On Mon, 2001-12-10 at 21:56, Hong Feng wrote:
I'm pretty sure there is no obstacle for FSF Europe to distribute paper copies of this magazine. [...] As of now, one could coordinate with non profit Free Software organizations in Italy (ASSOLI) [...]
In Italy we can't distributed printed stuff so easily. The publisher (or importer) must deliver 4 copies to the police before being allowed to distirbute. And magazines (those published once every month/whatever) must have additional authorizations. [1]
well, if it is a state law to do so, then we have no other choice (it looks worse in Italy than in China --- in China, you could distribute any copies to anybody, police station never acts under this censorship...)
That law was done in 1939. So you can understand the goals that were behind it. No government changed it; the last one extended it in some way to electronic publications, the actual just ignored the results of a campaign aiming to reform it. Sometime I'm not so proud to be an italian.
Free press? Never heard of that in this part of the world.
I am glad to know you say so (actually I am proud of this)! Why not unite all of our community and try it now with Free Software Magazine?
In any case we (Assoli) can try to support the publication of the Magazine, accomplishing the law, but it will be a lot of burocracy ...
Ciao Simone