Italian Scallion

Another blast hot off the presses:

An Italian court (by which I mean a court in Italy, not one in the U.S. with an Italian judge) has sentenced a man to two-plus years in jail for posting nude pictures of an ex-girlfriend on the Internet (see Italian man jailed for emailing nude photos of ex-lover). So what brings this story to a blog on defamation? At first glance, this would seem to be a simple case of the related (but distinct) matter of invasion of privacy. However, one of the charges in the case was "aggravated defamation." Yes, that is indeed a criminal charge in Italy, one that carries the weight of the state's power to incarcerate. In fact, contrary to the free speech-leaning laws of the United States, many countries around the world prosecute defamation as a crime (and here's the bizarro kicker: particularly against public officials).

In the Italian case, the crime went beyond the mere posting of pictures. Far beyond that, the defendant "created a Web site that appeared to show his ex-girlfriend offering sexual favors and erotic games, with her phone number also on display." Okay, the phone number is not defamatory (if it's her real number), but the web site's false implication that the girlfriend was a willing participant in this, and was essentially a prostitute, clearly falls into the ballpark of defamation.

If this case had occurred in the United States (and there have been several such incidents here), jail time may not have been as likely, but a fat civil judgment would almost certainly have followed (and deservedly so). Of course, circumstances matter. For example, in 2005, a Canadian teen faced child porn charges for posting nude pictures of his ex-girlfriend (she was reportedly fifteen when the photos were taken). In 2006, A Wausau man was charged with identity theft for actions remarkably similar to the Italian case - in this case, posting photos to a faux MySpace account. The article says nude photos, but since those would almost instantly get deleted from MySpace, I'm guessing they were merely racy enough to raise hackles. And in 2007, a Macomb
man (and a local Mitt Romney campaign chair) was charged with "unlawful posting of a message on the Internet and using a computer to commit a crime" for again carrying out that sort of activity.

Kind of makes you wonder, why are women ever willing to pose nude for pictures for guys who turn out to be the kind who will post those on the internet with a false come-hither websites?