He can breathe a sigh of relief Carlo Ruta, journalist and author of the blog "It happens in Sicily", accused of defamation and clandestine press, for reporting on his blog, in 2004, some documents relating to the assassination of Giovanni Spampinato, a young journalist killed in Ragusa in 1972. Ruta, convicted in the first two instances of appeal was, in fact, acquitted in Cassation.
Now, together with him, all the bloggers of Italy can rejoice, because the sentence of the third section of the Court establishes that blogs are not news organizations and therefore do not have to be registered in court. This implies, as an obvious consequence, that blogs cannot be guilty, by their very nature, of the crime of clandestine press.
Thus ends a story that began eight years ago now, which had seen the conviction of Ruta, for defamation and clandestine press, first at the Court of Modica, and then at the Court of Appeal of Catania. A story which, due to its uniqueness, he had coagulated around himself a debate that had crossed national borders, expanding to all of Europe, with various demonstrations of solidarity for the Sicilian blogger.
The community of Italian bloggers, and more generally the network, can therefore claim victory, but for the moment still in a low voice, timidly. Why the sentence of the Cassation is however placed in a regulatory framework that is still ambiguous and confused, as well as objectively old, on the subject, a framework that still lacks an organic and updated law. Ruta's acquittal, however important, remains only the first brick of a road that will have to be carefully paved.
