Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Tiscali SpA, an Italian Internet provider, said parliament’s plan to crack down on what it defines as criminal content on the Web risks limiting freedom of expression.

Italy’s Senate on Feb. 5 passed a bill to block Web content that incites or justifies criminal behavior after the Italian press gave publicity to fan groups supporting convicted Sicilian Mafia bosses on Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social- networking site.

The bill, if converted into law, would give the Interior Ministry the power to order Internet providers, including Tiscali, Fastweb SpA, Telecom Italia SpA and Vodafone Group Plc, to remove content deemed criminal within 24 hours or face a fine of as much as 250,000 euros ($319,250). Prosecutors must identify criminal content and alert the ministry, the measure says.

“Freedom of expression is a delicate issue,” Carlo Mannoni, Tiscali’s director of public and legal affairs, said in an interview. “It’s difficult to establish whether opinions published on Facebook or on blogs constitute a crime.”

Internet providers already cooperate with authorities in blocking sites advocating pedophilia, where there is no question that the material is criminal, Mannoni said.

Too Blunt

Spokesmen for both Facebook and Google Inc., the owner of video Web site YouTube, have criticized the Italian measure for being too blunt. Internet providers can’t block individual pages on Web sites, and so the risk is that entire platforms will be blacked out in order to avoid paying the fine, Marco Pancini, European Public Policy Counsel for Google said last week.

The legislation is “akin to shutting down the country’s entire railroad network because of some objectionable graffiti in one train station,” Debbie Frost, a Facebook spokeswoman, said in an e-mail last week.

Spokesmen for FastWeb, Vodafone, and Telecom Italia declined to comment for this story.

Tiscali said that the most efficient way of dealing with potentially criminal content on sites like Facebook would be to notify Web site owners about the content.

“We think that the blocking of access to sites must be the last resort,” Mannoni said. “First the Web sites should be called into action.”

Italian Senator Gianpiero D’Alia, who sponsored the bill, said that the aim of his legislation is not to block access to entire Web sites including Facebook or YouTube, but to uphold Italian laws already applied to the printed word also to the Internet, preferably by removing individual pages. The measure does not limit freedom of speech, he said.

Open to Change

“As long as the same result is reached, I’m absolutely willing to change the technical aspects of the bill,” D’Alia said today in an interview. “The Internet provider has to be the focus of the law when the Web site has its headquarters outside of the country, where Italian authorities have no jurisdiction.”

D’Alia, who is Sicilian, said that he was motivated to write the bill after reading about Facebook fan groups glorifying Corleone-born mafia bosses Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, who have been convicted of dozens of homicides and are serving multiple life prison sentences.

While a fan group invoking “sainthood” for Provenzano -- with 492 members -- was still posted today, Facebook also has a group hailing as heroes Palermo prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were assassinated on the orders of Riina after successfully prosecuting hundreds of mobsters. That group has 387,455 fans.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose allies in the Senate helped pass the measure, owns Mediaset SpA, the country’s largest private broadcaster. Mediaset in July said it sued YouTube and Google for illegally distributing the television company’s content, seeking “at least” 500 million euros ($638 million) in damages.

The Internet legislation was inserted as an amendment to a bill aimed at cracking down on crime. The measure still must pass the Chamber of Deputies without being changed to become law. Debate on the bill in the Chamber has yet to begin.

To contact the reporter on this story: Steve Scherer in Rome at scherer@bloomberg.net. Chiara Remondini in Milan at cremondini@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 16, 2009 07:42 EST