Italian Police Censor "Blasphemous" Websites

ross.w writes "Italian authorities have shut down five Internet sites which reportedly carried blasphemies against God and the Virgin Mary, following a complaint by the Vatican's newspaper. The story is in this item on Australia's ABC News."

FIX THE LINK

[Anonymous Coward]

Page not found

It's not enough to preview you have to check that links are correct

Re:FIX THE LINK

[mashx]

Try this one. [abc.net.au]

Correct link

[Majix]

http://abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s603070.htm [abc.net.au]

Deep linking is illegal.. so heres the story

[f0dder]

Wednesday, July 10, 2002. Posted: 10:21:15 (AEDT) Italian police black out 'blasphemous' websites Italian authorities have shut down five Internet sites which reportedly carried blasphemies against God and the Virgin Mary, following a complaint by the Vatican's newspaper. The paper says a special police unit has taken over the sites due to what it has termed unrepeatable words which accompanied the name of the Madonna. The police have since blacked out pages on the sites, so that surfers can now only find the words: "Site seized by the Head of Rome's Special Police Force, on the orders of Rome's Chief Prosecutor." The paper says the police have also discovered a commercial network which sells t-shirts carrying the same blasphemous logos that appeared on the sites. Print Email

Thank God for Landover

[GothChip]

I saw this news last night on teletext. So far I haven't heard what sites have been blocked and it appears to be restricted to Italian sites only. At least Landover Babtist [landoverbaptist.org] is still up and running. Warning: This site is very funny. And you can still get your Cradle of Filth T-shirts here [bluegrape.com].

MSNBC are also running the story

[marnanel]

MSNBC are covering the story [msnbc.com]. It has a bit more information:

Investigators first learned about the sites, with names that translate into phrases including "Pig Madonna" and "Blasphemy," in 2000.

Sooo, if any Italian-speaking Slashdotters can tell us what "Pig Madonna" is in Italian, we can google for it, since it's been up for two years, and find out what the site was.

For italian speaking only

[sintesi]

You could find more on this here
http://www.punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=4088 0
italian only sorry...
I'm starting to be a bit scared living here...
the new spanish inquisition is starting...

Re:Hmm

[dtosti]

.. signatory to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms [coe.int], which should protect 'freedom of thought, conscience and religion' as well as 'freedom of expression'.

well, Italian government has signed a special convention with the Catholic Church (in the 1920s) long time before signing the Council of Europe Convention (in the 1950s).

This agreement with the Church is written in the Italian Constitution (dated 1947) and it obliges Italy to act against people who dare to slander the common religious sentiments.

Note that "freedom of expression" != "freedom of slandering" !!!

The real fact is: that guy who sold t-shirt with anti-religious sentences will probably be accused not only of slandering common religious sentiments, but of having evaded tax and VAT too, because the "special police force" mentioned in the article is the Italian equivalent of the american ATF (Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms) plus the duty of hunting tax evasors.

So, as an Italian, I'm not worried at all for the freedom of expression question, because those policemen works for the Treasury Minister and they receive a percentual on the tax recovered... :)

In a word: "NO"

[Hektor_Troy]

Make that a "HELL NO!"

The danish constitution has a very interesting paragraph:

" 77
Enhver er berettiget til på tryk, i skrift og tale at offentliggøre sine tanker, dog under ansvar for domstolene. Censur og andre forebyggende forholdsregler kan ingen sinde på ny indføres. "

And in English:
" 77
Anyone is at liberty to publish his thought, be it printed, in writing or speech, but are accountable to a court of law. Censureship and other preventative meassures can never again be introduced."

Or something to that effect.

The Danish police have no right to shut down any web-sites - to do so you need a court order (freedom of speech with personal responsibility). This includes hate-speech, blasphemy, propaganda and otherwise.

You are obviously not a lawyer, and you had better try to back up your wild claims with relevant quotes next time around.

The Tiger Lillies said it best...

[JimPooley]

I'm crucifying Jesus, banging in the nails,
And I am so happy, because old Jesus failed.
I'm crucifying Jesus, nail him to the cross,
The poor old bastard bleeds to death and I don't give a toss.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm crucifying Jesus, in my piss he bathes.
I think I am a pervert, I think I am depraved
I'm crucifying Jesus, beat him to a pulp,
I stick my organ in his mouth and on it he must gulp.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

You see that crown of thorns upon his head?
Well that was my idea.
I think I might be going to hell,
Oh dear!

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

I'm bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
banging in the nails.

----
All Text By Martyn Jacques
Copyright Misery Guts Music
http://www.tigerlillies.com

Re:MSNBC are also running the story

[Anonymous Coward]

pig=porca
censored site:
http://www.porcamadonna.com/

old index:
http://www.porcamadonna.com/index2f.html

Re:Disagree with censorship

[Abstrakt]

When the Italians became civilized (/ducks)

No need to duck... I just wanted to add that we have not become fully civilized just yet. ;)

The evil fascist dictator's name was Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, btw. Or "il Duce" for short. Unfortunately, he still has many admirers in this country.

Cheers.

Re:Nobody has asked this yet?

[BCoates]

"How the _HELL_ did Italian authorities get the jurisdiction to put up a block on a site located in the U.S.?"

From the MSNBC article [msnbc.com]:

Police said they used the same computer from which the Web sites were uploaded to remove the offensive material and replace it with the crest of the special police unit involved.

They did not say whether they informed the Internet providers that hosted the sites. Nor did they name the providers.

--
Benjamin Coates

Re:Correct link

[Abstrakt]

Thanks for the correct link!

What that brief article fails to mention, however, is that blasphemy has always been illegal here in Italy. Believe it or not, you could theoretically be arrested for yelling "Porco Dio" (the equivalent of "Goddamnit") on the street!

The irony is that using extremely blasphemous language is very common in Italy -- much more so than anywhere else in the world. We have some of the most colorful blasphemies known to man; most of which involve the virgin Mary and various sexual acts that would make the other Madonna blush.

Sadly, we seem to have a very different definition of "free speech" in this country. There have been many similar instances of government intervention in the past, as well as privacy violations that would have everyone up in arms if this were another country -- like America for example.

Cheers.

Re:Google to the rescue...

[eggz128]

Well, the italian police didnt do a very good job did they? A quick visit to googles cache of the page in question, and you find out the rest of the sites content is still there [porcamadonna.com]. (Oh, some people might find this material offensive, apparently ;) )

Re:MSNBC are also running the story

[Anonymous Coward]

it's

PORCA MADONNA

by the way, our worhty forces of order have only replaced the index page to the site; inside links still work wonders.

Re:Deep linking is illegal.. so heres the story

[Simon Kongshoj]

And that story doesn't even say that "deep" linking is illegal in Denmark. All that happened in that court was that Newsbooster was prohibited from gathering and providing news using them. The ruling didn't state anything else about the use of "deep" linking, ie. it doesn't consider anything about whether it should be prohibited to make a "deep" link to some story on, say, a blog or discussion forum. The ruling regards a specific entity (Newsbooster) and its specific practice (automatically gathering news on Danish newspapers' www sites, and linking to stories)

Besides, what in hell is a "deep" link? It's so fucking pathetic to see politicians trying to legislate a technology they seem to refuse to even try to understand.

Re:Hmm

[Ig0r]

The Boy Scouts of America burn thousands of US flags every year, and have for decades.

Re:Gotta play the Devil's(?) Advocate here

[frankie]

going all the way back to Copernicus??? I mean, c'mon!

Yeah, that's an especially bad reference to make, considering that the Church never attacked Copernicus [nasa.gov]. In fact, he was on the Catholic payroll while he was writing the heliocentric theory.

You should be referring to Galileo [msu.edu]. John Paul II apologized 300 years later [curriculumunits.com].

The Catholic Church is a slow-witted bureaucracy, and an 800 million pound gorilla, but it's a generally better about science than the major protestant denominations.

p.s. Pope Pius XII endorsed evolution in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis.