What if Wikipedia disappeared?

Dear reader,
at this time, the Italian language Wikipedia may be no longer able to continue providing the service that over the years was useful to you, and that you expected to have right now. As things stand, the page you want still exists and is only hidden, but the risk is that soon we will be forced by Law to actually delete it.

From Tuesday night until Thursday morning (it is now back online) Wikipedia Italy has not been available. The Italian chapter of Wikipedia issued a statement to explain that the decision was the result of a protest against the Wiretapping Bill, currently being debated in the Italian Parliament, which aims at regulating the publishing of wiretapped conversations from ongoing investigations, but that encroaches heavily on freedom of speech. . (Our current Prime Minister has been embarrassed by various leaks of wiretapped conversations, but he’s not the only one.)

The protest was specifically directed to paragraph 29 of the bill, stating that «For the Internet sites, including online versions of newspapers and magazines, the statements or corrections are published, with the same graphic characteristics, the same access methodology to the site and the same visibility of the news which they refer.». The proposal provided, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image (or pay a fine of 12,000 euros).

The protest was widly covered online and on the main Italian media. Reuters reports that groups of people gathered in front of the Parliament:

Wikipedia's move coincided with planned rallies in central Rome on Wednesday against the law, as parliament met to discuss an amendment which would curb Italian newspapers' right to publish police wiretaps during preliminary investigations.
Protesters gathered near parliament with their mouths taped shut. 

[...]Prime Minister Berlusconi, who began trying to toughen privacy laws soon after coming to power for a third term in 2008, says the restrictions on the media and websites are needed to ensure the rights of private citizens.
But journalist groups and other opponents accuse the government of scrambling to cover up corruption with laws that threaten basic freedom of expression.

While some (mostly non-Italian) users protested against a "political use" of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation issued a statement supporting the decision of the Italian section and founder Jimmy Wales called the proposed law "idiotic".

The protest may turn to be no more than a symbol: Italian lawyer and web expert Elvira Berlingieri published an in-depth analysis of the bill and argued that it is hard to think that paragraph 29 - though poorly written - may apply to Wikipedia:

It is not legally correct, in fact, to apply a special law in cases not covered: in order to apply the provision for corrections to a blog or a website you should assume that this site or blog could be considered "press." But if that were a possible equivalence, then the obligation to rectify already exists and would be the one to which the printed word has always been subject.

The last reports from the Parliamentary Committee currently discussing the law say that paragraph 29 has been modified and will now only refer to mainstream media and not to websites or blogs.
It is too soon to tell how the Wiretapping Bill will end up after all this changes and controversy, though.
And the output of this bill may create further debate on how information is regulated in Italy: while some Wikipedia supporters cheer up and consider this tentative change as a positive result of the shutdown, other observers point out that this is (yet) another way to state that, at least in Italy, mainstream media are being considered sources of news while online outlets are not.