There is nothing disgusting about what the WMF is doing here. You just don’t understand it…

In the event that the bill passes, this pulling of the Italian-language version of the Wiki will become permanent. Not in protest, but because the Wiki will no longer be able to function as it should. Because if the bill passed and the Italian Wiki continued to exist, anyone whose name is mentioned anywhere on the wiki (be it as part of a page, a citation or even an off hand mention in a discussion page) would be able to drag the WMF to (italian) court over it.

There is very little political about this. NPOV does not mean ‘stay ambivalent’, Neutrality does not mean ‘maintain apathy at all costs’ and independence most certainly does not mean ‘never defend yourself’.

Anyone who claims this couldn’t have made it through court fails to realise that when people say the Berlusconi owns most of the Media and Information services in Italy isn’t speaking figuratively in the sense of ‘they respect him greatly’ or ‘they always do what he tells them’. They mean that he is literally the owner of most of the Newspapers and Radio- and TV stations in Italy and a majority share of the non-international ISPs on top of being the head of state.

It’s not so much that Berlusconi can do whatever he wants as it is that the internet is one of the few places where people can find out he’s done something he shouldn’t have. So yeah, you betcha he’s motivated to push this through and you betcha he’ll bribe, threaten or otherwise pressure anyone he has to to get it approved if he can. (After all, who’s going to report on him afterwards? The reporters who are literally on his pay-role? No. The internet? Not any more).