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Blogs are illegal

Friday, 26th September 2008

Well, that's the lesson to be drawn from this little article.

Italy has a law on the books stating that newspapers must have a licence. That law has been extended (in one case so far, to be sure) to a blog. As it had a headline, thus it was a newspaper and as it didn't have a licence the proprietor was fined (and could have been jailed).

But that's Italy, right, nothing to do with us?

Ah, not so fast. It's a firm principle of English (and other Common Law jurisdictions) law that on the internet publication takes place in the browser of the reader. It's the same argument that leads to the viewing of child pornography being the creation of it. For before there was one version on the server and now there are two, one on the server and one in the browser. Thus it has been published.

Further, obviously a reader in Italy of this blog is thus publishing this blog in Italy. Yes, this point has also been tried, Dow Jones lost a case in Australia on exactly this point. And as we don't have an Italian licence, if this post is read in Italy I've just committed a criminal offence.

For super extra added bonus points, consider that if a warrant is issued for my arrest for this heinous crime, the British police are duty bound to deliver me up to the Italians without extradition hearings or even the presentation of any evidence under the European Arrest Warrant.

It really is an exciting world we live in, isn't it?

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Tim Cooper

September 27th, 2008 1:27pm

And the bad news is that I've just read the article - sorry. Just don't answer the door early in the morning (well actually 250 will probably see you right...)
- Tim from Italy

Andrew

September 29th, 2008 9:11am

Surely under that argument, the person who publishes your article in Italy is the one who has committed the offence, not you as the author. the same as if they had taken a paper copy of your newpaper article to Italy, and photcopied it in an Italian office. The person doing the photocopying is committing the crime, not the person(s) who published the foreign paper.