{"id":419070,"date":"2010-03-11T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100311\/1347368524.shtml"},"modified":"2010-03-11T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T02:00:00","slug":"lessig-gives-a-well-timed-speech-to-the-italian-parliament-on-internet-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/419070","title":{"rendered":"Lessig Gives A Well-Timed Speech To The Italian Parliament On Internet Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have noted, recently, that Italian laws and politicians seem to have a somewhat troubling<\/a> view of the internet, where they are quick to blame<\/a> the internet for anything bad that happens, and then look to pass laws that would throw out plenty of good just to protect<\/a> against the possibility<\/i> of any bad happening. This, of course, culminated just recently in the ruling in an Italian court that three Google execs were guilty<\/a> of criminal violations, over a Google-hosted video.<\/p>\n

Given all that, it’s quite interesting timing to see that Larry Lessig just gave a speech to the Italian Parliament about how Internet is Freedom<\/i><\/a>. You can see it below (assuming YouTube doesn’t take it down<\/a>) and it runs a little over half an hour:
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\nHe does not address that particular case (or, actually, any of the stories coming out of Italy concerning the internet). However, he does an excellent job setting up the issues related to regulating the internet — detailing how there is a generational divide going on here, and how the digital generation is effectively “waiting for the dinosaurs to die off,” but are still worried about the damage they might do in the meantime. And, with that, he suggests a rather gentle touch when it comes to regulations — a “regulatory humility.”<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, there’s plenty in the video that I agree with — but also plenty that I disagree with. While he does a great job highlighting three areas (copyright, journalism and transparency), where the internet does both good and bad, I disagree with his suggestions for “minimizing the bad.” I do agree that we should always look to see if there are ways to minimize the “bad,” but I’m not sure I agree with what he considers to actually be “harm” in all three of those cases. What he calls “harm,” looks to me an awful lot like disruption. And you can’t minimize disruption (at least not successfully).<\/p>\n

Still, it is a worthwhile video to watch, with especially interesting timing and audience, given all that’s been happening in Italy lately. It would be nice to know how the audience reacted and responded to the speech as well.<\/p>\n

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We have noted, recently, that Italian laws and politicians seem to have a somewhat troubling view of the internet, where they are quick to blame the internet for anything bad that happens, and then look to pass laws that would throw out plenty of good just to protect against the possibility of any bad happening. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-419070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}