YouTube and other media sites to be treated like TV Channels in Italy.

[Simon]

YouTube and other media websites that have advertisments will be considered like TV stations in Italy!

According to an article published in the Italian newspaper 'La Repubblica' media websites such as YouTube will now be considered the same as television stations in Italy.


Read Full Article here

What are your thoughts on this and how will websites such as YouTube deal with these so call laws?

 

[Vincent]

I live in Belgium, what do I care

No, but it's just the gouvernment being bored and than they do stuff like this.

 

[OSS 117]

I'm all for sensible regulation, but Jesus H Christ this is going a little too far.

 

[CroNiX]

Google should just block Italy from receiving youtube. While they're at it, they should pull google out for a week and see how the gov't likes it. I think it wouldn't take long for the gov't to change their position. People would be pissed without their youtubes and googles. Or institute a per search fee for the country of Italy and make it known in big red letters right above the search bar that its to recoup the costs that the government of Italy has imposed upon their (free/advertiser paid) service in that country.

I mean if Google can almost start an iternational war by accidentally moving a south-american countries border, surely they have the power to tell the Italian gov't to take a hike.

 

[Kim]

which will help Mr Belusconi (Italy Prime Minister) in his ongoing € 500M lawsuit against YouTube because of content copyrighted on his TV networks that some users uploaded on YouTube.

LOL so the Italian Prime Minister has an outstanding lawsuit against YouTube, and has introduced this legislation - no conflict of interest there!

 

[OSS 117]

He can't do jack with that lawsuit. It's safe to say that Google is an extremely powerful company. It's already known Google has several government contracts here and abroad. I'm sure Google is capable of crippling a country's economy overnight.

 

[MGSteve]

LOL so the Italian Prime Minsiter has an outstanding lawsuit against YouTube, and has introduced this legislation - no conflict of interest there!

Sorry, but the whole Italian government is a conflict of Interest and I have to say, as an outsider looking in, a bit of a joke. Bellasconi (or however its spelt) is a media tycoon for god's sake. Not to mention a joke of a politican. How he ever got through that vote of confidence its beyond me.

I guess Italian MPs don't care the image of Italy that he's portraying.

 

[Dodgeboard]

And I thought the US was the only nation hellbent on concocting a way to tax the internet.

 

[Simon]

LOL so the Italian Prime Minister has an outstanding lawsuit against YouTube, and has introduced this legislation - no conflict of interest there!

I live in Italy and always use a VPN to connect with the Internet. So any kind of censorship will not affect me but Italy being the first country to introduce these crazy laws I'm wondering if other countries will follow suit?

I agree that YouTube should have some kind of moderation of its video just like forums do with a moderator but i guess that would be a massive task.

I wish Google the best of luck in this issue. Pulling out of Italy is not the answer. Belusconi will use that to his advantage! However Google is a strong company and i'm sure they can fight this even at a European level.

 

[jmurrayhead]

Pulling out of Italy is not the answer. Belusconi will use that to his advantage!

Please do elaborate