Scrat and Agcom

Do you remember Scrat?

It is one of the most sympathetic characters of the fortuned Ice Age cartoon movies series. What makes it funny is the fact that despite the world is crushing down around him, he has a stubborn capability of maintaining his whole focus on its beloved acorn.

One of my favourite scenes is when, unaware of everything coming down, he's trying to stop the water leak in the glacier just seconds the whole thing explodes.

What makes us to laugh about Scrat is its stupid, even if tender, behaviour; it is that carelessness of his, so as the complete and unconditioned love for a world that is not there anymore.

In my personal opinion, Scrat's behaviour is somewhat similar to what is happening in Italy these days with Agcom. Agcom (Agenzia per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni - Agency for the Guarantees in the Communications) is the governmental body which supervises the media in Italy, whose attribution is "the dual responsibility of ensuring proper competition among market players and to protect the fundamental consumption freedoms of citizens" (from Agcom website).

Within next July, 6th, Agcom is going to apply an act which would empower it to bypassing the judicial authorities in the assessment and possible removal of the contents of any site web; and in addition to have the possibility to close the websites which, at its unsindacable judgement, are not applying the norm. This, without the previous passage through a court which would judge about the substance of the contestation.

A vaste part of the Italian online public opinion lived this attempt as a fundamental attack to Web's freedom in Italy, and a consistent number of groups have organised in order to block the initiative.

One of the most prominent is Libertà Digitali, whose initiative "La notte della Rete" (The night of the Web) is collecting thousands of citizens' signatures aimed to block the Agcom's act. The petition is available at http://sitononraggiungibile.e-policy.it/. I personally signed and asked to all my friends to do the same, since I believe that the Web is an untouchable space of freedom, which for the first time gave the mankind the possibility to freely express.

Therefore, my claim is simple.

Sign up, don't be Scrat.

PS: A little lesson of web 2.0 for some Agcom functionnaire. The Scrat's image in this post is property of Blue Sky Studios. They could sue me for unduly using an asset of their property, but nobody would be so stupid to do it. The more an image, or a concept, or a video is shared around the web, the more its digital weight (or share of voice, in ancient terms) rises up. It means that it climbs positions into the Google search ranking, and generates leads to the company's, or movie's website. Which website is naturally a great channel for branding communications, gadgets selling, advertising about next episodes of the Ice Age saga....so please don't you bother to blind my blog....