A new draft law initially approved by Mr. Prodi’s Cabinet of Ministers in October may need to be revised after the outrage they received from the Italian blogosphere. Much of the anger was due to the increased liability that the blogger would hold after the law was enacted.

In hopes of cleaning up Italy’s publishing-related regulations, the law would require non-professional, not-for-profit blogs and editorials to register with Italy’s registry of “communication operators”. By doing so, they would inadvertently be accepting a new journalistic standard which if not followed carefully, can lead to fines and even jail time for what many blogs could be guilty for – libel and defamation of character. This is already the case in Poland, their Act of Press Law (Prawo Prasowe) which like the Italian law, forces newspapers and magazines to register was amended by High Court to include websites and blogs in July.

A lot of the success of the blogosphere can be attributed to the fact that the internet is a soapbox for many of us with very few rules and to increase the potential liability for a blogger would definitely encroach on our freedom of speech online.

Now, libel and the blogosphere have met in the past. There have been many cases where blogs have been sued for libelous comments or defamation of character. But for the most part, it is generally accepted that if the piece of libelous writing is only available on the internet – then you’re pretty much guilty of nothing. It’s looked upon as the equivalent to writing rumours about a friend on a Facebook wall. Not that big of a deal right?