Four Google Officials Facing Charges In Italy For Errant Video

mikesd81 writes to tell us that four Google employees may be facing charges of defamation and failure to control personal data simply because they didn't remove a video of a boy with Down's Syndrome being harassed and eventually hit over the head with a box of tissue, from Google Video. The video was posted in September of 2006 and was removed by Google within a day of receiving the initial complaints, but apparently that isn't fast enough. "Google maintains charges against the employees are unwarranted, Pancini said. Europe's E-commerce Directive exempts service providers from prescreening content before it is publicly posted, he said. Also, the video was technically uploaded to a Google server in the US, not in Italy, Pancini said. 'It was a terrible video,' Pancini said, adding that Google is concerned about the case's impact on censorship on the Internet. The defendants include David C. Drummond, a Google senior vice president, corporate development and chief legal officer. Pancini said Drummond did paperwork to create Google Italy, but has never lived in the country."

Comments

Prosecutors in Italy are stupid...

[fabrica64]

You may not know it but many prosecutors here in Italy are well known for being quite stupid and just trying to appear on newspapers. Laws in Italy are sometimes so complicated that they can justify any kind of "crime"

In case you never saw a mafioso...

[orzetto]

That was a comment that reeks Mafia all the way. Sure, some prosecutors are silly like there are silly people everywhere, but this kind of generalisation is typical of corrupt politicians who accuse prosecutors going after them of being politically motivated, as appearing in the press were the main aspiration of prosecutors (in case you did not know: we do not elect prosecutors nor judges here, so being known among the populace is no career advantage). There is much more money and career to be made by keeping quiet and pandering to illegal interests, as Corrado Carnevale exemplifies.

As for the specific case, I'd like to point out that in the Italian system felonies, once reported, must always be investigated and prosecuted, no matter the opinion of the prosecutor; it is a way of reducing arbitrary decisions and IMHO it is overall a Good Thing. As the article says, the decision to hold trial has not been made yet, and the chance that the prosecutor will ask for an archiving is not as small as you Americans may think; since all reported felonies must be investigated, dropping one is not a mark of incompetence on someone's career.

If I remember correctly, in this specific instance it was former justice minister Clemente Mastella, leader of a corruption-ridden micro-party and currently in political disgrace (the two things are unfortunately unrelated...) that was most vocal in calling for a ban on Youtube and Google video when the video surfaced, of course never suggesting that the people who uploaded the video and performed the assault should be investigated themselves.

In fact, I have no idea about what happened to the perpetrators. Surely I did not read nor hear anything on Italian media. It seems that all the fuss was about the thing being recorded and broadcast, instead of the crime itself.