A licence to upload would be required under the evil sounding "Romani decree", as labelled by the press.

The proposed law, which has been signed by Paolo Romani, the Berlusconi government's vice-minister of communications, would allow government control of audiovisual content on the web through a licensing system. Anyone wanting to upload videos to the Internet would need to get a licence from Italy's Ministry of Communication.

Everyone licensed to upload would become broadcasters, like a television station with all the legal obligations. The decree is aimed at giving the government unlimited power to implement new measures to protect copyright.

In addition to being completely wrongheaded as a means of controlling the Internet, it would also provide support for Mediaset in the copyright cases pending against YouTube. Of course, Mediaset is controlled by the family of Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

It is unfortunate that the law is supported by the Italian Society of Authors and Writers, which appears listed as one of the authors of the document, and the Italian Music Industry Federation (FIMI).

Yes, posting copyright material potentially harms their members. But restricting others by requiring them to obtain a license to post their own videos cuts all but big companies from doing so. Don't they realise that licences can be removed from their own members under the pretext of breaking the rules. Don't they realise free speech is threatened by a ham-fisted law?

The danger is other governments are watching for a way to control the Internet. Australia already has filters in place. Posting hosts such as YouTube are under attack by being made responsible for posts. If the Italian scheme is seen to work, expect more of the same.

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Canadians have an excuse to be TV couch potatoes given those cold, cold winters in the Great White North. Now it seems they have become a bit more active. Ipsos Reid, a survey agency, reported that for the first time since it began tracking media usage, Canadians are spending more time online than watching TV. That is 18.1 hours per week on the internet compared to 16.9 looking at television. Go figure.

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The tech world is swooning over Apple's release on April 3 of the iPad, a tablet touchscreen computer. The basic model will cost about $500, with the most decked out rendition going for $829. It looks like a bigger version of a iPod touchscreen, but is targeted at businesses, but of course those in the arts and publishing will find excuses for playing around with it. iPad crosses many markets, allowing users to watch video, listen to music, play games, web surf and read electronic books. One gusher is Computerworld's tech reporter Mike Elgan, who labels this the dawning of the 'iPad Era'.

"I think the iPad is the most important launch in Apple's history - bigger than the Mac, iPod or iPhone. More than that, I think it's the most important cultural phenomenon of this generation. It's bigger than technology," he says in a recent column. He predicts that everyone of all ages will use iPad for all tasks.

He adds: "But more important than that, I believe the iPad will become such a cultural phenomenon that it will become a symbol or an icon of the coming decade. Future generations might refer to this decade as the iPad Era."

Apple is forecast to sell Apple could sell as many as 10m iPads this year. Check out the hype at www.apple.com/ipad.

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If you are a Photoshop fan (I am) then you are also awaiting the announcement of CS5 on 12 April (the release on the market will come later). Sneek previews of the photo manipulation software are available with video demonstrations at http://blogs.adobe.com.

Of particular note, see the video on removing swimware, in which Katrin Eismann, a retoucher, shows off how Content-Aware Fill can save the mounds of time we spent using the clone tool to remove or change features on an image.

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