Don’t Censor Me Bro!

I’ve been hearing things about bloggers in Italy potentially being slapped with new laws (known as the ‘Alfano decree’) that make them as accountable as journalists, so they can be fined or punished if they post anything that could be considered untrue, slanderous or damaging to someone’s reputation without rectifying in what’s known in tabloid terms as the ‘right of reply’. The controversial new laws are simply the next nail in the coffin of oratory liberty amid inordinate amounts of online security under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (I’m saying nothing about the tabloids reporting his womanizing having anything to do with this), including the need of a passport to access the internet in cafes or in other public places.

The outcome of this is that Italian bloggers have laid down their keyboards and Italy’s blogosphere has fallen silent. Ok, not totally but that just sounded kinda cool, and there is a definite fear that if these new laws are applied to bloggers then the result won’t be balance on blogs, but silence. On one hand it is perfectly understandable for people, particularly big companies, wanting people who talk about them online to have their facts straight, but I am against these laws for several reasons.

Here’s the reason – they’re unnecessary. Any blog worth reading (like mine) gives opinions with genuine reasoning behind it. If I was to say “Macs are shit” then nobody, regardless of Mac or PC Users, would listen to me or give a hoot what I say unless I back it up. Even if I were to then say “Macs are shit because of this, this and this” people are of course at perfect liberty to comment on the post (as I imagine Louis will) saying “No they’re not because of this, this and this reason”. BUT I shouldn’t be under any obligation to alter the post because it’s an opinion that doesn’t influence anyone specifically. Companies are seriously underestimating the ability of their customers to think for themselves, so if I badmouth Macs, then my readers have the right to take my opinion, do research of their own and form THEIR opinion based on what they gather. Another thing that is underestimated is the sheer number of blogs on the web that are just angry, lonely teenagers ranting about any little thing with no argument or reasoning, and people pay no attention to those people. In a way, bloggers are just more literate versions of people who comment on YouTube videos, and look at the comments of this video. How many of those comments have actual reasoning rather than simply making assertive comments like “macs r the shit yo” – but at the same time how many of the opinions that people give in these comments are you taking seriously or will actually sway you even slightly towards or away from Macs?

In comparison, the video itself is a nicely written video that makes jokes about Mac systems and problems. Which ties in nicely to the dilemma of the piece in that it’s a very one-sided video, and in that case maybe Apple would have the right, were we in Italy, to claim that the video damages it’s reputation.

However, the internet is the most accessible publishing tool in history. If printing and distributing newspapers en mass was as easy in the past, we’d all be doing it, and the internet is, essentially, that. But the sheer scale of opinions, people, blog posts, tweets and identities online mean that censoring it is totally impossible, but it doesn’t need to be censored. Newspapers are in the public consciousness as regulated documents that give out facts, and print retractions when they don’t. Newspapers have behind them the collected opinions of many, collaborated in a persuasive manner that is not specifically designed to, but can have a serious impact in someone’s opinion on an issue. The public perception of blogs is totally different, in that people know that it’s usually just one person writing from their point of view, usually not very persuasively (like my blog) and people are intelligent enough to take the information they’re given with a pinch of salt.

I’ve kinda gone off the point with this a bit, but it all relates back to the issues in Italy. But freedom of speech has been part of democracy for hundreds of years but could only truly be exercised in the past twenty because of the internet, before which there is and was, limits and red-tape preventing (by degrees) in publishing on the amount people could say in books and newspapers. The internet is the first and last line of defense for freedom of speech and if there’s even a hint of similar laws being introduced in the UK, I’ll be the first to blog against it.

Tags: blog, censorship, evidence, facts, freedom of speech, intelligence, Italy, macs, newspapers, opinions, right of reply