... or lack thereof.

Everyone is now familiar with the Global Financial Crisis, the Eurozone Financial Crisis, the near bankruptcy of Greece and the playboy antics of the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

What they don't know is exactly what state of degrade the Italian economy is currently now in. From being a prominent member of the G8 to nearly defaulting on all it's debts, Italy is currently going through the worst economical and political crisis in the last 25 years.

And rather than trying to find a solution to bring Italy back to the glory days when the first thing that people thought of when Italy came to mind was, luxury, wealth and La Bella Vita, the Good Life, the Italian government is wasting time coming up with laws and regulations that disempower the Italian population even more.

Freedom of speech is what makes society tick. Being able to say whatever is on your mind without being persecuted is the fundamental right of all free citizens.

The Italian government wants to remove that right (at least in part) by approving a law that will make any information published on a website, blog, forum, newspaper, etc illegal if found by any party to be offence or disrespectful. Even if it states proven truth.

The law states that a correction must be posted within 48 hours if deemed by something to be defamatory or offense, without prior intervention from the court. If this is not done, the article MUST be removed.

Try clicking on the following link: http://it.wikipedia.org I am sure you all know what it is.

Basically this law has seen that Wikipedia, the world largest, free, user-contributed encyclopedia is no longer available in Italian.

A silly example of this would be:

I am a Inter-Milan supporter, and I feel robbed by a referee's decision in a game and I blog about it. If that referee or anyone for that matter (even a supporter of the opposing team) feels that my comment could tarnish the reputation of the referee, I have to remove the article or place a big "I'm Sorry, I did not mean to say those things".

And that is just a silly example.

Soon it will get to the point where to protect politicians, Italians will be forced to walk around with recording devices connected to directly to the government, and fined on the spot if they said anything out of line.