Gag to Internet: The forums are not printing, but maybe yes blog

http://www.zeusnews.com/index.php3?ar=stampa&cod=9640

The forums are not printing, but maybe yes blog

The ruling of the Cassation not free blogs from the impositions of the law on the press: Only forum, for now, they are clearly exempt.

[ZEUS News - http://www.zeusnews.com - 12-03-2009]

The recent ruling by the Court of Cassation, which rules out the forums for the media to which the press law was decidedly unhappy aduc, but the media in general have hailed this decision as a good news for freedom of the Network

The question is actually more complicated than appears at first sight.

The current situation provides for the initiatives of various political forces - including Gabriella Carlucci is just the latest example - to enforce the laws on the press for what is published on the Internet.

Since the days of the bill that would require bloggers and webmasters in general to register the Roc (the Registry of Operators of Communication), the Italian network has always been opposed to these attempts to unnecessary bureaucratic regulation (and suspected of complaint): in all conscience, how can a personal diary, be treated as a body of information ?

Not a few bloggers that, to avoid this abomination, still exhibit on their pages the words: "This blog is not a newspaper in what is being updated without any periodicity. It can not therefore be considered as an editorial product under Law No. 62 of 7.03.2001. Yet the idea of regulating the Internet as a huge newsstand had not died.

That is why the ruling of the Cassation seemed to many so important: it appears to represent an official statement which should put an end to the dispute on the comparability of forums and blogs to newspapers.

Yet this reasoning is not a small flaw: the Cassation spoke of forum, not blog. General that the press is not attentive to these subtleties is even understandable, but the difference is substantial.

Henceforth it is clear that anyone who runs a forum is not required to record the head, indicating a director, to submit to all such limitations as are prescribed by law on the press.

Some may not even have the protections listed in the same text, but that's not the point. The point is that, instead, on the blog is still not clear.

The two media are different.

Even the judge or the legislature more distracted notice a difference, though, qualify as "news" there is the periodicity of the host content determined and can be a source of income (for which even a single banner would be enough), here is a blog that seems to answer perfectly or nearly so, whereas a forum is so much different.

Neither are very clear what are the criteria for defining the frequency of "which seems to be an important discrimine: to be comparable to a newspaper, a blog any length of time to be updated ?

Daily ?

It might be a newspaper.

Once a week ?

It could be a weekly.

Once a month ?

A monthly.

Just lengthen the period of time, and now that the schedule is.

For some, even just the fact that, from time to time, the author writes, simply that there is a minimum of regularity - the blog is not abandoned, but are new post even if not time-bound.

All this is not covered by the ruling of the Cassation, nor was his intention to do so.

The case of blogger sentenced for defamation (and failed control) or for the crime of clandestine press in recent times there have been and the Supreme Court apparently has not addressed the matter: the only ones who can celebrate for now (but always in moderation, as is necessary in these cases) are perhaps the managers of the forums.

It remains the case with comments on the blog: some may be considered "forum" and therefore not subject to the laws on the press, according to others are a matter of who runs the blog.