[Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia - What exactly does the proposed law say?

[Andreas Kolbe]

--- On Wed, 5/10/11, Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia - What exactly does the proposed law say?
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Wednesday, 5 October, 2011, 22:44


> Given that a Wikipedia biography is usually the first google hit to come up for a name, it
> doesn't actually strike me as *that* ludicrous. What Wikipedia writes about a person reaches
> more readers today than a New York Times article. As someone else mentioned recently,
> there is a responsibility that comes with that kind of reach. Saying that "we don't
> necessarily stand behind what our article says about you the way a newspaper publisher
> would stand behind an article of theirs" is frankly little consolation to an aggrieved BLP
> subject.

Moreover, some people in Italy are quite easy in sueing:
Wikimedia Italy is still on trial (in the person of her president)
beacuse someone
wrote something "bad" on the owners of a political newspaper. (and
they asked us 20 million dollars...).

Well, that *is* nuts. Moreover, the 48-hour time period and potential €12,000 fine in the 
proposed law are nuts (pity the blogger who has gone on a 2-week holiday). Yet that 
€12,000 fine is not mentioned in the it:WP statement. Being forced to include a statement
in an article is less of an issue to me than the prospect of being fined €12,000 if it isn't done
in time. *That* is where the chilling effect comes from, yet the it:WP statement doesn't
mention it.



Andreas