Despite the subhead ("Wales & co. take Italian Wikipedia dark"), Jimmy Wales didn't initiate this. It was the volunteers who run the Italian Wikipedia. Wales expressed support after the fact, as did the Wikimedia Foundation.
Looks like the Italian Mafia is trying to control what can and cannot exist on the Wikipedia. Wikipedia is doing exactly the right thing, two things, exposing the ramifications of the legislation, and pointing a finger at organized crime trying to silence opposition. I expect stuff like this in North Korea, not Italy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Mafia
The Mafia has little to do with it, as far as I can tell. It's Berlusconi and company, and while they may have some ties to the Mafia, it's certainly not a direct command/control type of thing. I would respectfully submit that you're writing something that is quite inaccurate due to little knowledge of the actual situation in Italy.
That's not to belay the gravity of the situation and the general mess that Italy's politics are in, but to lay the whole thing at the feet of the Mafia is simply barking up the wrong tree.
And the curious thing he tells: North Korea now has a surge in a small businesses (who of course bribe the locals to exist), but no mafia. No organized crime. Crime is low.
In most of the rest of the world crime would explode under such conditions (it did in ex-USSR after it reverted from planned economy), but in NK - it didn't, for some reason.
How in the world can you say there is no organized crime in North Korea? The entire government is a case study in organized crime and worse! The reason there is no "mafia" is because they're all in the government, or they're dead.
Organized crime is a term with defined meaning, so you can't have "organized crime and worse", like you can't have, e.g., "preemptive multitasking and worse".
And the thing denoted by that specific term, NK doesn't have.
Same reason why there was very little crime for many years in China when The Party ruled the country with iron fist.
Laws are written by people in power -- be it dictatorship or democracy, the stronger the ruling class (represented by government, police/military and judiciary system), the harder to conduct criminal activities.
When a criminal activity gains enough support, it will be legalized, like marijuana and prostitution.
