Editing Defamation (section)

===Italy===
In Italy, there used to be different crimes against honor. The crime of injury (Article 594 of the Penal Code) referred to the act of offending someone's honor in their presence and was punishable with up to six months in prison or a fine of up to €516.<!-- the word "determined" is ambiguous/incomprehensible: If the offence referred to the attribution of a determined fact and was committed before many persons, the penalties were doubled.--> The crime of defamation (Article 595, Penal Code) refers to any other situation involving offending one's reputation before many persons, and is punishable with a penalty of up to a year in prison or up to €1,032 in fine, doubled to up to two years in prison or a fine of €2,065 if the offence consists in the attribution of a determined fact. When the offence happens by the means of the press or by any other means of publicity, or in a public demonstration, the penalty is of imprisonment from six months to three years, or a fine of at least €516. Both of them were {{lang|it|a querela di parte}} crimes, that is, the victim had the right of choosing, in any moment, to stop the criminal prosecution by withdrawing the {{lang|it|querela}} (a formal complaint), or even prosecute the fact only with a civil action with no {{lang|it|querela}} and therefore no criminal prosecution at all. Beginning from 15 January 2016, injury is no longer a crime but a tort, while defamation is still considered a crime like before.<ref>{{cite web |title=Dei delitti contro la persona. Libro II, Titolo XII |url=https://www.altalex.com/documents/news/2014/10/28/dei-delitti-contro-la-persona |website=AltaLex |date=22 June 2018 |access-date=27 May 2020 |language=it}}</ref>

Article 31 of the Penal Code establishes that crimes committed with [[Malfeasance in office|abuse of power]] or with abuse of a profession or [[art]], or with the violation of a duty inherent to that profession or art, lead to the additional penalty of a temporary [[Ban (law)|ban]] in the exercise of that profession or art. Therefore, journalists convicted of libel may be banned from exercising their profession.{{sfn |OSCE Report |2005 |p=79 |loc=item 8}}<ref>{{in lang|it}} [http://www.altalex.com/index.php?idnot=2005 Italian Penal Code] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150317123316/http://www.altalex.com/index.php?idnot=2005 |date=17 March 2015 }}, Article 31.</ref> Deliberately false accusations of defamation, as with any other crime, lead to the crime of {{lang|it|[[calunnia]]}} ("[[calumny]]", Article 368, Penal Code), which, under the Italian legal system, is defined as the crime of falsely accusing, before the authorities, a person of a crime they did not commit. As to the trial, judgment on the legality of the evidence fades into its relevance.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Buonomo|first1=Giampiero|title=Commento alla decisione della Corte europea dei diritti dell'uomo di ricevibilità del ricorso n. 48898/99|language=it|journal=Diritto&Giustizia Edizione Online|date=2001|url=https://www.questia.com/projects#!/project/89289653|access-date=2016-03-17|archive-date=2019-12-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191211140818/https://www.questia.com/projects#!/project/89289653|url-status=dead}}</ref>