ROME — While Americans fret about whether President-Elect Barack Obama will lead the country from center left or center right, Italy’s new president has made no bones about his right-of-center intentions. In fact, the G8 leader has let the world know that one of his first international pushes will be to “regulate the Internet.”While addressing Italian postal workers, long-time media baron, real estate and insurance tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi announced that he intends to use his presidency within the G8 group to move beyond previous forms of regulation.

According to Reuters, Berlusconi informed those assembled that “The G8 has as its task the regulation of financial markets… I think the next G8 can bring to the table a proposal for a regulation of the Internet.”

Although Berlusconi is not yet G8 president, his term will begin on January 1st, 2009. Each member country takes turns organizing and hosting G8 meetings, as well as setting its agendas. Berlusconi was G8 president in 2001, during which time the annual meeting in Genoa was disrupted by riots.

Although Berlusconi did not elaborate about what he means by “regulate the internet,” the comment inspired deep concern among Italian pundits, with The Register reporting that the left-wing L’Unita observing that “You can not say that it is not a disturbing proclamation, given that the only countries in the world where there are filters or restrictions against Internet are countries ruled by dictatorial regimes: those between China, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia.”

Berlusconi’s history of pressuring opponents into silence has inspired considerable controversy, leading The Economist to declare him not “fit to run Italy” and Italian bloggers to protest any attempts to clamp down on Internet content access. La Stampa reports that bloggers intend to display anti-Berlusconi banners on their sites.

Belusconi is currently in litigation with American critic Andrew Stille, whom he accuses of defamation.

Unfortunately for free speech advocates, the tone of industrialized nations has been supportive of declaring certain types of Internet content to be objectionable, with the UK both introducing new laws and breathing life into sometimes strange old ones in order to end access to online content it deems to be too extreme. Australia has poured enormous amounts of money into filters, each of which has been easily hacked by young tech enthusiasts.