While Italy’s laws are a lot different than ours and there’s a lot of European bad will toward Google, imagine if this inspires new laws here. Impossible? The music and movie industries are trying hard to get other country’s extreme anti-piracy laws here. Pay the right politicians the right amount of money and…
On Wednesday an Italian judge delivered a stunning verdict in a long standing case against Google. The ruling sentenced three top Google executives — David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal officer; George Reyes, former chief financial officer; and Peter Fleischer, chief privacy counsel — to a prison sentence of six months for violating privacy laws. A fourth employee, marketing executive Arvind Desikan, was found not guilty.
[…]
Despite the fact that the verdicts is largely a symbolic gesture, it represents a serious threat to the current way the internet is structured. To understand this, you must explore the case first.Google describes the incident that started the case, writing, “In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate.”
Vivi Down Association, an advocacy group for people with Downs syndrome, complained about the video a couple months later to Italian authorities. Google went out of its way to try to cooperate with them. It took down the video immediately. […] Despite that cooperation, Italian prosecutors decided to take the bizarre step of next charging a handful of Google executives for “allowing” the video to be uploaded.
[…]
The stunning verdict sets an alarming precedent. The decision, if upheld, threatens the freedom of having blogs, video sharing sites, internet hosting, Wiki pages, news sites with comments sections and virtually any other kind of user generated or user interactive content, for fear of criminal prosecution if users misbehave.
Yeah, the premise of the ruling is that the internet needs to be monitored by corporate gatekeepers.
But nobody takes Italy’s court seriously, compromised as it has been by Berlusconi.
Wow. That is scary. The concept that every company where users can contribute could be responsible for their content is insane. It would mean Google are responsible for the content of every result for every search they host. Twitter would be responsible for every public tweet.
It is effectively a pretty strong step towards the silencing of free speech.
Can’t they just charge a screening fee to Italian YouTube submitters? I don’t think there are very many valuable Italian YouTube videos and this might up the quality a bit.
Italians can continue to pay Google a babysitting fee until they rejoin the rest of the Internet and grow up.
It’s simple. Google, do not service IP addresses from Italy.F*** them.
So, a party with no standing brought suit in a court with no jurisdiction and received an unenforceable verdict in absentia against the three corporate schmoes all over yet another school prank video…
While I haven’t seen the video and can’t comment on its content, it sounds like some stupid high school kids were being mean to a classmate and recorded their behavior, subsequently uploading the video for all the world to see how stupid they were. And four guys 6000 miles away are charged with a crime for this?
I’ve heard of kangaroo courts, but what is the word in Italian for kangaroo? Or for that matter, ‘horses ass’?
Of course we have this same type of thing going on here in the US as well…not to worry, Obama will stamp out all the meanness…
Will this set a legal precedent in the EU?
Will Italy issue arrest warrants to Interpol?
Or, as #4 points out, will Google just block Italy to all Google sites, and wait for the Italian citizens to riot, drag the judge out into the street and beat him?
I didn’t have the time to read the whole article but the the core question seems to be:
Was the image of this boy broadcast without his consent?
I assume the autisic boy did not or could not give his consent to be broadcast and, thus, should not have been broadcast.
Is there some place in the TOS where the uploaders testify that everyone in the video consented to be broadcast?
If they lied on the TOS, then doesn’t this give Google some legal cover?
If there is NOT this declaratoin in the TOS, then Google probably didn’t do enough to assure that privacy laws where complied with.
Uncle Dave,
All Europe is doing is pointing out the obvious. It doesn’t matter that Google became a monopoly because of their competitions incompetence.
Just because the US apparently doesn’t have a problem with monopolies doesn’t mean they have to be forced to follow suit.
properly after all Italy is responsible the biggest fascist music corp of them all the ifpi.
The ifpi was created before the out break of ww2 during the rain of that bugger you know who i mean.
Whats more so ashamed of their origins (properly lead to bad press) they tried to Erases Evidence Of Fascist Roots For 75th Anniversary.
Trust ifpi are very nasty buggers.
you can find out more here
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-erases-evidence-of-fascist-roots-for-75th-anniversary-080408/
@Benjamin
That’s the idea.
All broadcast media, and all but one newspaper, in Italy is owned by the italian prime minister.
Any other media that might want to report on the government is going to get stopped.
This case is just easier to get through the courts than that of a political blogger – but the law would apply to them as well.
It’s countries like these that make you realize that the USA isn’t so totally screwed up (by comparison).
… You could have your own charges levied against some italian officials for assaulting intelligence. 6 months in the looney bin… should they ever set foot on American soil.
HA! Taking advice from Italian judges is even worse than taking financial advice from Cramer. I just wish I could do something to help Italians on this one (I mean helping Italy to remove the charges) Seriously … Milan Court ?
And we thought that America was corrupt, at least not as much “in your face” as over there. I guess I’ll never catch the “explicit mafia pride” concept evershowing in their elite class.
They refuse to really police their own Mafia.Like most of Europe they have decided to use their courts to cash in on the internet big boys.Its the new form of extortion.I always get the feeling with Italy they are always one step away from putting in another Mussolini.I notice that Kadafi is always a welcomed guest because he hires all the Italian good looking babes to be his security. I’d love for him to open up his big fat mouth and have his own security kick his ass in public.I have always hoped that the world would kick in to keep some of the great Italian art treasures up, but nobody really wants to because the government is such a bunch of corrupt goons.
Isn’t the local Italian ISP part of this conspiracy?
Should the ‘internet’ allow them to connect and carry on their criminal activities?
Who is is responsible for their actions?
Imagine a world without the internet!
Yea, looks bad. Italian people should fight back.
What do you think of the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t69uZ-MXQKc
It seems they are privatizing and stealing Finlands groundwter supplies. Hunger striker is fighting against it in front of the parliament.
Anybody that thinks that Italy has anything to do with the real world; 1. Has never been there. 2. Has never read a newspaper article about there.
Don’t get me wrong I love the Italians, history, food, clothes, politics, cars, etc… But by no means is this the nation to be comparing the rest of the world to.
‘Sup uncle Dave? Running short on conspiracy theories and political fear mongering?
Isn’t this an example of the Achillies’ heel of a One World Government?
It is doomed because the stupid are bound to wrap stupid laws around the not stupid, fracturing the system.
They should also prosecute the video camera company for “allowing” the video to be made. Same logic as this case. Fridiculous.
You guys should be cheering just like you cheer when some court somewhere tries to file charges against Henry Kissinger or George Bush.
If this was about protecting the rights of the autistic child who suffered from this then the Italian courts and police should have gone after the jerkwad schoolmates and their parents.
Robert Heinlein: “Kill all the lawyers.”
Kissinger and Bush have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
Google execs? Not so much.
#22 MikeZ, say what you want about Bush Presidency (either one since you paired him with Nobel Peace Prize recipient Henry Kissinger). A disagreement on politics with the likes of you does not a war criminal make. Come back when you earn your Nobel Peace Prize.
Judges make silly decisions in cases involving technology all the time.
Judges make silly decisions about everything all the time. And they get overruled. That’s what will happen here.
Get used to it. It is going to happen a lot more often.
Some day there will be a “Killing Fields” type movie about the US invasion of Iraq. It won’t be made by Hollywood.
Oh yes, I am so eager to get my Nobel peace prize, so that I can be in the esteemed company of murderers like Kissinger, Arafat, and Obama.
Yes, Obama. Now that he and his attorney general have demonstrated complicity with the war crimes of the past administration, they too are war criminals.
The Nobel committee can take their shiny metal and shove it. It means the opposite of what it says.