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Google Privacy Counsel Facing Criminal Charges
ProfJonathan writes "According to a story in the IAPP's Privacy Advisor, Google's Paris-based global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, is facing criminal charges in Italy for defamation based upon a user's posting of a video to Google Video. Mr. Fleischer was on his way to the University of Milan for a speaking engagement when he was met by Italian law enforcement officials. As with the 1997 case of Compuserve's Felix Somm and the 2006 arrest in Texas of BetOnSportsUK's CEO during a layover on a trip to Costa Rica, this case once again highlights the risks faced by executives and employees of online companies whose activities may be legal and protected in their own countries, but illegal elsewhere in the world. Troubling, and worth watching."
No kidding.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
... to remove something like that.
I know this is my opinion on how hasty one ought be, but its not like Google was condoning the act or promoting the video. It seems that they were not immediately aware, and once made aware, moved quickly to make things right.
Whats the problem here? Do we all have a duty to right the wrongs of others in nanoseconds if those wrongs are somehow involved in our own publicly accessible properties? What about offensive graffiti? What about belligerent racism on a myspace comments section?
What if Italy has had a terrorist in its borders for more than 24 hours? Ought we hold them accountable for harboring terrorism due to lack of rapid response?
Che cazzo, Italia.
First of all, this sort of prosecution is likely to be immensely counterproductive. What kind of businessperson would want to travel to Italy when they prosecute individuals for supervisory responsibility of departments that have made a diligent, good faith effort to comply with the local laws from 10,000 miles away?
In addition, the modern conception of legal jurisdiction is all screwed up. Traditionally, jurisdiction comes with the territory. Physical presence in the jurisdiction is required when an essential part of the crime is committed. That is why, for example, states cannot force companies who do not have a physical presence in their state to collect sales tax on online purchases for them. The idea that you can prosecute somebody for an ordinary crime when all the relevant actions occurred outside your physical jurisdiction is a very bad precedent.
So rather than arresting visiting Google executives, if Italy feels so strongly about this, why not just shut down Google's local operations (if any), or create a national firewall and filter Google at the border? Or require ISPs to filter their entries from local DNS servers? Or threaten to do so unless Google pays some civil fine?
That's actually a pretty simple case. German law clearly states, in what cases it applies to actions performed in other countries. Nazi propaganda isn't one of them.
What if I'm an anti-Chinese blogger that catches the ire of someone in the Chinese government... Worse, what if my words cause economic harm to China--bad for them but great for my blog... They put out an arrest warrant for me for "defaming"... Now, while I wouldn't fear extradition from the US over my freedom of speech, does this mean that I'm in danger of being extradited to China should I travel to a country that has a liberal extradition treaty with China? Sure sounds like it...
I agree with another poster--it's time for some basic "global laws." It's too bad the UN is too gridlocked and useless to prevent situations like these from happening...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
The US *DOES* suffer from businesses that avoid our borders due to the patriot act alone. Most businesses are not excited about opening all their data to our government on merit of it crossing a U.S. boundary alone.
It makes you wonder how much data enters "the U.S." without ever being near it. Would make for a good conspiracy theory, minus the made up stuff.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
Just because various countries are sovereign states doesn't mean it's inappropriate to criticize them if they're run by hard-right authoritarians (or hard-left authoritarians, for that matter).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
A huge proportion of censorship of, for example, literary works, was done by elected governments---Ireland's government, which has been democratic since its independence, is pretty notorious for their treatment of James Joyce's works, for example. That doesn't make it not government censorship.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Whoever uploaded the video, I would think would be the provider of the content, while having Google as providing a service that allows it's users to share their videos.
No. I disagree strongly here. Providing 'generic webspace' or even 'video hosting' should qualify as provider of a service, but something like youtube or google video is, in my opinion, clearly a different case.
Youtube and Google Video are branded sites that they have COMPLETE control and discretion over. They decide how it looks, what they'll accept, they decide what advertising is on the site, it is THEIR site. Not yours.
While a given video itself might be yours, they aren't merely hosting it for you. They are providing the end-to-end user experience in a branded manner that they exercise total control over.
Users are given a complete google or youtube branded site that is managed and controlled by them. They allow you to upload videos -- but they decide what they accept, what it looks like, how users use it, everything.
When you visit my site, you have no idea who is providing me the service, unless I decide to put their name up there or something or you go digging at the technical level. With Youtube or Google Video ... its their site, not mine. I can upload them my video, and they may or may not choose to accept it and publish it or not.
Saying they are a 'service provider' instead of a 'content provider' is as ridiculous as an art magazine that publishes photos sent in by readers claiming that they aren't responsible for any child pornography in their last issue because they just provide a publishing 'service'. That might hold if readers were publishing their own magazines, and they were just printing what the readers submitted... but if the photos are published in their trademarked google magazine, then they are responsible for the content.