[NetBehaviour] Free speech? Not in Italy: Piero Ricca’s Blog censored

[Graziano Milano]

Piero Ricca, is an Italian citizen owning a blog in which he speaks
about politics and justice. A sort of Italian Michael Moore armed with
a video digital camera and his speech.

On 10th July 2007 the blog of Piero Ricca (www.pieroricca.org) has
been censored. Blocked actually as Italian police changed passwords,
blocked posts on the site, deleted articles; although we can still
leave comments on his last 'legal' articles to express our solidarity
(please do so).

What happened? Why this blog has been censored?

Some time ago, Piero met Emilio Fede, a "journalist", director of TG4,
Rete4 News (part of Berlusconi's TV network) and asked him how it is
possible that Rete4 continues to transmit illegally and abusively
using TV frequencies that a final judgement of the Italian
Constitutional Court has assigned to Europa7, a new independent
channel? In response to that question Piero was first given by Mr Fede
a false declaration of his resignation, then was called a "stupid" and
finally received a spit. When Piero tried to respond to those
provocations, he got threatened both physically and by legal actions
(video clip at www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KbGNQwO7es).

Following that incident Piero's blog was closed on 10th July 2007 by
an order of the Rome Prosecutors' office, a "preventive removal"
notified to Piero by two officers of the "Italian Finance Police
special unit against ICT frauds". The order was the result of a legal
action for defamation presented by Mr Fede against Piero following the
above incident. With the same measure the Police deleted one of
Piero's posts relating to the Mr Fede's incident and the related
comments. For technical reasons, they were unable to remove the video
from YouTube.

So a "pirate TV" owned by a former Italian Prime Minister can continue
to broadcast illegally for years, but if a citizen demands some
explanations his blog gets banned from the internet. Dangerous idea of
Justice in a western democracy: strong with the common citizen, weak
with the powerful.

Now Piero is thinking to move his blog outside Italy in order to avoid
censorship in the future. The website Qui Milano Libera
(www.quimilanolibera.net) has been hosting Piero's voice while his
blog is blocked and every blog in Italy is echoing his story. One
thing is for sure no one will manage to remove Piero's freedom of
speech or ours for that matter.

MrG