Italia.it, the portal supposedly conceived to enhance tourism to Italy, has been closed. It may be good or bad news, but we Italians could tell better when we will file the annual tax return. Reportedly it has been a financial black hole, the main feature of which has been that of being able to consume some 45 million euro without the blink of an eye.
Now the website is timed out, not even a "goodbye" page.
By the way, the website is closed, but Italy is still open for business -- and tourism -- in case you wondered. Don't be mislead!
Revised to cover some more press reports: now in addition to WSJ we have Groklaw, Robert Weir, CBR online, Punto Informatico (Italian) and Mimmo Cosenza (Italian).
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) runs another article written by Charles Forelle, who already wrote a story on 30th August, with a balanced and impartial view. The article sports some lines of mine, gathered during a chat with the author.
Following to an uprise of customers -- including my humble self -- against the use of proprietary technology and platform dependent (browser + OS), in spite of the Internet spirit and the indications of WAI, RAI has sent a mass email, which is shown below (in Italian, sorry, I have no time to do the translation).
The title makes sense in Italian, and refers to a recent news published by the authoritative Italian IT electronic magazine Punto informatico. It elaborates on the recent update of the RAI's website. RAI, as you may know, is the state-owned TV broadcaster in Italy, and it has a Service Agreement with the Italian Goverment, because it is deemed to be a public service. Moreover, anybody who has a television set (or even a PC screen) must pay a yearly subscription irrespective of him/her/it ever watching a single minute of the broadcast in a year.
