The Italian language pages on Wikipedia has been replaced with a statement which warns that a law that is now under consideration by the Italian parliament might just force the shutdown of the Italian version of Wikipedia, and to make sure that the English speaking world is aware of what is going on, a statement by Wikipedia (in English of course) says that the law includes “a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.”
According to Wikipedia, this requirement is “an unacceptable restriction of the freedom and independence of Wikipedia,” where it might just see a freeze in Wikipedia’s bottom-up editing process that has served the site well thus far.
This kind of legislation is understandable as at the moment, beleaguered Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (seen above in a Face-Palm moment) has every plan to restrict publication of police wiretapping transcripts after he was embarrassed by leaked transcripts of his own phone calls that did not put him in a flattering light. I wonder how long this free speech protest is going to continue in Italian though…