Hammer and Tongues

Monday 13 November 2006 from Punto Informatico (this article is published by kind permission of Punto Informatico)

Radio Radicale: Creative Commons must be respected

A long series of events has brought the webcasts of meetings of an Italian political party leaders, broadcast with CC, into the limelight. The media giants seem to ignore Creative Commons and certain bloggers make fun of it

Rome:Transparency doesn't pay. Or at least not all the time. This is what Italian Radical Party leaders must have thought when a political mountain was made out of a molehill, both on and off the Web,  concerning the delivery via Internet of audio and video broadcasts of meetings of the party leaders. At the heart of the case is the question of transparency, and the use of Creative Commons  licenses, blogs, loyalty and freedom of expression.

The facts: during the last meeting of party leaders at the end of October,  was “>broadcast, like all other Radio radicale events, well-known leaders of that party (Marco Pannella, Emma Bonino e Daniele Capezzone) blew theri gaskets, apparently uninterested in the fact that certain statements and wisecracks would be  seen by many, many people. And lo and behold, just a few hours after the publication online of the event, it was already being discussed on the RR site  FaiNotizia, after which the whole story ends up in Il Giornale.

Pannella doesn't think much of this article and makes a statement  by speedy return of post with some sarcastic comments on the so-called “scoop” of the  Giornale. He points out that transparency about political activity has always been a characteristic of the Radical party and that the presence online of party leaders is absolutely nothing new. But a few hours later, the Corriere.it takes up the story again on its own home page, linking directly to the “episode” of the political summit, as a result of which, as Radio Radicale has told Punto Informatico, the site is taken down for a few hours, as it can't deal with the huge number of visits.

But that's not the end of it. In the meantime, an Italian blogger, Daw, uses the same materials to produce a fairly amusing satirical video which he publishes on YouTube, a video which immediately hits the headlines in both the Repubblica and the  Giornale and even ends up on TV in Studio Aperto's news bulletin (Italia1).

At this point,  according to Daw, Diego Galli, a director at Radio Radicale, writes to Daw asking him to publish the source of the materials, together with his video, thus respecting the Creative Commons agreement. On the one hand the Radio wants CC license to be respected and on the other hand they fear that the lack of citation of the source means that whoever wants to know more will not be able to see the original video online. A day later Daw publishes the source of the content he uses,  but Radio Radicale is not happy with just a link to Radio Radicale's site and would like the link to the original video to be used. So they to send a letter to the blogger from its lawyer, cautioning him to publish a lengthier declaration on CC, including the direct link. Then  Daw, as you can read on his site decides to remove the video and accuses  Radio Radicale of censure

This is a pretty serious accusation, because it involves a political party traditionally associated with the fight against censure. This news begins to circulate, with frequently unpleasant comments  on the behaviour of RR and expressions of solidarity with Daw.

Will this commitment to take legal action against the blogger no further be enough to  calm everyone down? For now,  Daw's video  as we have mentioned, is no longer available. One can only hope that Daw will put it back for everyone to see. Or end the whole debate with a laugh.

Angelo Maria Petroni
Originally uploaded by mok.

Director of RAI who can't direct

The administrative board of the RAI still has a “right-wing majority” (as if it were indeed a mini-government!!). The man who makes the difference, Angelo Maria Petroni (nominated by the Treasury of the previous government) is still hanging in there, thus causing paralysis in decision-making because the Director General Claudio Cappon is getting outvoted by the board. Petroni is accused by Fabrizio Morri (RAI Watchdog committee) of pursuing Forza Italia party politics rather than responsably safeguarding  the interests of shareholders.

On the 25th October Cappon put his plans to reorganise the three main strategic sectors of the RAI (personnel, artistic resources, management of purchases and services) before the board, including the possibility for the directors to appoint their deputies without the approval of the Board). This plan was thrown out by Petroni and Giuliano Urbani, one of the founding fathers of Forza Italia.

Apparently, the two Forzitaliots slipped out for a quick confab and then came back into the meeting again to announce that they were against the proposal because it would put all the power in Personnel (“Human” resources) into one man's hands.  (never a good idea of course because one might give all the jobs going to one's friends and family).

According to board member Rizzo Nervo this “parallel meeting” outside in the corridors was absolutely unacceptable so he walked out and the meeting was adjourned.

Sandro Curzi, another member of the CdA, wrote in the Corriera della Sera on October 28th that Petroni “systematically prevents the new director general from fulfilling his proper and essential role” (CURZI: The case of Petroni and the party-cratic regression of the five RAI board members) (2)

It is hard to reconcile RAI's commitment to independence, as stated in its code of ethics, (1) with such a strong political influence in the governing body, whether left or right-wing. Appeals for a genuinely independent administration have so far fallen on stony ground.

See “Per un altro TV“

(1) “In its relations with national, local, or international public bodies, Raiworks to represent the interests and positions of the company in arigorous, coherent and transparent manner. In order to guarantee thegreatest possible clarity and transparency, institutional contacts are carried out exclusively by the functional areas and by assigned employees”

(2) According to Grillo Sparlante Petroni is supposedly under investigation for “abuse of office” by the GIP of Rome (procedure n 5424/2004 N). (see Mr Raffaele Pellegrino's letter to the Espresso (“In the tunnel of scandals”) Can this be true? Shuerly some mistake.

The following article is published by democrazialegalità

“Our computers were seized. We are sad.

No one here is playing the undying hero. The search took place in the early hours of 27 October; the seizure of the computers and other material, impeccable agents of the Polizia Postale wandering about the house was no fun: and we are not “calm and relaxed”: we are a trifle nervous, we are.
As we write and update our site thanks to the help of trusted friends, our hard discs are lying around who knows where, pared down to the bone in a sort of IT autopsy. What a shame.
When we received the “visita” we were sound asleep in our own homes. If your house has never been searched, as in our case, you can have no idea what you are in for: there you are in your pyjamas, in front of badges and reams of warrants which you don't have time to read, confused as you are, while questions and answers crowd your sleepy brain. In other words, we have been accused of the crime of “complicity” (concorso), with a public official who – this is the theory – is supposed to have passed onto us the report about Locri. A public official who is totally inexistent, as far as we are concerned, because the document has already been circulating (with a vengeance) for months among journalists and the public in general. This fictional public official, according to the theory of the Reggio Procura, is supposed to have met us (but where?In Calabria?) and passed the material onto us, just as one sees in the worst kind of spy story, during a dark and stormy night battered by the winds of the Strait. Yet how and when and from whom and by what means we got the document is well known to the police themselves, who deduced this information with a couple of clicks of the PC.
Time drags when you are being searched and investigated. On Friday the 27th it dragged interminably. While Marco followed inspectors and agents to the barracks, and Roberta stayed on the spot, the first news items on the episode were dispatched and the news spread thanks to Veltri and many friends.
Seizing our hard drive, as well as depriving us of our tools for work, has also robbed us of our ability to communicate and all our data – professional or private- memorised on those precious magnetic supports, believed to be such “hot property”.
We don't know why they might be considered so explosive nor why they need to be confiscated; the Internet is the least secret thing in the world and every trace of our activity had been accurately analyzed (email sent and received, publications on the internet, connections with site etc), because of a prior foray by the Police in our Pisa server.
What can we say, in our position as suspected criminals? We are innocent. It seems banal, but it's true: we have committed no crime or misdemeanour, much less those we are accused of. The fact that the Basilone report is still available online, and can still be read on our site, proves that is was not and is not necessary to black it out or hide it.
Furthermore, it is a good dose of truth which should be made known, even to those who are directly quoted with name and surname as they – perhaps unknown to them – were considered to be “known criminals”. Whoever has anything to do with information knows perfectly well that information is always useful, though sometimes unwelcome, as in this case.
We have the feeling that it is all – as they say in the underworld – a misunderstanding. We should get out of this soon without any broken bones. We feel a little bit stressed and violated of course. But we are confident that the Reggio Procura will clear things up in a short time (at least as short as the search and seizure operation lasted). Now we would like our computers, our material and our dignity back…
We know we are not alone and this is a great consolation to us.
But we are sad, as we have said in the headline, because we have come face to face, personally, with another defeat of the State. Each time the State, in order to protect itself, its citizens, in order to get to the truth about criminal activities of administrative misdemeanours is obliged to seize, confiscate, hide and camouflage, this is a defeat for the State itself and for all of us. From the tremendous affair of the State secret surrounding the kidnapping of Abu Omar, from the disgraceful affair of the secret dossier about the “enemies of Berlusconi” who have to be “disarticulated” (among which there was, incidentally – the editor of this publication) to the trivial incident involving ourselves, fog and mystery are regularly used to shroud clarity and truth. Shame, shame, shame.

Roberta Anguillesi    Marco Ottanelli

Acknowledgements
We have received many emails, telephone calls and testimonies of solidarity. We are deeply grateful to everyone for what they have done and are doing, we can't thank you individually because there are too many of you, but, without offending all the rest we would like to say thank you to;

a Elio Veltri, Giulietto Chiesa, Antonello Falomi, Diego Novelli, Achille Occhetto and all the friends at the Cantiere;
to MP. Antonello Falomi, again because he has presented a question in parliament on what has happened;
all'on. Tana de Zulueta che ci ha esternato la sua solidarietà
to Marco Travaglio, who has written about us affectionately
to Barbara Fois and Daniela Gaudenzi, Massimiliano Coccia and Vittorio Melandri, Maria Cristina Naso, Luigi Villani, Antonia Stanganelli and Giulia Sgrisi who have put out press released
to the sites  genovaweb.info, centomovimenti.com,  antimafiaduemila.com,   carovanaperlacostituzione.it, giustizia-elibertà.com, a Controradio, and all the other who have reported what happened
to Marco Mucci who has lent us a PC
to Francesco Paola who is helping us
to the policeman who were very polite
to the dog Trippa who amused the police during the search.

At 6.30 on the morning of 27 October the “Postal Police“, acting on orders of the Procura of Reggio Calabria, searched the houses of two editors (Roberta Anguillesi e Marco Ottanelli) of the online publication democrazialegalità and seized computers and other material.

This came after the publication of a report on the administration of the Local Health Authorites (Asl9) (Relazione della Commissione di Accesso) in Locri, which was riddled with mafia corruption, waste, bad adminstration and put under controlled administration by the Ministry of the Interior. Locri  hit the headlines last year after the assassination of vice-president of the Calabria regional council Franco Fortugno.

This incriminated report is a public document, an administrative report (not a legal document) commissioned by the Interior Minsiter Beppe Pisanu of the last government.

It can be read on dozens of websites, including repubblica.it.

Democrazialegalità will be posting the story of what happened in the next few days, together with Marco and Roberta's comments on what has happened.

Democrazialegalita.it must now defend their right to freedom of information. Hopefully, they say,the judiciary will soon clarify their legal position.

Further Reading: Marco Travaglio's article “A volte rimangono“

Diego Galli, in charge of RadioRadicale.it website, has come up with another great initiative,  a collaborative journalism portal Fai Notizia. Inspired by Newsvine.com, a content aggregator for non-mainstream journalists scattered all over the world, the idea is to enable people who are traditionally regarded just as an “audience” to participate in newsmaking.

Source: Punto Informatico

You can try out a beta version of Fai Notizia by registering here