[hackmeeting] Un juez ordena el cierre de Indimedia Italia

[merce]

De EDRI-Gram.
Ahora mismo no se puede acceder a Indymedia Italia pero no
por la accion judicial sino por un DDOS que dura y dura.

M&M



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8. Italian prosecutor demands take down Indymedia Italy
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The public prosecutor's office of Rome has requested the relevant judicial
authorities to allow the seizure of Indymedia Italy's website, on the
ground of violation of the Italian penal law on 'vilipendio della
religione cattolica' ('insult to the catholic religion') and 'vilipendio
della figura del Papa' ('insult to the Pope's figure').

What happened? Someone, using Indymedia's content management system (which
allows everyone to freely upload all kind of material) has published a
fake photo of Pope Benedictus XVI dressed as a Nazi official. This was a
clear reference to the Pope being a member - albeit, as he put it in
various interviews, 'not a real enthusiast' - of the Hitlerjugend (the
'Hitler Youth').

Even though the constitutionality of the law on insult to the catholic
religion, that is being invoked as a weapon against Indymedia Italy, is
itself quite doubtful (on the basis that it is discriminatory towards
other religions and in general not really compatible with the supposedly
lay nature of the Italian State) the public prosecutor has nevertheless
decided to issue an international judicial action; the website of
Indymedia Italy is physically hosted in the US. Italian media consequently
speak about hosting in Brazil, but they are probably confused the fact
that the domain name is registered by a Brazilian entity.

Moreover, the public prosecutor is waiting for the authorisation of the
Italian Ministry of Justice in order to prosecute for insult to the Pope's
figure. Since the Pope is a foreign head of state, a formal authorisation
by the minister is necessary. It will be interesting to see what the
decision of the Minister of Justice will be, especially given the very
close links that have always existed between Italian governments from 1945
onwards and the Vatican.

This is not the first time that Indymedia is being targeted by Italian
authorities: last October many Indymedia national websites went off-line
because of the seizure of two hard disks. Even though the information was
officially dismissed as untrue, rumours were that the request for the
seizure was issued by the public prosecutor of Bologna, in the context of
an investigation on homeland terrorism. However, the FBI - which
materially seized the servers - confirmed that the request came from
Italy.

The fake image of Pope Benedictus XVI
http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/782557.php

(Contribution by Andrea Glorioso, Italian consultant on digital policies)