Wikipedia Italy has decided to temporarily shut down to protest against the potential enactment of the Wiretapping Bill. Here are the reasons for this silent yet evident protest.
Wikipedia Italy is currently closed: whether the user types the address of the enormous site directly or arrives at its internal pages through a search of one or more terms on the engine, they find themselves on a page containing the statement about the reasons for the closure.
Everything revolves around the Intercepts Bill, a provision currently under discussion these days. Specifically, Wikipedia Italy points the finger at the clause 29 which reads: “For computer sites, including daily and periodical newspapers distributed electronically, declarations or corrections must be published, within forty-eight hours of the request, with the same graphic characteristics, the same site access methodology, and the same visibility as the news to which they refer.”
This is the point on which Wikipedia stands firmly: there is no judge or authority assigned to determine whether content is harmful, only the requester who—if the decree passes—would have the right to request any correction or modification from blog managers, online magazines, sites, and projects such as Wikipedia.
Moreover, the correction cannot be in any way commented on or explained to the readers of the site involved; on the contrary, it must simply be inserted into the incriminated text within 48 hours of the request, even in spite of citations of sources that might testify exactly the opposite.
The staff of Wikipedia concludes: “The obligation to publish among our contents the denials required by clause 29, without even being able to address the substance of them and regardless of any verification, constitutes an unacceptable limitation of Wikipedia’s freedom and independence: this limitation distorts the principles underlying the free Encyclopedia and paralyzes its horizontal mode of access and contribution, effectively putting an end to its existence as we have known it until today.“
The Wikipedia protest, though silent and sudden without proclamations, could only attract the attention of thousands of people, simply because a resource used daily by millions of users worldwide has been unavailable for several hours.
An enormous amount of information has become inaccessible in protest, to help people understand that in the future this could become the situation of thousands of web resources: disappearance and closure to avoid trouble with the judiciary.
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