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The contemporay technological developments have been redefining human communication, concurrently raising the question whether users of online services and various media platforms can cope with so much freedom. Thus, the Internet as a global medium opens new legal issues and poses new challenges in the field of media legislation. Information policy, and legislation must adequately respond to the challenges of the new digital age. New media pose a new challenge for law and values, not only in a speculative sense but also in a real procedural and human sense. In times of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), law should not turn a blind eye to the developments in the virtual space. The development of new digital environments and media platforms raises the question whether the legislation should be the same for all media, traditional and new ones alike. The first step in addressing this issue should be the provision of a broad and realistic definition of the concept of media, which will ensure the recognition of the new media. Secondly, media regulations and principles referring to the new media should be more flexible and less strict as compared to the traditional media (but only provisionally), which is more purposeful than turning a blind eye to the new media. Non-recognition and non-regulation of information dissemination via the Internet opens the possibility of causing much greater damage to the public interest.

This article focuses on recent trends in the Italian mass media. In broadcasting the first pirate stations challenged the RAI's monopoly in the first half of the 1970s. In the absence of a relevant law, chaos reigned, and gradually Fininvest, owned by Silvio Berlusconi, became the predominant protagonist in private television (in addition to being heavily involved in the media industry as a whole). The Constitutional Court repeatedly called for strict anti-trust measures. Finally, in 1990, parliament approved a new law which in fact merely confirmed the existing situation, i.e. the same company could control up to three national networks (in addition to having substantial interests in others). This law apparently contradicts the Constitutional Court's decisions. The article also analyses recent trends in the press and in the film industry, which, during the last decade, have also been subject to similar ownership concentration phenomena. In the words of a parliamentary commission `the current level of mass media concentration in Italy is now unparalleled in any other country with a market-based economy'.

The Mass Media Declaration approved by acclamation by 161 countries in 1978 is the only official statement on journalism ever passed at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The operative sections of the Declaration invoke access for journalists to news sources, and freedom to report, while calling for a "wider and better balanced dissemination of information." The title and content of the Declaration also set forth "fundamental principles" intended to enlist journalists in "strengthening peace and international understanding" and opposition to racism and incitement to war. These objectives are regarded by some western critics as threatening content control of the mass media. Some Soviet and Third World activists claim that this bland document has the force of international law. We reject this objective as insupportable. But we point out that western journalists have generally failed to distinguish between Third World pleas for greater communications facilities and the presumed threat to limit the freedom of the news media. Western journalists thereby inadvertently lend credence to the criticism of their performance, and lubricate the drive to give the Declaration the force of law.

"Dieser Artikel konzentriert sich auf neuere Trends in den Massenmedien Italiens. Im Rundfunkwesen haben die ersten Piratensender Anfang der 70er Jahre das Monopol von RAI herausgefordert. Wegen des Mangels an entsprechenden Gesetzen herrschte zunächst Chaos. Allmählich erreichte die Firma Fininvest - im Besitz von Silvio Berlusconi - eine marktbeherrschende Stellung im privaten Fernsehsektor neben einem beträchtlichen Anteil in den Massenmedien überhaupt. Das Verfassungsgericht hat wiederholt starke Antitrust-Maßnahmen gefordert. 1990 hat das Parlament endlich ein neues Gesetz verabschiedet, das in Wirklichkeit die faktische Situation bestätigte: insbesondere kann ein Konzern drei überregionale Netzwerke kontrollieren und Beteiligungen an anderen unterhalten. Das Gesetz scheint den Beschlüssen des Verfassungsgerichts zu widersprechen. Überdies untersucht der Artikel neuere Trends im Pressewesen und in der Filmindustrie, die im letzten Jahrzehnt von ähnlichen Konzentrationserscheinungen gekennzeichnet sind. Mit den Worten einer parlamentarischen Kommission '(ist) der gegenwärtige Konzentrationsgrad in den Massenmedien Italiens höher als in jedem anderen Land mit einer Marktwirtschaft'." (Autorenreferat)