Angel_F in Piazza Navona, fighting for blogs

Angel and Derrick

In Italy, a new law imposes strict conditions for bloggers, such as defining incredibly high fines for people not correcting stuff on their online publications, and enormous amounts of bureaucracy. Thus practically making free speech on the web too risky, to costly, too hard, cumbersome… a bureaucrat’s dream come true: censorship through fines and forms

A big event has been organized today in Rome’s Piazza Navona where hudreds of bloggers, journalists, politicians, intellectuals and other people of any shape and sizes gathered to protest.

Among these was Derrick de Kerckhove, who met his little digital child, Angel_F, to discuss problems, scenarios and possibilities for the future of the network and for people’s rights and freedom.

As you might know, Angel_F is an ongoing art performance in which a young Artificial Intelligence, son of prof. de Kerchove, takes action, first online and, then, in the physical world, on issues ranging from digital rights, to new economy business models, new sexualities, contemporary approaches to identity.

Angel_F has been the first digital being to officially speak at the Internet Governance Forum, the United Nations’ organization for the definition of a bill of rights and to promote global network freedom and accessibility.