimini, Roseto degli Abruzzi, Siena, Sennori, Termoli, Valenzano, Viadana, Vigodarzere, Volpiano, Ugento

Suggest a meeting in your town.

Apparently, the Italian Parliament’s biggest problem is the Web. For years now, they have been churning out laws, decrees, bills and amendments in an attempt to muzzle it. The fury with which the Pdl and the Pdwithoutanel have been dealing with the Internet is absolutely awe-inspiring. It is a priority on the list of the Country’s problems. The latest attack on freedom of information and on the Web is the requirement that websites make prescribed corrections within 48 hours. The blogs are now being equated to the newspapers, with fines of 12,000 Euro per offence. All blogs are at risk of closure.
On previous occasions this blog has launched various successful campaigns against the Levi/Prodi Law and against the D'Alia Law. This time, however, I absolutely refuse. Let them approve whatever laws they want. They alone will pay the price. Indeed, I urge Berlusconi/Bersani to be even more daring and to lay down the law once and for all, gravely and shut down the Internet totally. I am sick and tired of getting into monthly arguments with a bunch of Internet idiots, because then I would also look like an idiot. Therefore, go ahead, shut down, filter, black-out, hack, do whatever the hell you want. You are the ones that will have to bear the consequences, because shutting down the last avenue of democratic debate is a very high-risk strategy indeed. The pressure cooker may just explode sooner rather than later.
This Blog will, in any event, remain indifferent to the law against the Web. This Blog will continue to operate for as long as it remains possible for me to do so. This is not an act of civil disobedience. In order for there to be disobedience, there must also be certain Authorities with a legitimate right to exercise public power and in this Parliament, which consists of a bunch of convicted criminals, inhabitants of gifted houses, and servants nominated by the political parties rather than by the Country’s citizens, I see none of the necessary prerequisites for Authority. The only possible response is public indifference. Not civil disobedience, but blatant indifference from people who are fully prepared to bear the consequences. So go ahead, introduce 100 laws per month to shut down the Web. I certainly won’t apply them and if the millions of Italians that use the Web as a means of communicating do the same, then all your laws will become nothing more than mere toilet paper.

Here is a brief and incomplete list of the bipartisan laws against the Web.

The “Wiretapping” Bill (30/06/2008: The text of the Government’s proposed Bill is tabled in the Chamber)
Regulations governing telephone, data communications and environmental surveillance. Article 18 supplements the press regulations by including «online sites» amongst the media that is subject to the 48-hour correction requirement.

The “Romani” Decree (30/3/2010: published in the Government Gazette as Law No. 44/2010)
The initial draft appeared to introduce certain registration requirements for anyone producing video clips and other material posted directly on the Internet, even on a non-professional basis.

Draft Bill S.1950, otherwise known as the “Lauro” Bill (26/1/2010: Forwarded to the Justice Committee)
Against anyone instigating the commission of a crime against public safety, or who makes apology for any such crime, with aggravating circumstances in the case when telephones or computer systems are used to commit the crime (internet and social networks).

The “Bondi” Ministerial Decree (30/12/2009: the decree was signed)
A surcharge is applied on all digital media
(the so-called "equitable compensation”) to cover publishing rights.

Draft Bill C.881, otherwise known as the “Pecorella Costa" Bill (14/09/2009: Text forwarded to the Justice Committee)
Extends the applicability of the defamation provisions of the Press Law (47/1948) to also include “Internet sites of an editorial nature”.

Draft Bill C.2455, otherwise known as the "right of deletion" Bill (23/06/2009: Text forwarded to the Justice Committee)
Guarantees that information regarding previous criminal convictions can no longer be directly accessed by just anyone.

Draft Bill C.2195, otherwise known as the ““Carlucci” Bill (12/03/2009: Text forwarded to the Transport Committee)
Prohibits the anonymous posting of information on the Web.

The D'Alia Amendment (C.2180) to Draft Bill S.773, otherwise known as the “Security Decree"”(29/04/2009 The D’Alia Amendment was repealed)
Prohibits the use of the Internet to commit crimes of opinion, such as making apology for a crime or instigating the commission of a crime.

Draft Bill C.2188, otherwise known as the “Barbareschi” Bill (12/02/2009: Bill tabled)
Seeks to limit digital piracy by legislating the establishment of a “national computerised file-sharing platform”. Providers obliged to report utilisation by users.

Draft Bill C.1269, otherwise known as the “Levi” Bill (18/11/2008: Levi releases an extract of the Internet Regulations)
Provides vague definitions for the terms “editorial products” and “editorial activities”, which would appear to imply that blogs and amateur sites would also be required to be recognised and registered with the Roc.

The “Pisanu” Decree (30/12/2008: The Berlusconi Government extends its validity to 31/12/2010)
Identification of anyone using public Internet access and archiving of Internet browsing data.

The ““Urbani” Decree (21/05/2004: Promulgated)
Aimed mainly at the public funding of film and sporting enterprises, it introduces certain penalties for the systematic online pirating of music and films by websites or file-sharing systems.

Italy is near the bottom of the list of European Countries in terms of access to broadband services and therefore also as regards the Internet and the digital economy. A survey conducted by the EU’s Eurostat Institute places Italy on a par with Greece, Bulgaria and Rumania. This proves that economic development and the Internet go hand in hand. Greece has already gone down the tubes. Broadband is an absolute necessity, just like electricity and roads. The Eurostat map is very telling. Within the Mediterranean area, there are “green” islands where there is access to broadband, such as Corsica, the Balearic Islands and even Malta, and then there are “white” islands, which are unconnected from the rest of the world, such as our islands, namely Sicily, Sardinia and the Island of Elba. How come Corsica has a wider distribution of broadband services than any of the Italian Regions? I spent a few days in Sardinia and discovered that a number of areas on the island don’t even have mobile phone coverage. Italy is unified by its narrow band, and everywhere, from the North all the way through to the South, our telecommunications are as backward as those in a number of African Countries. In Lombardy, the distribution of broadband services is lower than in certain parts of Poland and is comparable to that in some poorer areas of Spain, such as La Mancha. This cannot be blamed on mere coincidence, but rather on the total lack of any forward vision displayed by the politicians and Confindustria, which has become little more than a Government concession holder, a government “favourite” that grants its favours in return for receiving government concessions. Without top of the line telecommunications, this Country has no future, and indeed not even a here and now. In this Country, nothing ever happens purely by chance. Therefore, we have to ask ourselves the usual question, namely "Cui prodest?", "Who is benefiting?" Who is benefiting from senseless laws like the Pisanu Law, which essentially outlaws wi fi? And from the high priority given to the prehistoric terrestrial digital services in order to increase the sales of television sets? Or from the tax on digital memory units, the so-called "Fair compensation" law, which merely increases the costs of any unlicensed copies made by users (unlike in the film "Minority report", the law punishes the intent rather than the crime)? Who benefits from the Wi Max licences granted to the same old telephone operators that have simply kept them locked up in some drawer? Or from the holding back of 800-million Euro already allocated for the development of broadband services in this Country, held back by an almost octogenarian Gianni Letta with the laughable justification that this money will be spent after the crisis (without telecommunications, the crisis will only get worse!)? Not to mention the laws introduced against the Web, the wilful destruction of Telecom Italia and its utilisation to create illegal dossiers on Italian citizens. The new Italy will not be televised, nor will it belong to these parties or these politicians. The Web is a very threat to the status quo. These manikins of power prefer the Titanic to progress. The band is narrow and Greece is nearby.

WhenI addressed the 2007 Telecom Shareholders Meeting, the then Managing Director Carlo Buora threatened to press legal charges against me (I never heard anything further). This time around, the current MD, Franco Bernabè, responded. If nothing else, at least this is a major step forward. Unfortunately, however, through no fault of Mr. Bernabè, it’s a case of too little too late. Not even Superman would be able to save telecom from the fate of being merged into some or other foreign Group. Small, deep in debt, in a Country without infrastructure, where broadband has been replaced by terrestrial digital technology by engineers and dancing girls and a Government that doesn’t have the foggiest idea about the future. A Country where an almost octogenarian like Gianni Letta has blocked 800-million Euro of previously authorised funding aimed at reducing the digital divide that separates us from the rest of Europe and places us on a par with Greece. Bernabè made certain comments with regard to the destruction of value caused by the Offer to purchase with debt, which he didn’t want to accept, and that is why he was forced out (for which I give him full credit). However, he seems to have forgotten the name of the person responsible for what was possibly the worst political/business decision ever made in the period after the war: Massimo D'Alema (the then Chairman of the Board), as well as all those that, following his decision, proceeded to line their own pockets at the company’s expense. Now we are bottom of the list in terms of telecommunications when compared to any of the Countries that actually matter, my dear Mr. Bernabè and, since I travel the world and live in Italy, I can confirm that Italy doesn’t have any network of excellence. If possible, please broadcast the proceedings of the next Shareholders Meeting via live streaming on the Telecom portal, . Last Thursday, the only information in this regard that went out live were a number of mesages on Twitter, while the only thing on the company’s website was Ms. Hunziker advertising spot. I thank nevertheless you for your response. Beppe Grillo.

Letter from Franco Bernabè.
"There is one thing that I am pleased about, my dear Mr. Grillo, namely that you and I, and fortunately many others are well aware of the fact that Telecom Italia, above all, is the driving infrastructure for the future of this Country. However, I cannot agree with you on certain other matters, as I mentioned yesterday when responding to your address at the Shareholders Meeting. Since you left immediately after completing your address, so it seems only proper for me to respond on your blog, where a summary of your address yesterday has been posted.
What I said yesterday is that there is no funeral to be held because Telecom is not dead. It is wounded, without a doubt, and much of the company’s value has indeed been stripped out in the past ten years, so it is unsurprising that I battled right to the very end to prevent the Offer to purchase with debt. However, the result we posted show that this important company can indeed be put back on track, in the interest of its employees, its shareholders and the Italian public in general.
We have no intention, nor has it ever been our intention to give up our best engineers and IT experts, and we are not in fact getting of any specialists that are essential to the Company’s future. We are merely creating more rational structures so as to enable us to become a company of the future. Rationalisation of structures and skills, which, I assure you, will be very different from those that the market has demanded to date. And while some of the other operators that you mentioned have their hands full trying to manage the imposing geographic empires that we no longer have, albeit having to now create the conditions necessary for a re-launch, we are nevertheless better equipped than most to face the new challenges that everyone knows are lying ahead in an interconnected and digital world.
Those dividends that you claim should not be paid to shareholders in companies with a heavy burden of debt are now sustainable and have indeed been cut by two thirds since I joined the company. The network is not a sieve, as you claim, but statistics show that it is indeed a network of excellence (and you who travels the world should be the first to recognise this), while our investments, which are very real and highly significant, are continuing to contribute to the improvement of our quality indicators, as certified by the Authority for the sector, and the expansion of the network to all of the Country’s citizens.
That for which you state we are bottom of the list in Europe is not the access to broadband, but rather broadband utilisation by families, schools, companies and public administrations. The stimulation of demand, which mainly starts from the computerisation of the Public Administration, has already begun with the recent introduction of Certified Electronic Mail, and we are with you in hoping that the process will be quick and productive for everyone.
Finally, as regards your long diatribe on the accountability for previous financial years and the question of what happened to the revenues resulting from the numerous sales, which you claim is unknown, I have always said that it is the Magistrature’s duty to deal with any crimes, however, I am a manager, not a policeman, and I have always done my best with what I was given. The Magistrature, which has far more probing means than the company has, seems to be spending a lot of time looking into what happened within Telecom Italia in past years. We can only rely on those who should, and do know how to do their job, something which, to all intents and purposes, they are indeed doing already.
My door is always open to you and the visitors to your important blog, and I am more than willing to constructively discuss any matters that will contribute towards creating a digital culture in our Country."
Yours in friendship, Franco Bernabè

Last week saw the disappearance of Marco Travaglio’s video called "I bertoladri {the Bertolaso thieves}" in his series of Passaparola broadcasts. The film reappeared after a couple of days following on from actions by my staff. The motive reported by YouTube for the removal of the video was: "This video is no longer available following a violation of copyright complaint from Mediaset".
Travaglio was interviewed in his own home with fixed framing. Neither he nor his home are (for now) owned by Mediaset. Copyright on words and on citizens has not yet been brought into law. In the future, perhaps, to appear on the Internet, you’ll have to ask permission from Ghedini. YouTube was obliged to remove the film. The violation of copyright by recognised third parties makes that operation automatic. Anyone who has suffered the deletion can complain if they take on the responsibility of any violation that is brought to light. Normally the film, if legal, is put back in the public domain within a few hours. In this case, that didn’t happen. A few days plus emails and telephone calls were needed. In the end, a really embarrassed YouTube restored the video and sent the following message to the blog: “On the orders of the judge for the civil case promoted in front of the Civil Tribunal in Rome by RTI against YouTube, we were ordered to allow the Consultant appointed by the judge to carry out checks on the correct functioning of the system of “Content ID”. The removal of the video in question came about during these checks without the knowledge of YouTube. As soon as we found out, we started taking action to resolve the inconvenience by contacting the Consultant. It has to be remembered that YouTube is a “hosting Service Provider” and in the case of notifications relating to copyright it has the obligation to remove the content indicated.”
Summary:
- there’s an ongoing court case between RTI of the Mediaset group and YouTube
- the Rome Tribunal has appointed a technical person to check on the way that videos are managed on YouTube
- out of millions of videos, the technical person checks on Travaglio’s video relating to Bertolaso and he blacks it out without informing YouTube
- the video is not restored after the checking operation
- the video is blacked out by declaring what is false: "violation of copyright".
How many times has the law been violated for a single video? I’ll ask my lawyers.
The most serious aspect of this affair is not in relation to my blog, but the removal of hundreds of bloggers’ videos, which were probably perfectly legitimate, with the excuse of copyright. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

The facts:
In 2006 an autistic boy was ill-treated in a Turin technical school by some class members. The others in the class don’t intervene and look on with indifference as though it were a normal happening. The attack is filmed and put on YouTube. It was seen 5,500 times and then removed following a notification. YouTube is owned by Google which is accused of a privacy violation. Three Google directors have been found guilty and sentenced to six months by the Milan Tribunal for not having prevented the publication of the video. The conviction happened even though the complaint by the boy’s lawyers had been withdrawn.
The considerations:
Internet allows for the publication of content on different platforms. YouTube is one of these, like Vimeo, Facebook, Flickr and many others. The responsibility for the content belongs to the one who is publishing, not to those managing the platform. If EVERY item of content had to be checked from a legal standpoint before being put online, Internet would have to close down.
If a defamatory insult is written on a wall, you cannot convict the owner of the building for having allowed it or for not having deleted it immediately. If someone uses the telephone to spread news that should be protected by privacy laws, you don’t denounce the phone company.
Without the video, the boy would still be the victim of his tormenters. The scandal came out only thanks to the visibility given on YouTube. The guilty ones are in order: the teachers and the head teacher that did not take care, the classmates that habitually hit him, the classmates that looked on without lifting a finger, those who knew and did not present a denunciation.
YouTube meant a crime became public. Has someone been punished for that crime? They have punished those who revealed a glimpse into Italian schools and pathetic bullying with parents who are absent or are complicit in the behaviour of their children. The Google directors are not only innocent, but they should receive a medal. The conviction is a warning: it’s OK to beat up disabled kids in school as long as you do it in incognito. It is, as anyone can understand, a question of privacy.

The attack on the Internet is by now shameless. The government, thus the owner of Mediaset, has decided that the right to information on the Internet has to be ratified, that copyright be used to close down websites and to eliminate videos from YouTube. That the live recording by a citizen using a webcam in live streaming is considered to be on a par with a live TV broadcast. That websites that provide information on the Internet have to provide rectification that is on a par with national TV News. All this shit that should be returned to sender. The Internet will have to do an act of civil disobedience, starting with this blog, when faced with a law packaged for Mediaset and for the RAI.
Berlusconi is paying just one per cent of the income on the three national TV channels. He is rich thanks to D'Alema who, when he was President of the Council, packaged for him a tailored-made law in 1999. Have a go at giving away some property of yours, an apartment for example, in concession to someone and then you just ask for one per cent of the rent. This is what the PDminusL has done. I propose at least 30% to keep the concessions with Mediaset and a single network, and packaged with this, the immediate resignation of Berlusconi. A concessionary of the State in fact, cannot have roles in the government. Violante reminded Parliament that the directors of the PDminusL guaranteed (in private) to Berlusconi that his TV channels would never be touched. Furthermore, the PDminusL, in the last Prodi government, followed the advice from Arcore and organised the appointment of Paolo Gentiloni as the Minister of Posts and Telecommunication instead of Antonio Di Pietro. That Gentiloni, “ surprised” by this law, who as a Minister, did not lift a finger to apply the verdict in favour of Europa 7 and move Rete4 to satellite. The Guarantor of the Communications will have to ensure respect for the law on the Internet, “their” law, he’s the person who controls the information and uses a person like Minzolini to dishonour the RAI and to humiliate the Italians who are listening, with the celebration of the thief Bottino Craxi. Let Clito Minzolini come to the Internet, live, and tell his lies, and he will understand how the Italians are thinking, let him read the comments, listen to the “chat” and book himself a helicopter.
We have to move forward with our work. To eliminate toxic refuse from the Internet. Delete Mediaset programmes and publish no more of them. I’m starting, from today, let’s make the Internet a better place. Denounce Mediaset and the RAI every time they make use of, in their programmes stuffed with advertising, one of your videos or one of your articles that is published on the Internet. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Zanna Bianca Maroni wants to gag the Internet. To put in filters to prevent the Italians accessing sites appearing on a black list while what is being looked at by Paolo Romani is a prohibition on live streaming. China has not dared to do so much. From one who plays the sax (quite well) and one who (perhaps out of anger) mauled the calf of a police officer, I didn’t expect that. From one who defends oppressed peoples.
In another country, a Minister of the Interior incapable of defending his Prime Minister would have resigned. He is setting off once more in the search for external enemies. The truncheon of the police is by now the symbol of Padania {the Po Valley}. Hit and hit. Students, ALCOA workers, demonstrators in Piazza Fontana just the other day. The Lega of the bullets at 300 lire, of the Italian flag with which you can clean your backside, of the “I have a dream in my heart, burn the tricolore” {national flag} sung at Lugano by four Lega Ministers, of educational games like “Bounce the clandestine” and against violence on the Internet. If millions of Italians go online to say “F… off” to a corruptor, pimp, P2-ist, friend of the mafia, is it the fault of the Internet that informs them, or the fault of the corruptor, pimp, P2-ist, friend of the mafia?
On 8 July 1998 the daily paper “La Padania” asked ten questions about the origin (mafioso?) of Berlusconi’s wealth. Perhaps even “La Padania” was instigating people to hate? Should it then have been closed down by Cicchitto-style P2-ists? The "mafioso of Arcore", (words used by Bossi) is today the master of the Lega who keeps it on a short leash. Maroni knows that in politics nothing is worse than renegades. Of those who have fought, I believe in good faith at the beginning, against the P2 and the mafia to then find themselves the servants of a P2-ist who defines a multiple murderer like Mangano to be “a hero”. Why vote for them? For one of the Centre Right at this point the original is better. The Internet is the bad conscience of the Lega. Anyone can listen to what the Lega leaders were saying a few years ago and can see what they have become today: the doormats of the P2. More Internet, less Lega, it’s arithmetic. Maroni has understood this. In a bit all the Italians will understand it, even above the Po. To help them, download the PDF with the ten questions of “La Padania” to Berlusconi, read them to the Lega people, print them and distribute them everywhere. For those questions the Italians are still waiting for responses. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Yesterday, all of a sudden, I realised that I have lost a habit, a bad habit. The TV was turned off. How long has it been turned off? Weeks, months. It has become an ornament, an antique like the radios with valves that are found in the summer markets. I remember that once upon a time, while I was distracted, I turned it on. I did a bit of zapping. The TV stayed there, implacable, with no one watching it, or listening to it, like a crazy old person that doesn’t have the courage to stay quiet. It seemed innocuous with its mikebongiorni and pippibaudi. But it wasn’t. It had got into our homes. Slowly it became the master of our consumption, of our dreams, of our children, of Parliament. A washing machine that has made the Italian washing grey, black, then just dirty. A bleaching of our consciences in reverse. At the start there was some filter to stop the mind getting intoxicated. But for years there has no longer been any protection, just the freedom of lies. We know all this, just as the one who smokes knows that it does no good.
To go from the awareness of a problem to the change is more difficult. I have changed. Has it also happened to you? “If I don’t look at you, you don’t exist.” And I no longer watch it and it no longer exists.
I get the information, I have fun and get angry on the Internet. The evening is much better with the videos that you send me as comments on the post. Not all of them are on the right topic, but nearly all of them are worth the entrance fee. Nunvereggaecchiu, wpapillo, byoblu, trarcomavaglio, quimilanolibera, danielemartinelli and so many others provide Internet information. There are people who are paid to lie on TV and young people who are providing information on the Internet at the own expense. Today I want to share with you an achievement. The videos produced by this blog, published with the name "StaffGrillo" and loaded onto YouTube have had more than 50 million viewings. 400 films, interviews, presentations or “montage” created for the Internet in less than 3 years. The YouTube channel was opened on 3 October 2006. The one who decides on the information on the Internet is the navigator, not the TV News programme makers.
”TV News”. Do you realise the effect that this term now has? It reminds you of the News at the cinema done by Istituto Luce”. The TV News directors are like the little dogs in the back of the 1960s cars that bobbed their heads up and down.
I want to say “thank you” to all the bloggers, to all the navigators. Even to those who are a pain in the neck and to the trolls that have activated the immune defences of the blog and made it even stronger. Thank you for the comments that often make the post worthwhile. Thank you for your videos that are informative, and are even putting at risk (even physical) those that create them. Information is going to power. They don’t know that yet. They believe that propaganda will always remain in power. They don’t enter the Internet. When they have a look, like Riotta or Mastella, they are marked for life. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

In Italy, you can do whatever you like, just don't touch our mothers. Mothers are sacred. "Mother, only for you my song takes flight, mother, you will be with me, you won’t be alone any more!" our soldiers used to sing during the Second World War. The German allies, who were used to hearing Lili Marlene and the military marches, would look at them in amazement. Italian mothers make all the decisions, including the meals on the table, the type of furniture in the house, holidays and the son’s girlfriend. If the mothers wanted it to, the whole of Italy would be changed within a month. Who would be able to fight against the mothers of this world? No one has ever succeeded. Not even the Argentinean generals against the "Madres de Plaza de Mayo", who were demanding justice for their children who had disappeared, the so-called “desaparecidos”. Mothers can do anything. Mothers on the Internet can do even more. An army of mothers networking with each other can beat the crisis, they can change society and halt the current political rot. Today the Blog wishes to announce the start of a permanent initiative entitled "Mothers 2.0" in order to enable mothers to swap children’s clothes, toys, shoes and pushchairs, as well as films, books and all those other things that only work for a short time before new ones have to be bought without delay. Why buy these when you can swap them for others? The GDP may well crash, but who gives a damn anyway. Thousands of new friendships between mothers will be born, the family budget will improve and a little less of the Earth’s resources will be used up, the very planet on which our children will be obliged to live. Any mothers that would like to participate can send in their contact details and state what they want or what they would like the Blog to do. A preliminary list will be made available in September. With immediate effect, the Mothers 2.0 will be ready to use on Facebook. "All mothers of the world are beautiful when they are hugging a child to their breast".

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I would like to return to the topic of the court actions for defamation, that really have been a part of my professional life for years. I remember that there was a socialist in prison who was always saying to me: “As soon as I get out of prison I’ll bring an action against you!” Now times have really changed. Compared to this, the Socialists were tiny babies. Today there’s an incredible tendency. Things you can’t imagine can happen. An assassin, with a suspended sentence, a pardon, and with all sorts, can get out of prison and, if you mention the fact in a newspaper, or on a blog or on the internet, you can be had up for defaming the assassin. And he asks you for damages, perhaps even millions in damages. The one who is had up for defamation always risks more than the one bringing the action.
Now take away the word “assassin” and replace it with “bankrupt”, “swindler”, “mafia person”, the concept doesn’t change. The one who speaks the truth is always risking more, that’s perhaps, like I do, or like you do when you are shouting the truth our loud.
We are living in a really strange Country, in which a little man like Schifani, protected by the shield of the Lodo Schifani and then by the Lodo Alfano, can denounce a journalist like Travaglio, because Travaglio exposes facts on TV. The ones who are risking more than others these days are us, the people of the Internet. It’s the internet. How can you gag the truth? There are millions of posts, millions of film clips, millions of comments. There are three routes for gagging the Internet, three routes. The first is with the little attempts, in August: around 14. 18, 16 August. Amendments, sub-amendments to the amendments. Changing the laws on publishing as has been done by these squalid folk like Levi, Ms Carlucci, and D’Alia. I remember Gentiloni who said “I didn’t realise that, because I was playing tennis with Ermete”. Ministers who don’t notice these things. The internet noticed and together with all the bloggers we blocked it. Or it can be done in other ways. By placing the Internet in a situation in which it cannot operate. Like in the Fourth World. 3000 town without ADSL, to do Wifi you have to shout loud. There’s more speed and more Internet in any island in the Indian Ocean than there is in Sardinia. Thus we are already in the Fourth World as regards Communications.
And the other thing is defamation. You write something and you make an error in an article, a comma, you put a badly designed phrase in inverted commas, and there you’ve triggered an action for defamation with millions of damages. This is intimidation: attack one to attack a hundred. The court action is triggered. This famous court action. An action done by the rich against those who cannot afford it. The politicians, the people with certain means can do this, but the ones who are taken to court generally have problems, some financial problems. These days, there’s the risk that a camorra-person, while under house-arrest, but with a clever lawyer, can send Saviano to prison. It’s incredible. You take a civil action and you ask for money. You take me to court and you ask me for a million euro. OK, if you lose then pay me a million euro. You have to be risking something. It’s not OK to use the court actions like that to cause intimidation. That’s why I have decided to defend the bloggers. Not because I am altruistic or a benefactor of humanity. Because the Internet is a system that can protect itself. How? We can protect ourselves very well. We have started this defence battle that is called “The Internet Shield” in which we are looking for the best lawyers, the ones that are against the stupid ones, who are a bit motivated by certain things and who can give a contribution to those of the Internet who have a court action brought against them for some phrase, some comma, some inverted commas.
The initiative is called “The Internet Shield” and it will give the list of all the lawyers who are available to both defend and to prevent court actions for defamation by supplying correct information.
Look, I have a certain amount of experience on court actions and I have some really skilled marvellous lawyers. Now in these last six months no one has brought an action for defamation against me and there are my lawyers who are calling me and saying: “Well then Grillo, what do we want to do? We can’t go on like this!” OK. My lawyers, who are people who are used to this type of experience, will be available to the Internet.
They will never give up, and you – here I’m talking to the bloggers and those of you who make use of the Internet, - you must absolutely not give up. Because if you give up I will take a court action against you all! See you later.

P.S.: Those lawyers who want to contact me about the initiative can do so by sending information to the blog.

The court action for defamation has survived all the reforms of the Justice System, from the removal of penalties for false accounting, to the Lodo Alfano, the separation of the career, to the gagging of information. The court action for defamation is useful for those in power. It is a weapon for the rich. It is used to intimidate. To shut people up. To remove the financial means from the adversary. Often with the search for a tiny detail, like for example, the failure to put a phrase in inverted commas. The court action can be in the civil or the criminal courts. If all goes well, the adversary gets trapped in the mire and you take home a neat sum. Perhaps with the slice of a fifth of some poor wretch’s salary.
The action of defamation should be depenalised. And if there’s a request for financial compensation, the one who brings the action, should be obliged to deposit the whole sum requested in an account with the Tribunal. If they lose, that deposit will be used to compensate the one who has been taken to task. It’s too convenient to cover someone with mud, to frighten them and then to get away with just paying the court costs.
Usually, the action is taken against someone who is telling the truth, not a lie. Usually the ones bringing the actions are the politicians and the representatives of the so-called institutions, never the citizens. Usually the action for defamation is used rather than other means of discussion so as to end up in the newspapers of the regime and give the impression of being innocent. I’m thinking of Schifani who cannot be put on trial and has taken Travaglio to court for defamation. “Mavalà Ghedini” is threatening to take anyone to court if they call his client a “whoremonger” (and that’s practically half the world). Cicchitto has taken L’Espresso to court.
I’ve got some good lawyers and a lot of court actions. I’d prefer not to have them, but they are a part of the game. Nearly always, I’ve won. Most bloggers have no money, and neither are they accustomed to being taken to court by a powerful guy, who at times, can use well-known lawyers, sometimes at the expense of the State. The whole of the Internet is at risk of being taken to court. All the truth that is on the Internet is an attack on the Regime. It’s not possible to take a court action out against the Internet, but it’s possible to limit it, to place on it, idiotic restrictions like those in China and Burma as they have done and as they are doing. This is why I want to create a “pool” of Internet lawyers who are available for those who are taken to court.
I’m asking all those lawyers who read what I write who want to defend bloggers for free, to send me their contact details. I will insert them in a list on the blog. For the more complex cases, I will make available my own lawyers, who by now have quite a bit of experience. From September, there‘ll be a “help” area on the blog for the bloggers who have been taken to court with the facts you must know so as to defend yourself, the law firms that you can turn to and a list of the current actions against Internet publications. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

P.S.: The lawyers who want to contact me for this initiative can leave me their details on the blog using the category: "Aspetti legali del blog" {Blog legal aspects}.

The wiretapping Bill has the potential to shut down the Web. Should this happen, the responsibility for what happens thereafter shall lie squarely with the Government and with Parliament. The Web is the tool, the space, the medium that has allowed millions of Italians to believe in the possibility of democratic change. To elude themselves that they are actually citizens rather than merely subjects. Without the Web and with the television and most of the newspapers firmly in the hands of the psychodwarf and his P2-ist friends and mafia dons, this Country is headed towards an uncontrolled dictatorship and a range of unpredictable social consequences.
Within 48 hours after receiving any request, Website administrators will be obliged to correct any postings, comments, information or any other type of published information. Any failure by bloggers, operators of newsgroups and information sharing platforms and anyone else that could remotely be classified as a “website administrator” will result in a fine amounting to between 15 and 25 million of the old Italian Lire. This or any other blog may be asked to correct any comment, any video published on YouTube or any photograph. The more information you publish, the more corrections you will receive and be obliged to publish. There could even be a situation where someone posts a comment using a nickname and then proceeds to demand a correction.
This is a senseless law and the person that drafted it is either an Internet illiterate or someone that is out to gag the Web. The Blogs run by free information providers such as Martinelli or Byoblu will shut down after the first few fines are imposed, and hundreds of others will be forced to follow suit. I would have to employ 10 people simply to be able to comply with correction requests within 48 hours, and even these may not be enough. In any given year, I would probably have to pay a few million Euro in fines. A law that does not even exist in China or in Burma, conceived to screw any chance there was of freedom of expression. If this law goes through, it will mean the death of the Italian blogosphere. Should this happen, we will make a point of remembering who signed this Bill, who voted in favour of it and who is the one that will eventually countersign the Bill into Law. The Web is not some sort of debutantes’ ball, as these revolutionaries will soon discover. They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

Also read the Punto Informatico article.

After Levi, Cassinelli, and D'Alia now even Gabriella Carlucci has arrived. The Internet has to be put under control with every law, with every parliamentary human reject. The choice of who has to do the draft law is not casual. The less they know about the Internet, the better it is. If they know nothing at all, even better. In fact, if it’s possible to have a discussion with someone who is well informed, to do so with an idiot is not advisable. Anyone observing from outside sees two idiots talking nonsense.
Every week there’s a new attempt to gag, to normalize, to make the Internet go away. And every week, we have to contradict, explain, demonstrate, compare and denounce. Excuse the vulgarities, but this lot have broken my balls. Italy has millions of unemployed and our golden employees are worrying about applying censorship to the only information medium that exists. Paid by us, with laws that can neither stay in the sky or on the earth. Gabry, the least intelligent of the Carlucci sisters which is why she was elected to the PDL, wants to prevent anyone from putting content on the Internet anonymously in any format. Do we have to discuss with this mass of few neurons and cellulite? With D'Alia who wants to close down the sites on the authority of the Minister of the Interior for presumed crimes without a judgement of the magistracy? With Ms Carlucci who is dealing with the interests of the corporations? With a fellow nanotelevisual government page with Mediaset that landslides onto her day after day? With Confalonieri who is citing YouTube for 500 million Euro?
Anyone who writes on a wall cannot be traced. Anyone who writes on the Internet is almost always traceable. His IP address is. In most cases the Postal Police can identify it. This lot are delirious. The Pisanu law is asking for an ID card from anyone who is connecting in Wi-Fi. In the parks of New York, London, Paris, and Madrid you can connect to Wi-Fi networks from a park bench or while you are lying on the grass. We are the only nation in the world that has managed to invert Internet access. No one has been capable of doing that much. Not even China or Burma. The number of families that are connected in Italy has gone down last year. ADSL does not get to thousands of towns or if it’s there its speed is like that of dial up. We have invested billions in digital terrestrial, a dead technology, instead of getting widespread use of the Internet in the schools and in the public administration.
If these laws get passed, I will turn to Europe and denounce them for violation of civil rights. I will not stop. They will not stop us.
They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Senator D'Alia interviewed by Alessandro Gilioli

The UDC’s Senator D'Alia wants to black out the Internet. He has proposed an amendment, that has been approved in the Senate, to a draft law put forward by Brunetta that will oblige the ISPs to black out a site, a blog or a social media like YouTube or Facebook at the request of the Minister of the Interior for crimes of opinion, for example a film clip or a group that invites people not to observe a law that is considered to be unjust. Without any verdict from a magistrate. Today, this only happens in China. In a dictatorship. The Chinese have erected a "Golden Wall" against Internet information. They were inspired by the Great Wall of China. D'Alia wants to build a “Shit Wall”. He was inspired by the psycho-dwarf.
YouTube is Mediaset’s true competitor. I would not buy Mediaset even if they gifted it to me. Advertising is abandoning the TV and news is done on the Internet. Putting the Internet under the control of the executive power means in fact closing it down and zipping up the mouths of the free citizens.
Google’s Marco Pancini has said: “No, the “ad Aziendam” laws {laws against particular companies} that then have an impact on the whole ecosystem, cannot be made. And it would be necessary to avoid taking Italy to the level of the worst countries in the world as regards crimes of opinion.”
Italy itself is anyway an “ad Aziendam” country and as regards the prosecution of crimes of opinion we are second to none.
The State is ours and we will take it back.

Participate in the "Free Blogger" initiative with a photo of you.

Text:

From Alessandro Gilioli’s interview with Senator D'Alia published in "L'Espresso".

A. Gilioli: I wanted to talk about the amendment. First of all, can you explain the aim and what use it is.

D'Alia: The amendment brings in article 50 bis to the package on security, and it allows the Minister of the Interior, on the notification by the judicial authorities, who takes action on crimes of instigation to commit crime or apologia of crimes, to make available to suppliers of connectivity to the Internet to use filtering tools against those sites or social networks that contain, let’s say, declarations and other stuff connected with these supposed crimes.
That is, it is a regulation that is used to start to take action on the regulation of the Internet and this has been born basically from the happenings that relate to Facebook, of the appearance on that social network of groups that are praising Riina, Provenzano, the Red Brigades and so on.
And given that in the regulations there is no tool that allows for an immediate intervention obviously if a potential crime is seen, that is if the magistracy is investigating, the Minister of the Interior can intervene with a tool that is completely for protection and is used to avoid a multiplication of such sites and of these illegal displays on the Internet.
Obviously, all this happens with the possibility of recourse to the judicial authorities by the interested parties, and anyway via a procedure that has a “contradictory” nature even with the managers of the site that receives the notification to black out or delete those parts that are in contrast to the situations mentioned earlier.

A. Gilioli: However, Senator, excuse me for interrupting you. The contestation is exactly this: I have had a good read of your amendment. It does not talk about deleting the parts but about blacking out the websites. OK, then: if there is a group on Facebook that is inciting people in favour of Provenzano rather than other things, the effects of your amendment would not be to delete that page but to black out the whole site.

D'Alia: But excuse me: if the manager of the site does not accept to delete these elements from the site, it is right that the site is blacked out. The Minister tells the webmaster, then the webmaster has two possibilities: either to obey the instructions and delete the groups from the site, or not obey. If he does not obey, he is making himself an accomplice to those who are praising Provenzano and Riina, so it is right that he is blacked out.

A. Gilioli: For example, on YouTube, there are various videos that could perhaps fall within the conditions that you have outlined. If YouTube does not delete those videos, will the whole of YouTube be blacked out?

D'Alia: According to me, yes , certainly.

A. Gilioli: And another, example...

D'Alia: I’ll give you an example: If a video comes out on YouTube, as has happened and for which there was a lot of polemics, in which 4 youngsters were beating up one of their peers who had a disability – anyway – in this case we are in the presence of the representation of a crime and it is not that we are talking about an apologia: there is a live film or the copy of a film showing a criminal action being committed. Is it right that a site keeps that? I believe it isn’t right.

A. Gilioli: Another point: there’s an online discussion, on the websites, on the fora. Among the people participating in th forum it can happen that someone is insulted or even threatened. Do you think that this comes within the ambit...

D'Alia: If I threaten someone, the threat is real, whether it is on the Internet or not it is a crime.

A. Gilioli: I’ll give you another example: Let’s say I am the author of a blog. On my blog, one of the people who are commenting on my blog insults me, or threatens me. Since I am the blog master and thus believe that it is right to leave my blog open to every voice, including those who threaten and insult me, and I do not remove these voices.
Does even this situation come within the ambit ?

...

The Senate has approved the filtering of websites via the D'Alia amendment, named after the UDC Senator and bench colleague of Cuffaro. In future, should a blogger incite anyone to disobey any law that he/she believes to be unjust, the service providers can be obliged to shut down the website in question. These guys are currently coming up with a new unjust law each and every day. We are only spoilt for choice. The first of these was the Alfano Bill and the latest one requires doctors to report illegal immigrants that come to them for treatment. Now the D'Alia Law provides that an Internet service provider may be obliged to shut down a website wherever it may be based, even abroad. What they are doing in essence is deploying servers at our borders instead of armies.
The only possible response to a law such as this is civil disobedience.
They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

«Art. 50-bis. Repression of activities involving the defence of, or the instigation to commit a crime via the Internet
1. When prosecuting crimes involving instigation to commit a crime or to disobey the law, in other words for defending any crime specified in the Penal Code or other penal provisions, and there are sufficient grounds to suggest that a person is involved is such defence or instigation by electronic means via the Internet, after having notified the judicial authorities the Minister for Internal Affairs may issue a decree providing for the indicated activity to be stopped and order the Internet Service Provider in question to utilise any appropriate filtering tools that may be necessary to this end.
2. The Minister of Internal Affairs shall avail himself of the services of the Post and Communications Police to undertake any investigations aimed at issuing the decree as specified at clause No.1. Any objections regarding the interruption of the service provision may be referred to the judicial authorities. The provision contained in Clause 1 shall be revoked immediately in the absence of the grounds stipulated in the aforesaid Clause.
3.I In terms of the provisions of Clause 1, Internet Service Providers shall be required to make the necessary arrangements to comply with the filtering order within 24 hours. Violation of this requirement shall result in the application of an administrative punitive fine of between 50,000 Euro and 250,000 Euro, which will be ordered by the Minister of Internal Affairs via an appropriate provision.
4. Within 60 days from the date of publication of this law, the Minister of Internal Affairs shall issue a special decree, in agreement with the Minister of Economic Development and the Minister of Public Administration and Innovation, establishing and defining the technical requirements for the filtering tools specified in Clause 1, as well as the associated technological solutions.
5. Clause four of article 266 of the Penal Code, number 1) states the following: "by means of the press, electronically via the Internet, or by other propaganda means "."

"Dear Beppe,
For some time now, every time I receive any news informing me about the Government’s latest legislative injustice I find myself asking whether it is proper to respect unjust laws. Laws promulgated to protect the rights of the chosen few and destroy the lives of many.
At this time, and with these thoughts going through my mind, I find the words of Don Milani to be very relevant and, forty years on, I believe that they deserve to come back and prick everyone’s conscience. Obedience is no longer a virtue. In 1965, the use of force as the sole strategy for protecting the Homeland was called into question. Today we need to stir up new conscientious objectors with the ability to sound reasoning to judiciously criticise these unjust laws that are being imposed on us. Filippo
"[...] It is not my intention to preach the Gospel in this letter. It is very easy to prove that Jesus was against the use of violence and that in his own case He never even accepted the principle of legitimate defence.
I will rather refer you to the Constitution.
Article 11. "Italy rejects the use of war as a tool to deprive other peoples of their liberty...".
Article 52. "It is every citizen’s sacred duty to defend his/her Homeland ".
Let us use this as a measuring staff to assess the wars to which the Italian population has been called in one Century of our history. If we find that the history of our military forces is rife with offences against other peoples’ Homelands, then you should tell us whether, in those cases, the soldiers should have obeyed or disobeyed the dictates of their consciences. Then you will also have to explain to us who defended the Homeland and its honour: those that objected or those that by obeying orders made our Homeland the most hated in the civilised world? Enough with these highbrow and generic discussions. Come down to Earth. Tell us precisely what you have taught our soldiers. Obedience at all costs? What if the order given was to bomb civilians, an action of reprisal against an unarmed village, summary execution of partisans, the use of atomic weapons, chemical weapons or torture, the execution of hostages, summary trials for simple suspects, decimation (the random selection of some or other Homeland soldier and then have him shot by a firing squad in order to instil fear in the remaining Homeland troops), blatant acts of aggression, the orders of a officer rebelling against a sovereign population, the repression of public demonstrations? [...]" Don Milani

Ps: Anyone wishing to forward some suggestions to Senator D'Alia for improving his amendment can do so by sending an e-mail to: dalia_g@posta.senato.it

Sardinia has been left in the dark by digital terrestrial television. Meanwhile, Sky is doing a brisk trade. In order to stay informed, the Sardinians are flocking over to satellite television and are backward-sing and forward-sing with the mainland.
This is keeping Fedele Confalonieri awake at night. There are two concerns that are tormenting him. The future of Mediaset shares, and digital terrestrial television. In 2005, Grandpa Fedele shouted to me at a media conference, saying: “Who the hell is this Masaniello that’s busting our chops!” The veins on his neck stood up and he turned redder than Gasparri when he is thinking. I had the temerity to state that digital terrestrial television was an obsolete and defunct technology, indeed it was never born. Do you remember the psychodwarf’s advertising spot: “Digital terrestrial television has landed”? Now, as then, it is dead and buried, except that everyone has now realised this fact.

From the blog posting dated 9-10-2005: “Digital Terrestrial Television came in after the Constitutional Court’s ruling No. 466-2002. which established that no one would be permitted to own more than two television networks. It may just be my usual maliciousness, but in order to prevent the decree being applied, the Government introduced the “made to measure for television” Gasparri law. In order to view the Digital Terrestrial Television, one had to have a little box called a decoder, for which public funding was allocated. Digital Terrestrial Television is being advertised with public money. Whose money is this, you ask? Ours of course! And to whom is it going? Perhaps to the manufacturers of the decoders and to the owners of the television networks, via the users purchasing pay for view football games, apparently the only thing that the Digital Terrestrial Television is good for?”

From the blog posting dated 1-12-2005: ”Notwithstanding the State subsidies, in other words our money, a total of only three million of these useless decoders have been sold (out of a possible twenty million Italian families), and the Government has now decided to bring the date for the compulsory adoption of Digital Terrestrial Television forward by two years. We would already be able to view hundreds of different television channels on the Web, that is if there broadband services were available (as is the case in other Countries), if the lines were fast enough (as is the case in other Countries) and if the costs were reasonable (as is the case in other Countries). Who then has benefited from Digital Terrestrial Television? Who is scoring from the adoption of this zombie technology? At some point we will have to do the math”.
Italy has fallen ten years behind in terms of telecommunications thanks to the Gasparri law and to the State assistance handed out for digital terrestrial television. It is an obsolete technology, an old piece of junk, just like Rete 4 and Grandpa Fedele.
Italy now has a wonderful opportunity. With the spread of Digital Terrestrial Television going the way it is, Mediaset and Rai will become hidden in a perfectly natural way. The next Regions to be liberated will be the Aosta Valley, Piedmont, Trentino and Campania, followed by the rest of the Country.

They may never give up (is it in worth their while?), but neither will we.

Tremonti show


Minerva is the nickname of a South Korean blogger. He was arrested by his government and he risks seven years in prison with the accusation of having spread false rumours about the economy. Minerva has been defined by the weekly magazine "The Economist" as an online Nostradamus for the predictions he has made. In September on the Korean portal called Daum, he predicted the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank a few days before it happened. In October he wrote that the Korean currency, the Won, would be devalued in relation to the American dollar. That happened with a drop of 26%. In recent months the President Lee Myung-bak and the Minister of Finance Kang Man-soo have tried to discover the identity of Minerva. A terrorist of the peace of the economy. If Minerva knew and the government did not know, then there are just two possibilities: the first is that the government is made up of people who are incapable, the second is that it wants to be ignorant. Minerva has made other predictions about the future of South Korea, that are not at all reassuring. He predicted that the leading company on the South Korean Stock Exchange would lose half its value, just like the real estate. In his latest article, Minerva has written that the South Korean authorities have decided to order the financial community not to buy any more American dollars. The information was declared false by the government and Minerva has been identified and arrested.


Minerva. Photo by The Irish Times

Minerva is an unemployed lad who has recently graduated and he has no particular knowledge of the economy, according to the South Korean authorities.
Crikey, I’m coming out in cold sweats. How long will they give me for Parmalat? More than Tanzi or less? And for the collapse of the shares of Tronchetti’s Telecom Italia? And for the collapse of the banks that I predicted on 8 August 2008 in Piazza Navona, will they send me to Devil’s Island with Gasparri?
Crikey, here I’m risking too much. If word gets round that the Koreans jail the bloggers who make economic predictions, it’s curtains for me. If, for example, I were to say that the BOT {Government Bonds} are not worth a fig and give a third of the real inflation rate, what could happen to me? If I were to dare to say that in 2009, Tremonti will not manage to sell the State Bonds, will I finish up in the Arcore Mausoleum with a view over the Mangano stables? If I were to say that there will be an extra 2 million unemployed people during 2009? That the public debt will explode? That the towns will go bust? What would happen to me if I were to say these things? I have not said them. I am contradicting myself. From now on call me Mercury.

Franco Bernabè has replied to me and I thank him for this. His letter is a photo of the weak thought of Italian management. A way of thinking that has dragged the country into a recession that has the outline of a catastrophe. Dear Bernabè, it’s not necessary to have your ability and your salary to sack 9,000 people (for now) and increase the fixed line rental because “companies don’t live on air and promises”. My son Ciro who goes to the Elementary School would be capable of doing the same. You say that the problems of Telecom are the result of what happened ten years ago with the handover on the basis of debts. And this is true. But there are no names. No manager is naming names, not even yourself. It was Massimo D'Alema, the President of the Council at that time that destroyed Telecom and handed it over to the ragged-arsed capitalists, Colaninno and Gnutti. Tronchetti finished off the job.
In your letter you say that “for the rest, I’ll leave that to the magistracy” perhaps alluding to the illegitimate use of Telecom resources for the biggest spying operation of the Republic. The Magistracy will do its work, but you have to do your job as CEO. Tronchetti and Buora are responsible. They were Chairman and CEO respectively. Tavaroli was accountable to them. The damage caused to Telecom in terms of finance and of image and the damage to its shareholders, and above all the small shareholders, is your precise responsibility.
We are the only nation in the world in which the number of families with access to the Internet has gone down. There are thousands of towns without Broadband and you are talking to me about PCs. In certain parts of Italy you cannot even get a mobile phone connection. Finally I don’t think that there can be development and a free market without, (using your words): “access for the other operators in terms of equality of conditions and treatment”. Those who operate services need to be separated from those who manage the network.
Dear Bernabè, you are not reticent, you are much more, you are part of the system and you have a family to look after. Anyway you are better than Tronchetti and Colaninno, but, you will agree, that’s not hard. I’ll see you at the shareholders meeting. Greeting to you and to Napoletone. Beppe Grillo.

”Dear Grillo,
Not only will I not be reticent to respond to you at the shareholders meeting , but I will reply straight away, taking advantage of the means of communication and the hospitality of your Blog. You are right on many points. When you say that we are behind in getting information technology into the country, into the public administration, to the citizens, and when you say that the development of Italy also depends on the proper management of the main connectivity of the country that is provided by Telecom Italia. As regards the problems of Telecom, they are the result of what happened ten years ago, and perhaps you too remember that I was in the same position of responsibility as I find myself right now and that I tried to defend with all my strength and with all the strength of the company the “takeover by means of debts” that then undermined the potential for income, development and economic outlook. Without the takeover by means of debts, it’s possible that right now the country would be better equipped in terms of infrastructure, less divided culturally and in terms of the distribution of opportunity. Italy has always had the best results and the positions of importance in the telecommunications sector internationally, from the invention of the telephone to the development of mobile phones as a modern and personal tool for everyone, just to mention the things that are most well known to the general public right up to the use of fibre optics. You are wrong on a few things. We are strongly convinced that it is necessary to give an impulse to the development of informatics in public and in private lives. But it’s not our job to sell computers, and the connection that is available today with ample availability of band width covers 96% of citizens and all the companies and public authorities. We have even started to favour the use of PCs, but I repeat, it is not our job and others should be taking advantage of this vast potential market, that sees the public sector as the top one.

...

For the rest, I’ll leave that to the magistracy, for the part under their jurisdiction, and to the shareholders, who are also supporting this effort even though it means they have to make sacrifices. Thus I am sorry to delude you. I am not selling to anyone, and above all I want to retire to Vipiteno, or even somewhere else if you will allow me, only when I have finished my wok. And certainly not at the forthcoming shareholders meeting in April, where I look forward to having the pleasure of seeing you.” Franco Bernabè

...

Choose the subtitles in Italian, Spanish or Portuguese.

Franco Bernabè has been leading Telecom for about one year. A period in which its share value has dropped to below one euro. Bernabè has announced the sacking of 9,000 people. The Trades Unions gave a sigh of relief. They thought at least 20,000 would go. Among the names of those to leave, that of Napoletone Luciani is not included. He should be becoming the future President of Tim Brasil, as a substitute for Araujo. Napoletone is already preparing his speech for the Brazilian directors, he’s not going to talk about Alexander the Great, but General Custer.
In Bernabè’s year, Italy’s telecommunication system has collected an unbeatable world record. For the first time in the history of the Internet, the number of families with access to the Internet has gone down. It’s like going against the laws of thermodynamics. In Europe everyone is beating us apart from Greece, Romania and Bulgaria (all growing), but don’t give up hope, we will have success in getting worse. There are thousands of towns in Italy without ADSL, usually they do not get services provided by Telecom because the payback is low. The WiMax coverage has not got off the ground. Telecom increases its fixed charges instead of abolishing them and the government doesn’t bat an eyelid. Bernabè and the current shareholders however, have not asked for their money back fromTronchetti, Buora, Ruggiero and their mates who have sucked the company dry. Bernabè and the current shareholders have not filed a lawsuit against the previous management team for the faithful Tavaroli’s Telecom wiretapping. As always, the ones who pay are the clients (line rental), the small shareholders (shares), the employees (sacking).
At the next Telecom shareholders meeting I’ll be there. Let Bernabè not do an imitation of the unhappy Tronchetti who had a “sicky” to avoid responding to me. Let him be present. If he wants, I will let him have the questions a few days early so that he can be prepared. The country’s lack of development is connected to the lack of direction for the telecommunications system. You cannot have a market when you have a company that is at the same time providing services and access to services for its competitors. It’s a monopoly situation that is cockeyed. Services and backbone have to be separated .
Bernabè knows full well who has destroyed the value of Telecom. He knows the names of those responsible, of the politicians and the ragged arsed businessmen. Let him not complete their work. Let him denounce them, and as administrator let him ask them for hefty compensation (anyway he has all the documents) let him sell to Telefonica (anyway sooner or later that will happen) and let him retire to his Vipiteno

The little werewolf

Italy is going bankrupt. Families only manage to survive through to the third week of the month before. Two million people unemployed again within just one year. Yet our very own little Marie Antoniettes, firstly Levi (Pdwithoutanel) and now Cassinelli (PDL) have nothing better to do than work day and night, PAID FOR BY US, in an attempt to gag the Web.
Just when Levi stated that he had withdrawn his blog killer proposal, along comes Cassinelli with a new blog screwer law. The difference between the two is significant. If it is true that Levi was attempting to kill the bloggers, then Cassinelli first screws them, making as if he is trying to help them and then he kills them, as explained in the Punto Informatico article.
In all honesty, I no longer understand these politicians. What point of public exasperation are they trying to reach? They will land up turning the Italians into absolute little werewolves. Companies are shutting down, a lifetime’s worth of savings have been shot to hell and three workers a day are being killed in the workplace and yet, while all of this is going on, all that these irresponsible morons can talk about are the blog killer law, Villari and the RAI Oversight Committee. RAI and Mediaset should both be shut down forthwith. They are nothing but filth; CO2 mixed up with lies and private interests.
This political system of ours is being kept on its feet by the media. Without the media, the system would collapse overnight. That is why the politicians are so concerned about the Internet and keep such a tight reign on television broadcasting. Come on Cassinelli, stop busting everyone’s chops! The Internet doesn’t need your laws. It doesn’t need any new laws. It is in perfect health and continues to run down the bullshit ideas expounded by your party, Forza Italia, every day, every hour, every minute and every second. You don’t represent us, simply because you were never elected.
I am hereby inviting all bloggers to post their comments regarding Cassinelli’s law on their blogs, namely to robertocassinelli.blogspot.com or, (if they don’t post your comments) send a mail to: cassinelli_r@camera.it
Say “No” to the blog killer. The instigator’s name has changed from Levi to Cassinelli, but the law still bears the Veltrusconi trademark.
They will never give up, but neither will we.

Comparison between Financial Times and La Repubblica headlines of 21/11/2008.
The main headlines. FT talks about the collapsing economy while La Repubblica (like the other national papers) talks about Villari, therefore, about the political parties’ control of the media.

Obama has won, thanks in part to the Internet. Online he collected funds amounting to a billion dollars for his election campaign. "A campaign powered by people, not the special interests".
The “Obama de noantri” {everyman’s Obama}, in ordinary life known as Topo Gigio Veltroni, after having got all the Italians mad about how he is similar to Obama (an insult worse than the “tanned” insult of the psycho-dwarf), wants to give the Internet a helping hand. All the bloggers are holding each other.



Topo Gigio is worse than spyware, than malware, he’s a really insidious virus that transforms everything he touches into a Walterloo. His PDminusL man in charge, with the stage name of Franco "Ricardo" Levi has placed before the Culture Committee of the Lower House, with a few adjustments worthy of Pol Pot, the infamous Levi/Prodi. Also called “blogger-killer”. A law that is rebaptised Levi/Veltroni thanks to the new clauses.
Basically:
- every blog is considered similar to a publishing product
- every blog that publishes Google’s Adsense or a banner can answer to the Tax Collecting Agency for that
- every blog has to register with the ROC {Registro degli Operatori di Comunicazione= Register of Communications Operators}
- every blog is subject to the regulations on the responsibilities connected to crimes via the printed word
- every blog that does not register with ROC can be denounced for the crime of “clandestine publishing”: two years in prison and financial sanctions.
A blogger can choose to register with ROC and run the risk of one of the innumerable criminal and civil actions on the crimes via the printed word that go back to the “Codice Rocco” of fascist times, or alternatively, enter clandestinity before entering prison. Basically he can hang himself or shoot himself in the head.
The Commission that has to examine the draft law will soon start work on the “blogger-killer” law. Support from the Internet will help them take their decisions.
They will never give up, (but would it be worth their while?) neither will we.

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PS C6 TV, that today - 13 November – is trying to beat the record for the web broadcast with the greatest number of live interventions, will have a live broadcast of tomorrow’s biciclettata in Milan starting at 2 pm on www.c6.tv.

Click on the image

The blog-killer draft law is no one’s offspring. Perhaps it could be a whore’s offspring. Of an unknown father and an uncertain mother. Born in a test tube and by parthenogenesis. Apart from that of Antonio Di Pietro, no parliamentary voice has been heard in favour of the Internet. And yet it should have a certain relevance to them. Millions of Italians live it, use it, discuss it and get information from it.
The draft law was presented by Franco 'Ricardo' Levi. Levi is PD. The Secretary of the PD is Veltroni. Either he knows nothing about it, as I’m told happens often, or he is in agreement.
The true journalists work via the internet. You know some of them. They are called Ricca, Martinelli, Byoblu. Apologies to those I am not mentioning, but there are thousands of them. The internet expresses a different Country. If the lobotomized ones of the TV stations and the trio CorriereRepubblicaLaStampa were to get there information via the internet, the psycho-dwarf would be a permanent guest of Putin’s in Siberia and Topo Gigio Veltroni an usher in a cinema.
The blog-killer law is not to be taken lightly. Even in China, they haven’t even dared to go so far. If it gets passed, the internet will disappear. I have read a lot of comments advising bloggers to move the blogs abroad or to register them with an address ending in .com, .net or something else, not subject to the Italian laws as “.it” is. Why should we do that? Let them do it with their shXt websites. It’s been years that we are the hares and they the dogs. That we are playing in defence. Every day a new rubbish idea. It’s time for a change. I feel like a sabre-toothed werewolf. It’s a great feeling. Chasing after the one running away. Hundreds of bloggers are showing their faces, their first and second names, their http address with the “FREE BLOGGER” initiative. It is they who are change. You will not stop that.
” If all the bloggers in the world were to join hands…”

Send in your photos with the words: FREE BLOGGER":
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- Article in "Punto Informatico"
- Analysis by Daniele Minotti

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>> SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
On Friday 14 November, I invite all the people of Milan to go to the office and to school by bicycle. It’s the fastest, cleanest and cheapest way. Anyone going by push-bike does not depend on the price of petrol nor on the dis-service of public transport. The bicycle is revolutionary. I will be in Milan in the early part of the afternoon with my powerful legs. No to polluting vehicles that you have to pay for. No to childhood leukaemia. Yes to clean air and to the freedom to move about without the risk of being mown down. How many Milan town councillors and cabinet members go to work by bicycle? If there happens to be one I’m waiting for them to call me to speak. Beppe Grillo <<

Barack Obama is not taking money from the lobbies

Newspapers get a billion euro a year from the State. There are cuts to the funding for universities and they are gifting money to people like Mieli, Mauro, Ferrara, Polito, and Feltri. The list is really long, but how many are there who are fed and watered from our taxes? The liberty to express the opinion of their editors is possible thanks to the taxes of the labourers and the pensioners. Citizens don’t know it, but a part of Giuliano Ferrara is their property. In other times, for the financing, it was possible to call on the freedom of the press, now it’s possible to celebrate the freedom of disinformation. At our expense. They are fantastic. Only in our country do the servants anticipate the thinking of the master. Why are the companies allowed to go bust and Il Riformista or Libero have to receive cash from the State?
An item of good news. Finally. The press is dying. The cost of paper, of the staff, the fall in income from advertising and the possibility to surf online is moving a grain of information day by day from the newspapers to the Internet. It is an hourglass that cannot be stopped. Recent news, the first American national daily to close up shop, the “Christian Science Monitor” of Boston. It has more than a hundred years of history and seven Pulitzer prizewinners among its staff. It’s not the last one to arrive, but it’s the first to migrate. The others will follow. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in a couple of years. Meanwhile, Obama wins the election thanks to the Internet, to the funds collected online, directly from the voters. A billion dollars with an average of 100 dollars per donation. He will be responsible to the Americans, not to the lobbies of armaments and oil that financed Bush. No to Fiat, to Mediaset to Benetton.
Online, the rules change. The Huffington Post is the most influential political blog in America. Much more than most of the dailies and the TV channels. It has only 42 journalists on its staff and it lives on the spontaneous access. The more people that read it, the more the cash it receives from advertising. If it publishes what is false, anyone can show it to be wrong on the Internet.
The online version of the Italian newspapers is always the same. Between corriere.it, repubblica.it or stampa.it, what’s the difference? The masthead? They seem like so many brand names for detergents. Different ingredients. The same owners.

Gelli will be presenting "Venerabile Italia" on Odeon Tv

The Country has been struck by a bad case of digital divide. Two different groupings have formed. One gets its information on the Net, while other gets its disinformation via the newspapers and the television.
In certain Countries the Internet is controlled, just as the other media are and, therefore, all of the country’s citizens get the same information. In other Countries, there is freedom of information and freedom on the Internet, so those Countries’ citizens get their information from both these sources. Only in ONE Country, namely Italy, the only such case worldwide, the newspapers and the television are controlled, but the Internet not, yet!
Millions of people are living in two different worlds, separated in their own homes. Within one single family, Grandpa may believe everything Vespa says, while his grandson may tell him to f-off. This is a very unhealthy situation. The more time goes on, the more this lack of communication between the two faces of Italy grows, accompanied by reciprocal intolerance. However, the Internet has two major weapons in its armoury. The youth who browse the Internet (the oldies will die long before they do), and the anorexia of advertising on the old fashioned media. Without the advertising income they will eventually close down. And that is precisely what will begin to happen. Advertising revenues for advertising space in the newspapers and the television channels are falling and are set to crash within a year. Some of the advertising will switch to the Internet, advertising space that is not controlled by a bunch of liars. They are well aware of this and they are getting extremely nervous.
Confalonieri quoted me to certain financial journalists, with regard to the Mediaset share offer. I assure him, it is not yet time to buy. I only buy shares once their value drops. We will talk again when the shares in Mediaset, a company that basically lives off advertising revenues, drop to below one Euro. In the meantime, let’s appeal to the browsers (as opposed to the navigators=sailors): Please help Confalonieri. Don’t post any Mediaset clips on Youtube. It’s illegal. Fidel says so. We are all for complying with the law and cancelling every Mediaset programme that has ever been illegally posted on the Web. Let’s not pollute the media, Buddy.
Three publishing houses control all the information in print: RCS (Corriere della Sera), controlled by ABI and Confindustria, Mondadori, the psychdwarf’s group and De Benedetti’s l'Espresso, Champion of Topo Gigio and Swiss asylum seeker.
The Shares – losses since the beginning of this year:
- RCS - 54,84
- Gruppo l'Espresso - 60,97
- Mondadori - 51,78
We’re heading down the right road guys. Where politics was unable to succeed, the economy will.

Le Croci di Malta-1
Clicca l'immagine

Raja Petra Karamudin is a blogger from Malaysia. Last week, his blog, the first such medium expressing a political opinion in that Country, was blacked out by the government. Malaysia Today was blocked by the state-controlled telecommunications company Telekom Malaysia.
Following the last elections, the Malaysian politicians suddenly realised that the Internet has the capacity to affect the outcome of an election and even to send them packing. Raj Petra is only the beginning. The aim of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi is to standardise the Internet, making it the same as all the other media.
Badawi has admitted to underestimating the effects of the Internet, which is the only real alternative to Malaysian State controlled information in that Country. In order to shut down Malaysia Today, the government has made use of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). After careful analysis, the Commission found that the comments posted were “insensitive and verging on incitement”. Essentially the comments were anti-government.
Raja Petra stated that: “The government has written to all 20 Internet service providers and I expect that we will be shut down within just a few days”.
For the time being, the Malaysia Today site can still be accessed at the following address: http://m2day.org/. Visit the site and spread its contents.
I place my Blog at Raja Petra’s disposal. If he so wishes, I am willing to post his articles both in English and in Malaysian, in a section dedicated to Malaysia.
Bloggers of the world unite!

The media war has been going on for years now. Subservient information against free information. Press and television against the Internet. The psychodwarf’s bullshit is at the top of the Net hit parade. Topo Gigio’s hogwash is less widespread, because it is somewhat embarrassing to repeat them. On YouTube it is possible to see Italy’s loudmouths, and it is great to pull the piss out of them. Relax. They are making as if nothing is happening, they put forward people like Vespa. The Network is the world’s evil: paedophilia, body organ trafficking, fraud, and anti-politics. A place that scares the hell out of Tar-head and the post-communists. Fully one-third of Italy currently has no access to ADSL. Without the Net, the economy cannot grow. Were Net access to increase, these overworked politicians would be finished.
On the Porta a Porta programme dedicated to the Perugia criminal case, psychologist and renowned sex therapist Dr. Graziottin stated that: "The Internet is the antechamber of prostitution amongst the youth". Vespa smiled condescendingly.
Bruno Vespa is a threat to the country, to free information and to the economy. Let’s De-Vespise Rai, starting with this particular insect.
Stop purchasing any products advertised on Porta a Porta.
I am now publishing an open letter to Bruno Vespa that was sent to me. Circulate it.


”Dear Dr. Vespa,
Internet reaches more than one billion subscribers worldwide, and around 24 million people in Italy specifically. Each day there are 120,000 new blogs, for a total of more than 100 million blogs worldwide. In 2007 alone, 44 million people participated actively in the greatest ever social, cultural and democratic phenomenon in recent history.
In many authoritarian countries, the bloggers defend freedom of expression and democracy and fight against repression and, to date, going to prison for their beliefs. In democratic countries the bloggers expand the free exchange of ideas, community communications and, finally, participation in the life of society.
…
EU Commissioner Viviane Reding has repeatedly pointed out that 50% of any growth in the European GDP is linked to the development of information and communication technology (ICT), with the Internet being its spinal cord. The lack of access to broadband services is perhaps the most significant indicator of how far we are lagging behind in the important TLC sector.
According to the most recent data released by the European TLC operators’ organisation ECTA, the Italian scenario regarding broadband access is as follows:
1. Broad band distribution: Italy (16.5) is falling further behind the EU average (19.8), and is falling increasingly further behind other comparable countries, such as France, UK and Germany. We are obviously way behind the Nordic countries. Of the main 15 European countries, we are even lagging behind Ireland, and closely followed by Portugal. In essence, the distribution of broadband in Italy is less than in other countries with similar industrial and social homogeneity.
2. Growth of broadband services between September 2006 and September 2007: The rate of growth in Italy was only 3%, very low indeed when compared to other comparable countries, where the established rate of growth has been between 5% and 10%.
…the gap between us and the rest of Europe is continuing to grow.
Proper communications via mass media means and ICT technologies could contribute significantly toward attracting people to telecommunications, the Internet and computer technology in general, with positive spin-offs for the entire system. We wish to point out that in today’s age the Internet constitutes the main system for communicating worldwide, together with fixed and mobile telephony, with the Internet being far more functional than the latter. Just like the telephone networks, the Internet is used for legal as well as illegal purposes. This difference is that Internet communications and operations are, in most cases, open to the public, thus making any everyday, deviant, illegal and even criminal operations clearly visible, which unfortunately means that, precisely because they are so clearly visible online, they are often thought to be specific only to the Internet.
Nobody, however, and quite rightly so, has ever thought of generally criminalizing the telephone networks, even though the criminal and illegal utilisation of the fixed and mobile telephony networks is a well known, ancient, widespread and serious phenomenon, as proved by the telephone taps divulged from time to time.” Signed, inter alia, by: Luca De Biase, Juan Carlos De Martin, Michele Ficara, Alfonso Fuggetta, Enrico Gasperini, Enrico Grazzini, Marco Montemagno, Layla Pavone.

I would like to live in a country in which I can leave the house in the morning, buy a newspaper and read what the government and Parliament have done for MY FAMILY. I am paying these gentlemen with my work, with my taxes, by consuming. I am waiting for some every day good news, of any sort, even though it’s tiny. To feel at peace, to live a day of normal serenity. I’m not really asking for a lot. To be able to breathe clean air, lift my eyes to the sky and smile. Instead of that, every morning I am informed, rarely by the newspapers and the TV, almost always by friends and through the Internet, of new obstacles, problems, suffering created by our employees. They have a magic wheel. Without a break, they take out of it laws, amendments, subdivisions of articles to remove our tranquility from us.
Where do they want to get to? To collective Hydrophobia? If this is what they aim to do, they are succeeding. For example with a little law that they voted for in the night between 21 and 22 December 2007 to wish Happy Christmas to the Italains.
6 February 2007 saw the presentation of a draft law called: “arrangements concerning Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori (SIAE) {Italian company of authors and publishers}” by 32 deputies (THIRTY TWO).
On 19 September 2007, Folena, Guadagno called Vladimir Luxuria, Sasso, Bono, Garagnani, Goisis, Ghizzoni, Barbieri inserted article subdivision 1 B
”It’s allowable to have the free publication on the Internet, of images and music of low resolution, or degraded, for didactic use or encyclopedia use and only if such use is not for making money. With a decree of the Minister of Culture, having listened to the Minister of Public Instruction and Universities and Research, with previous opinions from the competent Parliamentary Committees there are defined limits on the didactic use or the encyclopedia use mentioned in the previous subdivision”.
After the Levi-Prodi law, that is proceeeeeeeding like Itaaaaaly, up pops (unrequested) article subdivision 1B.
On the Internet it’ll only be possible to publish images and music after having been “degraded”, only for didactic use and not for making money. A scientist can only publish “degraded” images. A blog that however covers its own costs (so as to make money) with Google advertising will have to pay the SIAE contribution.
The degrading on the Internet has already happened, with the faces of parliamentarians and with the rubbish in Campania. Subdivision 1B has certified it.
Further information on www.guidoscorza.it

V2-day, 25 April, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
2. Put your videos on www.youtube.com with the tag V2-day
.

Click for the V2-video

The Manager of the Advertising and Media Company of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, agreed to give the this blog an interview. Italy is always the tail end Charlie, yet she wants to gag the Networkork and Gentiloni and give the gift of WiMax to the telephone service providers. The blog has, instead, gathered more than 100.000 signatures of people in favour of eliminating rather than maintaining the current situation of monopoly. I will soon be sending off these signatures for the attention of Viviane Reding. The national Authorities, starting with ours, must be abolished and replaced with a single European Authority.
Anyone wishing to write to Viviane Reding in order to complain about the situation, may do so by sending an e-mail to: Viviane.Reding@ec.europa.eu

Text:
The Italian situation is very clear: the European average is 18% of penetration rate, Italy stands at 17% so it is under the European average and 20% less than the best player. I think that rally Italy could do better, but there is something more worrying in this, that is the access and the coverage.
You see people living in cities: they have access to broadband. But as soon as you go out the city people do not have access anymore. This is what I call “white spots” on the map. We got too many white spots on the map and we have to change that because I believe that all people hate to have access to broadband in a society which wants to develop in a equilibrate way.
The fourth best in the world in penetration rate are Europeans, I’m speaking about Denmark, Nederland, Finland and Sweden. Well done. But then we have a tail which is horrible, very low penetration rate and this brings, of course, our average down to 18% whereas our best players at 20% more and our worst players are 30% different from the best players.
We see very well that in those countries where the penetration is high, you do have on the market competition. Competition brings about investments, innovation that brings about offers to the public first access for the citizens and also access at a price that is acceptable. So, it is all about competition investments and innovation which really drives down prices and brings up access. That is the reason why I have to make reforms which brings competition about because that’s the heart of development.
The more there is an offer the better it is. I believe that all technology should be used, they are complementary.
For instance, it is not very commercial to bring fibre to a mountain village but we have WiMax in a mountain village, it’s logical.
It should be presented also in competition between different firms and the best one should do it but DO IT is important, not how it is done. It should be done. I’m against monopolies of all kinds because monopolies do not bring competition. If there is no competition there is no access, this is very clear.
If there is a several providers than the citizen have choice and the informed citizens can choose the best offer.
That is also the reason why in my reform the obligation of the provider to really inform the citizens. The transparency rule is very important, you see.
I do no not believe there is a conflict. I just believe that one has to intensify competition. People don’t care who brings them broadband. The only question people care is that they get broadband and that they get it at normal price.
The brand is not important, who is doing it is not important. That it is done is important. And that is best done if there is competition on the market.
Free access when this means free of charge I do not agree. But when it means that you could access the information freely that is the big battle that I have, in the name of Europe, been fighting at the level of the Internet governance of United Nations where really we explain in very hard words that copying down information is not the way free Internet should function.We believe that creativity and individual freedoms should express themselves on the Net and that is why we believe in free Internet not only in Europe but worldwide. That is the reason why we really do insist, and we have done that in the Rio conference of Internet governance that Internet should be free in order information to be free without obstacles. Web 2.0 is our answer to those who try to block people from being informed.
I have the view of that blogs should be free, that the creativity, the expressivity of the people on the blogs should not be hampered.
Of course blogs cannot be criminal: let’s say that very clearly too but except from this – I think nobody want to help criminal blogs – for the rest blogs should be open, should spread, should give people freedom to express themselves, to say what they want to say, to criticize politicians if they want. I think we should also be capable to coop with criticism on the blogs. I love blog so I think they’re a very nice way of freedom of expression." Viviane Reding

Paolo Gentiloni has put out a tender for WiMax. Paolo is one who has no time to lose. He’s always playing tennis with his mate Ermete and in his leisure time he’s reading Liala. He’s got on with his career, from being Rutelli’s spokesperson at Rome Town Hall he has become the Minister of Communications. A Ministry that needs great commitment and competence. Paolo knows his own limits. The laws and the tenders he has written for him by the specialists in the field.
- to sort out the terms of the digital terrestrial, he telephoned Confalonieri who straight away gave him a couple of tips. Now Fede has nothing to fear: he won’t become digital until 2012. Rete4 is safe.
- so as to give new contributions to the press and to put a stop to blogs he has used a pseudonym. Given that Paolo is Rutelli’s pseudonym, it is thus a pseudo-pseudonym, the mythical Ricardo (with a single “c”) Levi. He hasn’t read the Levi-Prodi, dictated by Berlusconi and De Benedetti. He even confessed this to the 70,000 Italian bloggers and said that in future he will be more careful.
- for WiMax, the technology that transmits at 50 kilometres with hardware costs that are really low that should resolve the problem of the “last mile”, Paolo has had an extraordinary intuition: who better than those responsible for our digital divide can resolve the problem of the digital divide? After a quick consultation with Telecom, Vodafone, H3G and Wind he decided to get them to participate in the tendering process. “To increase competition in telecommunications” he explained. The frequencies for WiMax owned by the State will be handed over to those who are responsible for Italy’s lateness, according to European Union data and below the (enlarged to 27) European average. So as to facilitate the entrance of the big operators, Paolo has fixed the overall price at auction for all the licenses at 45 million Euro. A pittance for the State. Such a low price was justifiable to get new operators to come in, as has happened in France, not for the usual ones who are earning billions of Euro. After the publication of the tender, caught up with enthusiasm for having overtaken Gasparri, Paolo said: “In this way the Government confirms its commitments to reduce the digital divide still present in many Regions of Italy.”

Thanks to an action taken by the MGM company that doesn’t wanted UMTS operators (the current ones) to be admitted WiMax has come to a sudden halt. Let us try and give it the mortal blow with a petition to the European Community.

Sign the petition and distribute the “Anti Gentiloni Divide on the Internet” box like a virus.

Click on the picture

Boing Boing, the third blog in the world, has written about the Levi-Prodi law. The Government has created a world image of itself as incompetent. Levi, a Mister No-one, explained that there had been a consultation for months with all the protagonists of the sector to draw up the law, including the newsagents. Bloggers were excluded. The Internet operators were excluded. Who did Levi talk to? With Berlusconi, with De Benedetti? Certainly not with the Ministers of the Government.
He didn’t show the law to the head of the Ministry of Communications, the one that should have written it.
The Council of Ministers is a strange place. I would like to be able to film it. On 12 October on the presentation of the Levi-Prodi whoever was present was asleep and if they weren’t asleep, they were thinking of other things:
- ”I accept my part of the responsibility as I did not personally control the text word for word….it authorises extensive interpretations that could limit the activity of many websites and blogs. It would be much better to leave the current regulations….” Paolo Gentiloni, Minister of Communications
- “was not discussed in the meeting of the Council of Ministers on 12 October because it was presented as a normal routine measure.” Antonio Di Pietro, Minister of Infrastructure
- “I’ll say straight away that that day, after trying to improve the decree on welfare, I had to rush to the Quirinale to give prizes to young people committed to climate change and I couldn’t follow the regulation that is alarming the Internet people. Reading it again today, it seems really restrictive for those who manage a blog or a web page.” Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, Minister of the Environment.
To avoid further damage to our image, let Prodi publish the proposals that are going to the Council online beforehand, and read the comments before going ahead. That way the citizens would be informed, as would the Ministers.
Today the Culture Committee of the Lower House is examining the Levi-Prodi. I would like the discussion to be made public with the possibility to comment on it.
Levi has said: “For every law, the passage through Parliament is the occasion to improve the text and, when necessary, to clear up any ambiguous points.” It’s he that took dictation from Prodi to write the law. There are two options: he’s there or he’s doing it. It’s certain that he has tried. This time they’ve been caught red-handed. But how many times have they tried and been successful with no one knowing?

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I’ve received an email from the United States.

”Something strange happened this morning.
Loads of videos on YouTube showing interviews with politicians and Italian citizens expressing their opinions have been deleted, apparently at the request of the RAI. Please investigate. For your information, click on the blog www.onemoreblog.it. Greetings." Francesco C.

What do you say about that? Why have the interviews with politicians been removed from YouTube? Perhaps because of the comments? Perhaps because they are ashamed? Or perhaps because of copyright?
Copyright is a contradiction.
We have already paid for the programmes from the public networks with the licence fee. They are ours and they shouldn’t be deleted from the Internet.
A strong and clear message should be sent to the politicians. Are you listening?
RAI is a public service owned by the citizens. RAI must be reformed and removed from the control of the parties. Parties get out of RAI!
I’m publishing the summary of an appeal letter from the association Anti Digital Divide about the insults that every day the TV stations vomit onto the Internet and on us.

Anti Digital Divide www.antidigitaldivide.org has decided to start up a petition to react to the offensive and defamatory behaviour against the Internet and those that use it, made by the journalists Filippo Facci, Paolo Granzotto, and Giampiero Mughini with the complicity of the newspapers il Giornale, Libero and the TV programme Porta a Porta. The journalists state that the Internet does not exist, that it is the worse thing in the country, that Internet users are of an inferior culture, they are Nietzsche’s ugly and malformed ones, ignorant in spirit, socially envious etc.
These offensive remarks have come after the Internet has shown itself to be able to rise above and ride over the traditional print media and to organise national demonstrations, that have involved more than a million people without the newspapers and TV programmes even talking about it. When giving their opinions on V-Day, (an event that would not have been possible without the Internet) many journalists paid more attention to the vaffa {F..K off} and to the quips than to the hundreds of thousands of people involved and the topics tackled. They talked about a lack of style, of form, to then go on and use serious language and to be seriously offensive against the demonstrators and against the Internet. On the Internet, there are millions of people, who make their knowledge available FREE, they offer their experience, their help, they organise events, demonstrations, to protect human rights. Thus the offensive activity against those who surf the Net are to be considered more serious than a comedian’s jokes.

This offensive behaviour is an attack on our choices and our ethics. We are not stupid, we are not of an inferior culture, we are not wanting to perpetuate class-divisions like those who attack us. We are people who operate without honours or salaries gathered from politics or from power lobbies like those who mutter insignificant offences on TV and in the newspapers. We are simple users who are committed to making things improve and so that information, one day, will be truly free and available for everyone.
This is why we are calling all the people of the Internet to gather to show that unlike what some journalist say, that the Internet EXISTS and that it is able to defend itself and to react to the offensive behaviour and falsehoods of the scarcely enlightened ones while making use of the traditional means of communication. Yours Sincerely." Associazione Anti Digital Divide.

Sign the petition at http://prorete.antidigitaldivide.org

(estimates – thousands of Euro)

The scurrilous story of the italia.it portal, explained in detail on the site, scandaloitaliano, is just the tip of the iceberg. If you read the chart published by l'Espresso with hundreds of millions of euro spent on technology for the public administration, you will come to the conclusion that we are a people of saints, navigators and failed ICT personnel.
Who is getting this mass of money? And justified by what results?
The Internet applications can be seen and are disgusting.
A Russian citizen who has tackled the joyous war machine of the Public Administration sent me a letter that seems to me to have been written by Franz Kafka.

“Dear sig. Grillo,

I would like to tell you about the sad experience that I have had while trying to renew my “permission to stay” with the new system that started up about 9 months ago. My name is Ilia T. and I am a Russian citizen that has been living and working in Padua for 7 years as an ICT engineer.

This year I’ve had to replace my “permission to stay” that was due to run out March 2007 and I had to use the new document renewal system for citizens coming from outside the European Union. It was well publicised by the government at the end of 2006. Half way through January 2007 I presented the pack of documents that I filled in at a post office and I paid the service charge of a good 72 euro (almost 5 times as much as the old system that cost me 14.62) . In exchange for my documents and my money I received a piece of paper with the code of my file and the PIN to used to access a Web portal developed by the Italian Post: www.portaleimmigrazione.it.

I accessed that site for the first time after a couple of weeks and I had the unpleasant surprise to find that, according to the Post Office, I made a mistake in filling out the form. To clear things up I made various attempts to call the telephone number indicated on the website, however I never had success until half way through April 2007 when all of a sudden when I called the number I managed to speak to a female operator in the call centre. The lady explained to me that the Post Office had a technical mishap, that my form had no mistakes and that in 2 weeks I would have found on the website the date when I would be called to the Questura.

Half way through May without having received any date for coming to the Questura I tried calling once more and I heard that my documents were blocked in a State archive in Naples and I was advised to go to the Questura to speed up the process.

At the Padua Questura they told me that they didn’t have any information about me and they advised me to phone the call centre of the Italian Post Office once more.

While talking to people there in the Questura I gathered that I’m not the only one to be in this situation and that there’s an infinite number of people obliged to wait more than 6 months to get their documents.

To sum up, I’ve written this letter in the evening of 2 June 2007, almost 6 months after sending the documents to the Interior Ministry. To get these documents I’ve paid a sum that is a good five times what I paid 2 years ago and as well I’ve had to fork out 17 euro for 210 telephone calls to the switchboard of the Italian Post Office. Nearly all of these telephone calls were answered by a voice mail that is not free.

Up until now, I have had no date to come to the Questura and I can’t even say precisely where my documents are located: in the post office, in Naples or in the Questura at Padua."

Ilia T.

V-day
1 Participate in V-day
2 Download the flyer
3 Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag: Vaffa-day

photo by XanaduAsia

Telecom shares are worth a bit more than 2 euro. The Piave line, the K2 of the analysts, is about to be breached. After that there’s the unknown. It’s nothing new. When Tronchetti demanded and got 2.9 euro per share, it was known to be an “ad personam” value. To get rid of him with a golden handshake.
The industrial forecast for the share was between 1.5 and 1.7 euro. A valuation with the game frozen, in the absence of interventions, if nothing were to happen. The directors Buora, Ruggiero and Pistorio who for years have added their signatures to the destruction of the value of Telecom, are still there.
With mega salaries and stock options. Tronchetti left and left his own men in charge. Was it worth it?
Telecom reminds me of the Alitalia of a few years ago. With the Milano-Roma route at selective pricing, at the cost of a flight to New York or Tokyo.
I’m publishing one of the loads of letters about the umpteenth “pizzo”.

“Greetings Beppe,
I’m writing to you about something that has happened to me and many others that has made me want to swear. I am attaching a copy of the email from the company that supplies me with the ADSL service.
They tell me that, thanks to the stupendous Italian laws regarding competition and the protection of the consumer, from next month I will be obliged to pay an extra 12 euro a month for the ADSL.
Really Telecom “no longer a monopoly” is in a certain way asking for a “pizzo”
and those like me who have done everything to avoid paying the Telecom line rental, and now is obliged to pay an extra 12 euro a month just because the ADSL is not based on a line from which Telecom can get the line rental directly.
I find all this a disgrace and the bad thing is that they don’t give us the chance to choose. I am really ashamed of living in this country each day that passes and these things don’t help. Just have a look at this. I know that it is utopian to think that something can be done and as usual we have to keep our heads down and find the money.”
F.D.B.

PS To get your head up, take part in V-day and print out the flyer!

Shortly the State will assign WiMax frequencies. It’s the point of no return for free access to knowledge. After that it’s not possible to turn back.
WiMax is a technology that makes it possible to transmit signals without wires over distances of tens of kilometres. It eliminates the last mile and the Telecom Italia charges. The local communities can become independent and connect to the Internet.
If WiMax ends up in the hands of the vultures in the telephone companies, as I said in my speech at Rozzano at Buora and at Ruggiero, it will be transformed into high cost shit. Even worse than for ADSL.
Every citizen should have at birth the right to access knowledge. There’s an online petition that I invite you to sign up to for your future, for the right to know and at least for once to not be taken for a ride.
The petition asks that at least a third of the frequencies are reserved for citizens for non-profit associations like town halls and local bodies and with no direct or indirect taxation.
Sign the petition at: http://www.petitiononline.com/wmaxfree/

Sturmtruppen by Bonvi

Peppermint Jam Records Gmbh. Remember this name. A fine of 330 Euro could be arriving at your home from its lawyer, Otto Mahlknecht di Bolzano, called Otto Vasken. Otto is a natural phenomenon. He has already sent out 3,636 letters to Italian citizens who have used their PCs to share Peppermint music apparently without any intention to make money. 3,636 multiplied by 330 euro makes 1,199,880 euro, a great package.
Who wants others to be able to hear a song on their PC can use P2P software like BitTorrent and eMule. The piece can then be listened to by anyone who connects up. If I’ve bought the track, it’s on my PC and I want to make it available to whoever visits me, why can’t I do that?
Does it damage the publishing company? But the artistes are already destroying them. They already sell on the Internet on their own without intermediaries at low prices. Sometimes they give stuff away.
To scrape out the Italians, Peppermint has made use of Logistep. This company has “done a test download of the tracks and has checked the hash value of the file”, words of its director Schneider. I don’t know whether these downloads and hash are violations of privacy. I’m putting the question to the Authority.
Anyone who wants to, can ask Peppermint directly (email).
The IP address of the 3,636 users was provided by their ISP, their Providers. From these addresses, they have then found out the identity details.
Obliged by an order from the Rome Tribunal that cancelled a previous decision that went the other way. Many lawyers and Adiconsum do not agree.
Peppermint needs protecting. The best way to do this is to never buy nor share its tracks. If you have one on your PC, delete it. Then send an email to confirm this to Otto Vasken.

PS I have asked my lawyers to see if it is possible to produce a standard form to be published on the Blog to reject Otto Vasken’s request. I’ll keep you informed.

photo: FeatheredTar

Ignorance can lead to a state of bliss. This is well appreciated by the Minister of Instruction. Fioroni, in collaboration with Ms Bindi, has presented guide lines to protect student health.
A document aimed at doctors and teachers “to prevent obesity and eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia) and to prevent phenomena of dependency (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, doping and Internet)”.
It’s the beginning or a new era: the era of Internet prohibition. Sooner or later it had to happen. The pornoFioroni has understood at his own expense that the Internet is full of traps, erogenous sites and politicians whose sins are revealed.
He wants to make sure that the young people don’t come into contact with the truth. He wants to protect them.
The daily consumption of doped information from the newspapers and the TV makes them live better and makes them believe the stupid stories put out by the regime.
Fioroni leave it be, the future is not stuff for you. Take refuge in the post democratic party. That’s the one that looks at the past.
But is the Internet really in the schools? Or is Fioroni’s call a false alarm? I ask students and teachers to use this post to describe the true situation in which they find themselves.
How many PC are there? Are there any? Are they accessible? What type are they? Is there a connection? What speed?
Give me your comments. I’ll collect them together into a document to be distributed via the blog. The priority for schools is knowledge and its name is Internet.
Those who don’t have it are cut off. Lost in a particratic nirvana. The one created specially for us by our employees.

Telecom Italia shareholders' meeting 16 April 2007.
Beppe Grillo's speech.

A simple analysis of this year's balance sheets shows that the privatisation of Telecom Italia has stripped the company of thousands of millions of receipts, of tens of thousands of jobs and has transferred into Chinese boxes a large chunk of the profits by means of dividends.
It's easy to do this analysis, you just need a book-keeper. You don't need Consob or the Government or an audit company. Presumed managers with patched up trousers got the company into debt with the help of the banks and the total absence of the Consob and the State so that they could act exclusively in their own interests.
The network is in a shocking condition. At least ten thousand million Euro are needed for initial investments.
Today however, I don't want to talk about numbers, but of something else: about industrial espionage, about the Consob, about the Chinese boxes and the Stock Exchange, the Chicago of the 1920s of Guido Rossi.
Guess who is Al Capone?

Tens of thousands of people have been spied upon. Among these are economic journalists like Massimo Mucchetti because of his analysis of Telecom management, members of the Telecom Board of Directors, company administrators, like Colao of RCS before he was sacked, simple citizens because they sent letters protesting about the malfunctioning of the network sent to Tronchetti and also to a comic, the one talking to you, with a "B.Grillo" dossier.
Milan's Re-examination Tribunal last February wrote: "The Security of Telecom-Pirelli has had at its disposal a resource that easily allowed it to get privileged news in the interests of the group, understood as both a legal entity as well as the group of directors" and it revealed that: "the vastness of the unmerited intrusion into the secrets of the lives of others has been displayed in a really alarming system of acquiring private information to be used against important persons in enterprise, in journalism, in Italian politics, before meetings that top management had programmed with these people."

The people formerly responsible for Telecom security: Tavaroli, Ghioni and other are already in prison. One of their colleagues, Adamo Bove apparently committed suicide and his father, Vincenzo Bove, claims the death was due to the calumny carefully crafted in Telecom.
The top management of Telecom is here. They are Carlo Orazio Buora, Marco Tronchetti Provera, Riccardo Ruggiero. I ask them: "to whom was the Security service accountable? To the doorkeeper at Pirelli? Where were you?"
Let's suppose that the top management knew nothing. Everything is possible. However, after proof of this level of managerial incompetence, the top management should have been kicked out, or they should have resigned, as was customary in the past, and they should not let themselves ever be seen again.
But they are still here. Why are they still here? Perhaps there are some dossiers all over the world about our politicians?

Or perhaps because the genii in the bottle Tronchetti was both the president, and the controlling shareholder of the same company and couldn't sack himself? A person who controls the biggest company in the country with 0.11 per cent of the shares.
So I thought that with 0.12 per cent I could get control of Telecom, sack the Board of Directors and then give back the company to the legitimate shareholders, holding 82% of the shares. I launched a request to see how much interest there is to delegate to me on behalf of the small shareholders.
Consob acted straight away by sending me a series of letters to explain the process to be followed and warning me not to make a mistake.
I have received thousands of letters of support, but the process is so bureaucratic and complex that I haven't managed to represent them in this meeting.
However, I want to reassure the Consob that I will succeed next time whether or not they like it. What is Consob? Where has Consob been in the last few years?
Parmalat, Cirio, Banca Popolare di Lodi and the obvious conflict of interests between companies with the same people on the Board of Directors that buy and sell from themselves as has happened between Telecom Italia and Pirelli Real Estate with the sale of property.

Does Lamberto Cardia, Consob's president really exist? Where are you apart from in the letters that you send to me and to Antonio Di Pietro? Many small shareholders would like to meet you personally to ask you a few questions.
The Italian Stock Exchange is a place where you can invest everything that you can loose. Not a euro more. These days the market is the buzz word. But in Italy, what is the market?
A club of people who live in the Boards of Directors and who decide everything, some of whom are members of 5 or 6 or 7 Boards of Directors. People who have control of big companies with percentages like telephone pre-fixes. Once more I ask Consob why Olimpia exists. It's an empty box of which 80% is owned by Pirelli. Olimpia controls Telecom Italia.

Should it not be encompassed with all its debts back into Pirelli? Dear President Cardia can you explain to me, a simple book-keeper who is a comic, why this has not happened?
Where is the famous public company that the politicians were so full of? The small shareholders do not have a real capacity for representation.
What does the government intend to do about that? And the associations for the defence of the consumer, where are they? Under the oval table?
As Telecom is a service company, let those who have capital and ideas manage it. No Italian entrepreneur has both these qualities.
But the network infrastructure belongs to the State, the fruit of generations of Italians who have paid through taxes and line rental.
Tronchetti wants to get America Movil and AT&T to pay him for the controlling position and in the handover to get 3 Euro for the Olimpia shares when the value of the shares is only 2.3 euro. He gets the cash. The small shareholders can stand and watch.
The State should put down some firm guidelines before this happens and don't talk to me of the sacredness of the market. What market? The fish market is much more respectable than the Stock Exchange with the current regulations.

The network should be separated from the services and made available to everyone. Whoever buys 66% of Olimpia will have 12% of the shares and must have only 12% of the power. Not a fraction more. The Chinese boxes should be abolished or the tax regime should make them no longer fruitful.
I would like to close this speech with an appeal to the dignity of the top management in Telecom: resign. That's the best service that you can do for the company and for the country.

In Italy the digital divide is implacably getting bigger in relation to Europe. It’s increasing just like the stock options of the Telecom Italia managers. In the United States more than 50% of families have Broadband. Broadband, not ADSL: BROADBAND!!!
In Italy there are even areas where mobile phones can’t work.
The President of AIIP {Italian Internet providers} has sent me this letter. Tomorrow the AGCom and the Government have the possibility to change things. Let’s send them a supporting email: Agcom, Gentiloni, Sircana.

“Dear Beppe,
as president of the most representative of the Italian Internet Providers, I feel it is necessary and my duty to write you a letter to make known to your affectionate readers the reasons for which Broadband in Italy cannot take off, reasons that we have tackled with many initiatives with other interested associations in the sector, from users to the tiniest operators.
The ills of the Internet are known to us all: the territorial coverage is limited, even absent in numerous areas, while prices are still among the highest in Europe. As though that were not enough, our ATM network is so old and saturated that the point has come when not even Telecom can find a reason for us to invest in it. You see, dear Beppe, there’s much talk of VoIP and of IPTV but many people don’t realize that here at times even the basic conditions for Internet access are missing.
Often user associations and business associations have opposing interests. In this case however their interests are in alignment and joint initiatives between operator associations and user associations are really numerous. They are trying to move the situation forward and avoiding the continuation of what Floris has described in his book ‘http://www.lafeltrinelli.it/istituzionale/articolo/articolo.aspx?i=15611Monopoli’: that the monopoly that went out of the door for telephones is coming back in by the window for Broadband.
To think that there are countries from Korea to Japan that have made Broadband a national priority. And without going too far away, even our neighbour Denmark manages to get the record for having the greatest number of Broadband lines per inhabitant. It’s a winning example that represents an example to be followed and to be put forward again immediately even here in Italy. How? It’s very simple.
In the next few days the Communications Authority (AGCom) and the Government are about to evaluate the opportunity to take urgent measures to use the same price system as in Denmark for the wholesale supply to us operators, better known as ‘Bitstream’. This represents a golden opportunity to make Internet work in Italy.
The Bitstream system is important. In Europe most of the Broadband lines offered by the alternative operators use this method and it has the advantage of not duplicating the network where it already exists, thus freeing up resources to take the Internet where it is not available.
This is why deciding today about selling prices that Telecom will apply to operators for Bitstream supply is a fact that is not simple, that has necessitated dozens of meetings and kilometres of paper, of letters, of rearrangements and continual postponements. Just think that Telecom was committed to put this into action by the end of December 2005.
We have been studying all the European documentation and finally we have come up with a solution: it’s called Denmark. In depth technical studies confirm that the Danish model is the best interconnection model, because it has encouraged the growth of the market and the opening up to competition.
The facts tell us we are right. To create in Italy a technological environment like the one in Denmark, we need to start with the wholesale Bitstream prices.
This is the only way we can hope to lower the prices for the public and to open up the market to the benefits of competition, so that resources can be freed up to invest in the areas that are not yet covered. Beppe, it really needs very little, but it no longer depends on us. It’s AGCom that has to do it. We want Danish pricing now.”
Marco Fiorentino – AIIP President

Italy needs money. And I always want to help Italy. The initiative “Oro alla Patria” {Gold to the Mother country} continues.
The software packages of the Public Administration will no longer cost anything. Already they cost nothing. It’s enough to switch to Open Source software. Free software that doesn’t cost a Euro. In the ministries, the regions, the schools, the public hospitals, the tribunals etc. etc.
How much does the State spend to buy and to update its Microsoft packages? From tomorrow that could cost zeroeuro. Europe has started to move, look at Norway.
Chavez has already started and by 2007 half of the Venezuelan public sector will be Open Source. Open Source can be adopted straight away. Why wait? Let those public administrations that have done that, perhaps there are some, contact me via email. We will cite all of them on this blog after an inspection by trusted technicians of the Meetups.
Let all the others start to take action because they are throwing away our taxes. I invite a Minister, anyone who likes to, to give an example and make contact by writing to this blog when and how they switched to Open Source and how much it has saved for the citizens.
You know I’m going all out to study computing to find savings. And our employees have got stuck at the abacus. This is the real problem. Their strength of ignorance united with our indifference. RESET Microsoft. Switch to Open Source.

The person succeeding Ghino di Tacco cried out: “Bandits”. It doesn’t matter that he nearly burst out laughing while he was saying this. This man is right. The Gentiloni reform is an act of banditry, a mess worthy of Calderoli. But because of an excess of prudence and a lack of care and attention to detail.
In a couple of years there’ll be 2 channels on digital terrestrial. Digital terrestrial is already dead. In a couple of years it will be a crypt for housing Fede and RAI 2. And this is a good thing.
But the other 5 channels will remain alive subject to the economic interests of the Telecom group, of the Fininvest group and the shabby politicians who can’t tell the difference between Darfur and Toblerone between Mandela and a lollipop (What cultural programmes? For this lot we need re-education camps for Mao’s Red Guard).
Thus nothing changes. The News will be like it is now. A tool for mass disinformation.

Commercial channels must become public companies without owners to be referred to, alternatively close them down by decree tomorrow. And if someone shouts out: “Gaglioffi”, “dirty Communists” or even “fiddledifo”, never mind. We won’t get cross.
There must be a single channel for RAI. It must have no connections with the government or the parties. Let’s be honest. Apart from Gabanelli and a few others, we just get shit in our faces from the TV. Absolutely all the advertising, all of it , needs to go to the commercial stations, without limits. That’s the best way for them to commit suicide.
Anyway TV is in its death throes. In a bit it will be buried. Let Gentiloni call up Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC. Let him explain his ‘Creative Future’ to bring the BBC to the Internet. Let him cast an eye on Google Video and on Youtube that is today the biggest Internet broadcaster in the world.
Let him bring Broadband to every home. Let him abolish the license fee. Let him cur Broadband costs in half. Let him take them to the levels of France and Germany where there is true competition. Let him denounce the Authority, change it, destroy it and if he wants, why not sell it to the Telecom that he’s always had such good relations with.

I hear mad people talking about TV, about media companies, about digital terrestrial as though they were on the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek.
When the future is in fact in the mass production of content, in fast connections and widespread coverage, in free access to knowledge, and in WiMax. RAI and Mediaset will end up like Alitalia. The Internet is ‘low cost’ and for the moment it’s without owners.

Is Italian cinema in crisis? Never fear. The Margherita party is ready to help with its cultural knight Andrea Colasio.

Colasio, the Margherita’s culture head has presented a proposed law about “Discipline of cinema and audiovisual activities, starting with these words: “Honourable Colleagues! – The idea that Italian cinema is going through a structural crisis, in which, with different intensity phases of obscurity alternate with phases of “eruption” appears to be a view that is shared by operators and observers. It is this long-term co-existence with the “crisis”, the almost normalness that has been generated over time with the phenomenon, with the relative evocation of the golden age of the “Great Italian cinema” that all the same risks to be a screen against the analysis that even though it has no pity about the state of health of this our cultural industry, allows us to formulate proposals around public policies for the sector.”

The solution to resolve the fate of Italian cinema appears in article 32 of the proposal (financial resources). The article sets down that through a new Agency the blood of the Internet is to be sucked up to give to cinema that is already in ‘rigor mortis’:
”a percentage equal to 3.5% of gross annual turnover of Internet operators resulting from IPTV traffic, streaming TV and generally from traffic relating to moving images.”

If the Margherita wants assistance to be given to cinema, let it finance it with its own money. It’s crazy that they want to make Internet users pay for the salaries of failed film producers. Let the government think about bringing Internet tariffs into line with European tariffs and not increase taxes on them.
I leave you with another (don’t worry it is really short) piece of Colasio’s prose:
“At this point it’s possible to choose between ‘surviving’, alternating cycles of discomfort with transitory euphoria, or to opt for a drastic intervention that can bring new life blood to the entire sector….”
You choose, you opt, you discomfort yourselves and then write him an email.

Junk dealer: A person that buys and sells used goods

Devoto-Oli. . ‘Pirelli and Telecom shares shooting up. The Stock Exchange is betting on a new rearrangement’ (Repubblica 9/9/2006)
‘Tronchetti sends out the signal of a turnaround now even Tim can be sold’ (Repubblica 9/9/2006)
‘Behind the negotiations between Telecom and Murdoch, an industry strategy that is common to the major European Groups’ (Repubblica 9/9/2006)
‘The fever about the rearrangement is giving wings to Pirelli’ (Corriere della Sera 9/9/2006)

The turnaround, the betting, the rearrangement, the wings, the industry strategy, the fever. Enchanted words. Let’s have a go at translating them.

Telecom has debts of 41,300,000,000 euro. Hopa, Unicredit and Banca Intesa have come out of Olimpia. Tronchetti and motorway payment collectors Benetton are the only ones left. Tronchetti needs cash. Now that he has sold “to rearrange” Telespazio, Seat PG, Finsiel, Pirelli Cavi etc, etc. After the plummeting of the share value of Pirelli and of Telecom in the last 5 years. After having got people working in outside companies to give the “turnaround signal” to part of Telecom. After merging Tim and Telecom as an ‘industry strategy’ and getting Telecom into debt so as to get available cash from Tim. After having distributed profits to the shareholders instead of using them to reduce the debts or to make investments. After having uselessly tried to get Pirelli Tyre quoted on the Stock Exchange. Basically, after having tried everything, according to whispers, he could sell Tim, the landline telephone network, the last mile. Everything.
This man is extenuating. Through a series of Chinese Boxes.

MGMP>Mtp&cSapa>Gpi>Camfin>Pirelli&c>Olimpia controls Telecom, with a percentage like a telephone prefix. He has no money but he wants money. Telecom shares on Olimpia's books are double the value seen in the Stock Market quotation.

It doesn’t get devalued. No one knows why not. Telephony and the backbone are essential for the development of the country. The government can’t just stand and watch. What’s Prodi looking at? He closes his eyes and smiles beautifully. I invite Prodi (you too invite him with an email) to give a signal with a letter to this blog.

Ps: Very soon the ‘share action’ initiative for the Genoa-Style Takeover will be here on the blog.

Our world is dominated by the ethics of movement. The one who doesn’t move is lost. The one who stays still is an ignoble lazy person, a subversive, an enemy of the GDP. There’s much talk of the infrastructures of steel and cement, of rails, motorways, bridges, tunnels. Structures that carry empty trucks and cars with a single person.

The car is an accessory for petrol. It serves to consume petrol and to sell petrol. A box of steel plates full of gadgets with the average speed of a mule.
Infrastructures of the mind, that have no cost, that free up time, that give us the choice whether or not to move or stay where we are. No one bothers about these infrastructures.

Fast connectivity for all Italian families and online services for paying ICI, getting a driving license, an identity card, a document declaring the status of the family. To be able to sign up your child with the health system and to choose a paediatrician, the family doctor, to book an appointment, to attend a university lecture. All this is not a priority.

To give incentives to promote tele-working, to avoid congestion in the cities is not a priority. A different way of organising companies using the Internet is not a priority. The reduction of ADSL costs is not a priority. Nor is it a priority to have 100% coverage of ADSL over the whole territory of Italy. (Gentiloni, to do this it would be enough to liberalise the “last mile”.)

The Internet frees up the movement of intelligence, of ideas. The Internet does not cause traffic accidents and it saves time, masses of time. I want a world dominated by the ethics of time, against the waste of queues, of offices, of elevators.

Man is a made of time. He is a product with a sell-by date. Let’s free up the time we use to move around for the sake of it. It’s only useful to the petrol people, the Ministry of Finance and those who make cars and roads. Less moving around, more time for ourselves, even to do nothing, but without excess as “doing nothing is the hardest work of all.”

Comic strip by: Ciccio De Luca


Raise the alarm. Stop.
A private company has been spying on Italians for years. Stop.
It can keep anyone it wants in check. Stop.
It’s a scandal that is worth ten Tangentopolis. Stop.
No minister (in check? Or check mate?) is talking about it. Stop.
The system is called Radar. Stop.
3,332,000,000 items of information reserved. Stop.
Five supercomputers connected to a central one of 10,000,000,000,000 bytes. Stop.
Information about citizens relating to timetables, numbers, position, personal data. Stop.
The Milan prosecutors are starting an inquiry into suspected association to commit a crime aimed at revealing reserved information. Stop.
Giuliano Tavaroli “group senior vice president” director of security in Telecom Italia resigns. Stop.
The unhappy Tronchetti didn’t not know nothing. Stop.
Tronchetti has initiated an internal enquiry. Stop.
The enquiry is conducted by Armando Focaroli. Stop.
The committee for internal control made up of Guido Ferrarini, Domenico De Sole, Marco Onado, Francesco Denozza is kept informed of developments. Stop.
An internal hole in the information system has been discovered. Stop.
Telecom will present a denunciation to the Milan prosecutors about illegal intercepts. Stop.
It’s like Totò Riina discovering mafia personnel inside his organisation and setting up an enquiry. Stop.
I’m fed up of being had. Stop.
It’s Tronchetti that should be investigated. Stop.
Why does no one do that? Stop.
Why is it only L’Espresso group that is talking about it and none of the other newspapers or TV channels? Stop.
Is the response in Radar? Stop.
Share value of Telecom 2.153 Euro. Stop.
Loss since beginning of year –13%. Stop.

Murdoch has decided to take a young man to the civil courts. He had tried in the criminal courts but his request was turned down by the judge. He had got his PC impounded but the judge had it returned to him.

The action was initiated by Sky, and as explained by a post, the site of the young man contained links to Chinese sites that allowed us to view live games of our championship. This is Luca’s short letter:

"Hi Beppe it’s Luca,
I wanted to tell you that Sky has even tried to take me to the Supreme Court.
The hearing is fixed for 4 July. I need to get in touch with the lawyer to get advice.
Let me know.
Hugs.”

Luca De Maio (calciolibero).


With the funds remaining from the publicity in the Herald Tribune, almost 8,000 Euro, I’ve decided to help Luca to get legal advice against Sky. I believe you will be in agreement.

I’ve decided to create an association for liberty on the Internet to help those people who are victims of prevarications and legal actions. You’ll get all the details before the end of the month.

Sky has made the world championship disappear from our TV screens. They attack a young person and take him to the Supreme Court. If you know anyone who subscribes to Sky, tell them to stop.

The Anti Digital Divide Association has sent me this letter.
I’m publishing it and I’m asking the employee Minister of Communications, Paolo Gentiloni to write to this blog to give his evaluation of the dismemberment of the Telecom Italia network. A dismemberment that’s necessary to introduce into Italy a market that is out of the control of the existing monopoly of the unhappy Tronchetti.
Gentiloni has a blog and he has inserted in his Blogroll a link to this site. I thank him for that and for the response that he will surely give.

“The illicit data intercepts operated by Telecom Italia to the detriment of alternative operators and thousands of users, confirm that the Telecommunication market in which there is not the presence of effective competitors nor effective rules to defend users and alternative operators from possible abuses.

What is clear is that we are faced with serious questions, both for the aspect of the violation of the regulations about competition, as well as the issue of intercepts. It thus seems evident that policies that have so far been put into practice, to guarantee a Telecommunication market the principles of correctness and transparency have been flawed or at least not sufficiently appropriate.

The decision by a single accounting division in Telecom Italia, to guarantee the respect of competitors, has been shown to be completely inadequate. The procedures for sanctions have also not been effective to stop the incorrect conduct of the incumbent. Incorrect competition tactics have been used constantly by Telecom Italia for years and so it is possible to explain them. One of the incorrect tactics is the exclusion of competitors from a new market. The most recent example, happening a few days ago, with the violation of the judgement 34/06 and the attempt to prevent access to Telecom’s new IP(ADSL 2+) network by its competitors.

It is thus clear that serious measures must be taken so that the market can finally be liberalised and so that real competition can be guaranteed. A necessary condition for this to happen is the dismemberment of the Telecom Italia network. This has been called for in the past by Mario Monti the former president of the European Antitrust body, by Giuseppe Tesauro the former president of the Italian Antitrust body, by illustrious economists, by the Corte dei Conti and in 2001 by Gasparri, but “strangely” this has never happened. Thus Telecom Italia must be divided into 2 distinct companies following the English model, one that is concerned with the network and the wholesale market, with tariffs that are the same for all operators. The other selling retail services, services that it would buy at the same conditions as its competitors from the first company.

Another fundamental action to be taken is to make the “last mile” and telephone switchboards to be state property. One talks only of twisted pairs and telephone exchanges, thus the transport network would remain the property of Telecom, just as all the apparatus in the exchanges and the new networks constructed by the incumbent. All the current clients would still be Telecom’s. However what would pass to the State would be the exchanges, the twisted pairs and the obligation to provide a universal service.

All the operators, under the same conditions, would pay the wholesale prices for the fixed line costs to the State and the price should be fixed using calculations based on the cost plus method, that is based on effective costs of supplying the access service. In this way, the operators who have invested in the construction of proprietary access networks would have an advantage and there would be an incentive for all the operators to invest in their own infrastructure. This would bring ample benefits to the users, who would have a greater possibility of choice, with lower costs and a higher quality of service. Naturally Telecom would continue to have to be notified as the dominant operator at least while its market share is above 50%.

For some time now, ADD has been fighting for the dismemberment of the network, following the recent happenings which involve Telecom Italia that show up the inadequacy of the actions that up until now have been taken, by the guaranteeing Authorities. We believe that this decision can no longer be put off. Challenges, fines, accounting divisions of Telecom Italia have not been effective in getting respect for the regulations for competition. This is why Anti Digital Divide has written to AGCOM but there’s been no response. Thus the AIIP, the providers’ association has presented a case to TAR {Tribunali Amministrativi Regionali= Regional Administrative Tribunal} asking for the respect of the 34/06 judgement.

In the next few days, we will write to the guaranteeing Authorities and to the new Minister of Communications, Paolo Gentiloni, to ask that these provisions be put into effect. The complete ADD document can be viewed at this address.

Anti Digital Divide Association

Tronchetti has written to 85,000 employees. His letter begins like this:
”Dear colleagues, for some time now an editorial group has been demonstrating a persistent attack against our company, accusing it of presumed illegal activity, namely intercepts, creation of “dossiers” and keeping documents on clients.”
The editorial group for those who don’t know is “L’espresso” and for those who don’t know, a Milan judge has signed an order saying that Telecom illegally uses data about its former clients. But this is a long story that I’ll come back to.
For now Tronchetti, should get pen and paper and write, not just to his “colleagues” but also to his “clients” (a diminishing number of them) to give responses to letters like this.
“I’m writing to point out the umpteenth example of how in Italy the concept of competition and liberalisation of services is merely utopian.
I live in a small town in the Province of Ravenna and since I habitually use the Web, I’ve requested Broadband. But my town (like so many others) is not covered by the service. Following numerous requests from citizens and private companies, the local authorities have taken action. They have collected signatures to present to Telecom. Telecom “took note” of the signatures but refused to provide Broadband without offering any explanation.

Then, mainly thanks to 2 companies in the town that operate at an international level, it has been possible to get a meeting with a Telecom representative. At that meeting, the administrators of the 2 companies expressed their willingness to accept the entire cost of constructing the required signal repeating installation that was indicated as the unit needed to supply Broadband.

When presented with this offer, the Telecom representative revealed the incredible background to the situation. As many people know, the Broadband signal, travels together with the analogue signal using the same cables, but at different frequencies. Thus on a single cable, 2 bands of signals are available. One is used by normal telephone traffic and the other is reserved for Broadband connections.

What only few people know is that each “band” on each cable covers up to 700 telephone numbers. What the Telecom representative said was that in my town, once the limit of 700 telephone numbers had been reached, Telecom took action to save money. Instead of installing a second cable, they preferred to code the extra numbers at a higher frequency, so that they could travel along the same cable.

Thus in simple words, there’s no Broadband (and there cannot be Broadband) for the simple fact that Telecom has used both the “bands” for normal telephone traffic. Obviously, this means that the other companies, (Tiscali, Infostrada, etc), cannot in turn offer the service, for the simple reason that Telecom cannot rent out the “band” that should be available for Broadband. The same situation also exists in many other towns in the Province.

To conclude, I find it ridiculous (and also offensive) that in 2006, when in most of Italy, the use of fibre optics is becoming more widespread, whole towns are forced to travel at 56K (or no higher than 128K with ISDN) because of a shameful “technical choice” (that’s how it was referred to by the aforementioned Telecom representative). This choice was made by our blessed formerly national telephone company that occupies (I suppose unfortunately that this is legal) both the “bands” of the telephone cables. This prevents any rival companies from offering their services, in the face of any law on the freedom of competition, but above all going against the needs of the citizens and of the companies.” R.C.

PS I’m asking the 2 companies that helped the local authorities in the town in the Province of Ravenna to get in touch with me so that they can offer, through this blog, the free construction of the signal repeating installations to all the other small towns in Italy.

We are living in a reality that is ever more innovative. A reality that makes innovation available for all. Which company can today allow itself not to be innovative? There’s always more need for innovative ideas. Innovation simplifies life for us. It helps us. In a certain way it ennobles us just as work did once. In the motorway we use the Telepass, and pay for petrol with the credit card. We put money on the mobile at any cash machine and we pay utility bills online and many many other things. Technology is great because it frees us.

Technology is great because it increases profits for those companies that invent new services. We pay for the Telepass on top of the tolls for the motorways. We pay for using the credit card on top of the price of petrol. We pay for the opportunity to put money on the mobile on top of the money added. We pay extra for being able to pay the utility bill online on top of the amount billed. Effectively we are paying for nothing. The companies make us pay the payment transactions, enchantments of the ether, legalised theft.

In fact, …
Innovation reduces the costs to the companies. The Telepass eliminates the cost of the person collecting the motorway toll money. The credit card avoids having to pay the money into the bank, paying the utility bill avoids the costs of the clerk taking the money and adding money to the mobile brings in money to the telephone company in advance before the calls are made.
Innovation thus makes us happier and poorer. Haven’t they always said that money doesn’t bring happiness? It’s used to add fat to the companies, to the stock options, to shares on the Stock Exchange and to tronchettibenettonscaroni.

But when are we going to stop allowing ourselves to be ripped off?
An Italian citizen has finally decided that this is too muchand has asked the European Commission to abolish the cost for topping up mobile phones. This is a charge that exists only in Italy.
They are considering it seriously and the European Commission has contacted the Authority. This is another innovation that makes us poorer, even though we don’t know it. We need 50,000 signatures to get this charge removed. Sign the petition!

Telecom Italia is watching over us. Day and night, in the office or in a sailing boat Tronchetti thinks of the good of the country. What is most pressing for him is our future. Telecom Italia is not mainly at the service of its clients. It’s difficult to find anyone who says the contrary.Telecom Italia is much more. It is a great group at the service of the country.

Tronchetti has bought page after page of newspaper space with money from our phone calls to explain how much affection he has for Italy. These are pages in which he is keen to let us know that Telecom is not bankrupt, but is healthy: “current net debt of about 39,000,000,000 Euro: 70% at fixed rate and an average length of 8 years.” But what is? The publicity of the bonds about to be issued or the proposal of new telephone services? The market of Telecom Italia is made up of satisfied clients and investors: “More than 100 million clients and millions of investors each day demonstrate the trust that the company enjoys” If it weren’t obligatory to connect to Telecom the clients wouldn’t have all this trust and there would be lots fewer of them. For the investors there’s a different argument. What trusting investors? I would like to know at least one. Send me an email. The Telecom share value has lost about half its value since Tronchetti arrived. Just since the beginning of the year it has gone down by 9.58%.

For Tronchetti, the pockets of the clients are sacred: “a technological phenomenon to offer innovative services and reduce prices for consumers”.

On this point however there’s not a real consensus in the country. The Justice of the Peace of Torre Annunziata, Giuseppe D’Angelo has accepted an action brought by a user against the payment of the line rental. Telecom was found guilty and ordered to pay back all the line rental payments received and to pay legal costs. According to Codacons: “this judgement opens up the road for more than 20 million similar actions in front of Justices of the Peace by Telecom users.” In Italy there is no such thing as a “class action”. If there were, the line rental would disappear in the course of about a month. However there is the possibility to be informed. I’ll leave this post on the right hand side of the site to receive testimony from other Telecom clients asking for the abolition of the line rental.

PS Tronchetti is always inventing something. The costs of sending out the bills has gone up from 0.17 euro to 0.37 Euro plus sales tax. Thanks to this smart increase Telecom will receive 52 million Euro in a year. However, the tribunale di Catanzaro has established that the cost of sending out the bills is illegitimate and Codacons has started an initiative with a predefined form to contest the increase.

We all know that tourism is a great resource for Italy. Our country has a vocation for tourism. Another great resource available to us is Mister I, where I stands for Innovation and Internet. What better combination could there be?
Stanca, the ex-chief warehouseman of IBM, his true identity, has announced in a brochure sent to 16 million families, the launch of the tourism portal: www.italia.it.
A portal on line costing 45 million Euro “created to promote the tourism we can offer via the Internet as well as to promote the cultural, environmental and whole food wealth of Italy” and as it says on page 16 of the brochure “uses an interactive program to organise and plan the journey”.
The project started in March 2004 and was led by Innovazione Italia that assigned parts of the contract to IBM, ITS and Tiscover.
Whoever connects to www.italia.it, moved by the contagious enthusiasm of Mister I, instead of the marvellous interactive delights of the Bel Paese  only finds a request to enter username and password.
Of the portal itself there’s no trace, not even a page explaining when the start date is. Perhaps because no one knows.
Falavolti, director of Innovazione Italia, made the following statement last year: “by January 2006 the first version of the site in two or three languages could be on line”.
World tourism is worth a third of all online commerce, with a value of about 650,000,000,000 Euro in 2005.
This is a massive business, but only for the other countries.
Just think of a Japanese person or a Russian looking for “the cultural, environmental and whole food wealth of Italy” using the government’s official portal without having being already briefed about who Stanca is. What will they think of us?

China has blacked out my image. A Chinese citizen wanting to see Beppe Grillo gets the following results from the Chinese version of Google:

However, in the rest of the world my face is still visible.

The Chinese Government gives us the possibility to find out its political direction by observing the censorship of images presented as search engines results.
In fact if you put in words like “Falun Gong”, “Dalai Lama” or “Mao Tse Tung” in the Italian version you get certain pictures. In the Chinese version you get other images or you get none at all.

For example, for Dalai Lama with Google Italia, you get the following image first:

In the Chinese version, you get this one:

The great thing is that the censorship is transparent and you can see what the censors are doing.
But censorship on the Internet is dynamic and the images of the Chinese version of Google that appear in this post could already have been modified.

PS: You try and see if you can find censored words.

I've already said that telephoning via landlines or mobiles will become free. And also that the prices of the telephone companies are in reality the result of cartels. And that our Telecommunications Authority should jump a bit. And that the prices in Italy are among the highest in Europe. And that the cost of recharging  (Five Euros) should be taken to ZERO.

All stuff that you know already and that make you scream when you receive a telephone bill or when you see advertising (paid for by you) of meganegaledesicaadriana.

Last year I said that you could telephone foreign parts from Australia to Argentina, at a cost of a few cents using Skype, a Voip program that can be installed on your PC.

Today there’s VoipStunt, an even cheaper alternative, as you just pay 10 Euros and taxes, then you can use the telephone for 3 months with no limits, to call most of the countries of the world including Italy.

3.33 Euro a month to phone 24 hours a day everyday on landlines.

Telephoning is costing less and less and in a short time it’ll cost nothing.

And that’s it. It’s been demonstrated.

But if that is the case, why do we have to pay a fixed charge and monstrous figures to the telephone operators including Tronchetti?

And why is this enormous saving for the Italians not given an airing in prime time TV in the early evening?

Save and boot them out!

At the end of his glorious five years at the head of the Ministry of Inovation, Stanca is throwing in the towel.
He has understood that the Italians, distracted by digital terrestrial, annoyed by connection costs among the highest in the world, and often not living within the areas covered by ADSL, haven't yet gone digital.

What to do with this amazing situation?
It’s simple, just inform them about the digital revolution with a 48-page booklet: “Digital Innovation for Families” that will be sent out to the 16 million Italian families.
By post of course, otherwise how would the families get it?
They’re not connected to the Internet.
Otherwise they would read it at their convenience using their PC as you all can do.
Using paper to explain digital is like sending a letter by pony after the invention of the automobile.

How much will it cost to send 48 pages x 16 million families?
Sevenmilliontwohundredandseventythousand Euros which is 45 cents a copy to print, stuff into an envelope and send.
But excuse me, what the f...k! wouldn’t it have been better to provide Italian schools with a few hundreds of thousands of PCs with that money?

The booklet is accompanied by a comic piece from the dwarf carrier of Internet: “the Government is promoting the digital revolution by a series of initiatives unequalled in Europe, starting from the teaching of informatics in the first year of school, and even facilitating the purchase of computers and access to Broadband.”

Let’s do our duty as citizens, helping the coffers of the State:
1 – let’s download the booklet from the Internet and thus avoid this waste of paper.
2 – let’s send an email to Stanca (address: L.Stanca@governo.it) asking him not to send us anything by post.
3 – let’s have a whip-round so that we can donate a PC to Stanca, we’ll digitalise him!

There's a world photographic archive that is growing real fast.
Anyone can put in her/his photos.
Now, with a program called Retrievr, you can draw a picture, e.g. a kid, and you get all the photos that look alike in the archive.
It's great, try it out.

PS: use colors

Chart: world ranking of sources of information on line: websites (dark) and Blogs (Light)

Information is based on trust.
Whoever has a bad reputation can say what they like but they won’t be believed.
They can write what they want and use newspapers and TV, but they won’t be believed.
They can be the leader of the Government, they can participate (but I’m saying it just as a hypothesis) in 2 TV programmes one after the other in the early evening, be interviewed with perpetual bowing and all the same, they won’t be believed.
There’s a crisis of credibility circulating and a boom in incredibility.
The bigger the sensation, the more you think you are credible even if you’re incredible.

> But who is it that makes the credible incredible?
The media.

> Why do they do this?
Because they are owned by groups in the economy.

> Why do groups in the economy own the media?
To do their business better.

> And the journalists?
The journalists have got families, they adjust, or rather they follow the editorial line. They are dependent on the editor rather than on the readers.

> And the Union of Journalists?
That’s part of the past.

> Why?
Because the Internet has invented Bloggers.

> What’s a Blogger?
Someone who writes on the Internet without having to answer to anyone except to their own readers.

> And the Honour Roll of Bloggers?
The readers create it. If a Blog is visited, it’s already on the Honour Roll.

> And the old media?
They will disappear. It’s a question of feeling and of links.

The world gurus of Information Technology: Bill Gates(Microsoft), Steve Jobs(Apple), Larry Page(Google), Iorma Olilla (Nokia), Gordon Moore (Intel) had a week-long meeting in Wyoming to discuss the future.

The meeting was transmitted in TV like a reality show and it was the show with the largest following in the USA. In seven days they discussed strategy, technology, a bit of everything.

But one thing that was never mentioned, not even once, was Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT).

I remember that in May at the Bagnaia meeting, in the presence of Gasparri, Cattaneo, Confalonieri and the underhand Mentana, (Tronchetti wasn’t there, he wouldn’t leave his bedroom) I said out loudthat DTT was a fictitious technology.

Confalonieri, ex-nursery school chum of the dwarf carrier of digital decoders, jumped to his feet and red in the face cried out: Who is this Masaniello who breaks our balls?”

Today has seen the announcement of the failure of DTT. With a contribution of the State (and thus of our money) the number of useless decoders sold is three million (compared to the twenty million Italian families) and the Government has decided to postpone for two years the obligatory introduction of DTT.

Already today, on the Internet it’s possible to see, if the line reaches you (as it does in other countries), if the line is fast (as it is in other countries), if the cost is reasonable (as it is in other countries), hundreds of TV channels.

Who has gained from DTT? Who stands to gain from the adoption of a zombie-like technology? One day we will surely have to make him pay.

In the meantime I’d like to suggest a great guru-meeting transmitted live on TV with Landolfi, Stanca, Gasparri, Confalonieri and Paolo Berlusconi.

I advise those who have already bought the decoder unit to take it to the home of Gasparri, the father of the project and demand your money back.

Telecom Italia has just announced the Supertelefono hi-tech that will work on landlines and mobile networks.

This Supertelefono will be available in 2006 and is “the result of the group working at the forefront of innovation.”

The Supertelefono will have Uma technology inside and will integrate protocols of the mobile networks like GSM and GPRS with wi-fi.

A wi-fi mobile Supertelefono! The first in the world.

I’m proud of this country and I can’t wait to try out this Supertelefono.

OK let’s see what’s happening in the rest of the world.

The mobile phone world is divided into operators like Vodafone and Verizon and producers of mobile phones like Motorola and Nokia.

Guess what the producers are doing right now?

They are developing Voip technology on their mobiles.

This means that the mobile network operators will find themselves completely missing out and we will be connecting our mobiles to the Internet in wi-fi paying little or nothing, just as we can do right now using applications like SKYPE.

However if the Supertelefono will save Telecom I’ll be happy because it really needs saving.

From the beginning of 2005, its shares have lost 23.8%, and from a historical perspective, from the moment the tree of infelicity came in in 2001, it has lost 35% with respect to the index of European telephones and it has lost 46% with respect to the Italian Stock Exchange

For now, I’ll make do with my Voip wi-fi phone as it allows me to phone at a distance of up to 100 metres from my PC using SKYPE and I’m saving.

PS. Olimpia, the company controlling Telecom, is keeping the value of its Telecom shares in its portfolio at 4.63 Euro. I am just a comedian and I can’t quite understand how it’s possible that Olimpia is valuing its participation in Telecom at double the market value.

Thank goodness that it’s Fazio controlling things. Otherwise we’d definitely have been worried.

Source: Time, Repubblica, Corriere della Sera

Photo: Boccalone, Largemouth Bass (in Italian associated with naivety)

Bill Gates has been in Milan to sell his stuff at the computer fair called SMAU and he gave an incredible interview.

Interviewer: “Don’t you think that Europe and particularly Italy are a bit behind? The Italian economy is still based on tiny companies, so it doesn’t seem to be in an ideal situation for the development of technology and for doing research. How do you see our future? What should we do? And what can Microsoft do?
Every time that you come to Italy, you come to Milan, the city of Leonardo, whom you hold in high esteem. The capital of scientific culture in Italy. Now it also seems to be capital of the Italian crisis.

Bill Gates : "Crisis? What crisis?".

Interviewer: “You don’t think there is one?”

Bill Gates : “No. To start with I love Milan. And I find it very beautiful, as I do Rome and other cities that I also know as a tourist. You’re talking about a crisis. Many countries, not only Italy, have to grab this moment and move really fast to change. If this doesn’t happen in Milan, the rest of Italy won’t do it. The business leaders are here , it’s up to them to plan out the reforms, the future. I’m convinced that the Italian business leaders are really good. I have just been meeting with the men from Capitalia, and I’m working with Telecom to test new technologies….”

Interviewer : “Some countries, not just China, have brought in restrictions. Does this policy threaten the development of the Internet? Does it have to change in the future?

Bill Gates : There have always been restrictions. Newspapers aren’t allowed to copy the work of others. In Germany Nazi propaganda is forbidden. In most countries pornography and paedophilia are forbidden. Everyone has a certain level of restriction, even the United States of America, where on the whole we are fairly liberal, but we do have limits which are hopefully useful. The new operating system, Windows Vista, for example, will allow parents to prevent their children from having access to certain websites.”

Poor old Bill, he has been informed about Italy by Geronzi and by the tree of unhappiness, and he, in good faith believes it all.
He knows nothing about China and in fact is talking of something else.

Let’s help him .
Let’s send information to the email of Microsoft Italia: infoita@microsoft.com, telling them of our opinion of the crisis in Italy and about the repressionin China in relation to the Internet. That way he’ll get informed.

PS: Windows is celebrating its 20 th birthday. Windows is proprietary software owned by Microsoft and its diffusion has made Gates rich.
But proprietary software won’t last another 20 years, maybe not even 10.
The alternative is open source, that is software made available over the Internet for free. One of these is called Linux . Use it instead of Windows just as I have decided to do.

The “Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) has arrived” advertisement is a trick and it’s paid for with our money.

It’s not true that it has arrived on earth, it’s always been there: below ground, it’s been born dead, or perhaps it’s never been born.

DTT, (acronym curiously similar to that of DDT), was born after the Constitutional Court’s 2002 decree 466 which established that no-one could own more than two television channels. So that this decree could not be implemented, (Am I the only one who thinks this way?) the Government passed the Gasparri law “ad televisionem” (he doesn’t know!)

To use DTT you need a decoder or set-top box and public money has been set aside to pay for this.
DTT is being publicised with public money.
Whose money? Ours! And who gets the money?
Perhaps those who manufacture the set-top boxes and the owners of the television channels, who are buying football games, the only thing that DTT seems to be useful for.

There’s talk of the “digital divide”, a term used by the mouthful at conferences, meaning that there is a gap between those who have access to information through the Internet and those who don’t.
Instead of investing in a technologabortion, we should be investing in the Internet, in ADSL, and in Wifi.
The Internet has millions of sites, is interactive and allows choice. You can do everything using the Internet. Are you telling me that DTT will be able to compete with the Internet?

Oh yes! DTT will compete with the Internet in Italy; in fact it will beat it hands down. But only in Italy where we are already ahead on this road.
In fact, according to the World Economic Forum, we are at position 44 in the world for the spread and use of the Internet and computers, the last among the industrialised countries.

People like Confalonieri, Stanca, Gasparri, Tronchetti slow down the progress of our country. They are robbing us of our future.
Last in innovation, but first in ditìtì (DTT).

Last year, the law 106/2004 was guided through the legislature by Urbani, who is now ex-Minister. This law obliges anyone who distributes information electronically (thus this includes by Internet) to send a copy to the central Libraries in Florence and in Rome.

Anyone who has a website, a newsletter, or a mailing list where information is circulated must send a copy to the Libraries, or pay a fine of 1,500 Euro.

The law aims to “conserve the memory of Italian culture and Italian social life”.

Does Urbani have any idea of the Internet? Does he know that its contents are changing every second, that there are about a million websites registered in Italy, or has he been using Stanca as consultant?

We could do an Urbani-thing and send our sites, blogs, and newsletters to the Library of Florence (for the attention of Urbani, and carbon copy to Stanca). It’s a shame, but not even the Library of Florence knows what to do with them.