Italy Proposes Law To Make Mocking People Online Illegal

Free Speech

from the what-a-stupid-fucking-law dept

Every so often, we see (probably) well-intentioned, but incredibly stupid, attempts to “fight” online harassment and bullying through laws that make saying things that are “offensive” against the law. In the US, such laws (if they actually get passed) are usually thrown out once someone makes a First Amendment challenge over them, but elsewhere in the world there’s no First Amendment to fall back on. Over in Italy, some officials have proposed what may be one of the dumbest such laws in history, written so broadly that it will outlaw a lot more than the kind of “cyberbullying” it’s supposedly intended to combat:

Under the proposed law, the “site manager” of Italian media, including bloggers, newspapers and social networks would be obliged to censor “mockery” based on “the personal and social condition” of the victim — that is, anything the recipient felt was personally insulting. The penalty for failing to take action is a fine of €100,000. Truthfulness is not a defense in suits under this law — the standard is personal insult, not falsehood.

Yes, mockery on the internet could get you a €100,000 fine. Mockery. The internet. The internet is made for mockery. And now is the time that everyone should be mocking this idiotic law — and the politicians who proposed it without having the slightest idea of how such a thing would be abused all the time. As Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing notes:

… what it will do is create a tool for easy censorship without due process or penalty for misuse. The standard proposed in the bill is merely that the person on the receiving end of the argument feel aggrieved. Think of the abuse of copyright takedowns: online hosts already receive millions of these, more than they could possibly evaluate, and so we have a robo-takedown regime that lets the rich and powerful routinely remove material that puts them in an unflattering light.

As bad as that is, at least it makes censorship contingent on something specific and objective: copyright infringement, which has a wealth of caselaw defining its contours. Indeed, so much that you need to be a trained expert to adjudicate a claim of infringement. But at least you can objectively assess whether a copyright infringement has taken place.

The standard set by the proposed Italian law allows for purely subjective claims to be made, and for enormous penalties to be imposed on those who question them before undertaking sweeping acts of censorship.

There are some efforts under way to “improve” the law by making it not quite so draconian, but maybe, just maybe, the “improvement” should be to recognize that you’re never going to successfully outlaw mockery on the internet.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, harassment, internet, italy, mocking, offensive, takedowns