But is a strike really the way to go? Because it seems to me that the bloggers, as a group, are missing the most important element of a strike: economic influence. Bloggers aren’t exactly autoworkers. Industries don’t depend on bloggers showing up to work each day in order to avoid crippling economic losses. Heck, as the BBC article points out, Italians barely use the Internet: “More than half the population has no web access and one source puts average usage at just two hours a week.” That being the case, a bloggers’ strike is unlikely even to be noticeable to the Italian public. Really, the Italian bloggers’ strike reminds me of nothing so much as the South Park episode where Canada goes on strike, to “show the world how bad things would be without it.” (source)
The entire post is worth reading. The strike is due to proposed “right of reply” law being considered by the Italian parliament. This is the kind of regulation which would be clearly prohibited by the First Amendment if they tried it here. See Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974)
