Italy Moves Forward with Plans to Regulate Online Video

Undeterred by internal and external criticism, Italy is moving ahead to make the internet a lot less open. The plan is to make video-hosting sites abide by the same regulations as TV broadcasters, meaning the government would be able to hold these sites accountable for what the users upload. A draft decree is set to become mandatory this month, according (subscription required) to the Wall Street Journal.

The law is cloaked in the cover of copyright infringement as the government says it is meant to protect right holders and only follows the EU directive on the matter. It says that any site hosting copyrighted material should be subject to the same rules governing TV broadcasters. YouTube holds a lot of copyrighted material, of legal or illegal provenience. And, by extension, even user-generated videos are subject to copyright so it would be impossible for any video site to operate within the country without a license.

Of course, the EU directive which Italy cites has nothing to do with online video and other directives make it clear that online services, like YouTube, shouldn't be held accountable for what their users share. However, the move has less to do with being a good EU member and more to do with prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's pockets. He holds the largest media company in the country, Mediaset, and its revenue would clearly benefit if online services were less of a threat.

Google has its fair share of troubles in the country, largely due to YouTube. In one lawsuit, four of its executives face jail time for a video uploaded by one of its users. As expected, Google isn't thrilled about the government's latest move.

"When this Directive was debated at length in Brussels, it was clearly decided that user-generated video content should not be regulated in the same way as traditional TV content. If it was then people would find it far more difficult to use video sites to share their videos. So we hope that Italy does not go down a different path and start to regulate videos that people upload to the internet in the same way as they regulate TV," Marco Pancini, Google's senior policy counsel for Italy, said.