Italian Prosecutors Seek Prison Sentences For Google Execs

angry tapir writes "Milan prosecutors have sought prison sentences ranging from six months to one year for four Google executives accused of violating Italy's privacy laws over the posting of a video showing the bullying of a handicapped teenage boy. The prosecutor's request was backed up by a request by lawyers representing the Milan city council for €300,000 (US$452,000) in moral and material damages. The case concerns the posting on Google Video of a three-minute mobile-phone video showing a handicapped boy being tormented by his classmates in a Turin school."

Comments

I'm sure glad

[mandark1967]

that those Italian prosecutors are going after the really guilty parties instead of the little, misguided tykes who perpetrated the incident.

Re:I'm sure glad

[smitty777]

Also, what about the person that uploaded the video? They would seem to be the main culprit to me, not Google.

Re:I'm sure glad

[sznupi]

Not the only time in Italy - media empire of Berlusconi pointing fingers at external factors, the deal with crosses being obviously the fault of Strasburg and not a case of not following your own damn laws, season immigrants from new EU memberstates being put effectively into slavery because of their own fault of not being able to prevent it...it's always easier to look for blame abroad.

And when you do you actually get to win the popularity contest...

Re:I'm sure glad

[somersault]

In recent news, leaders of the BBC were jailed for showing footage of a warzone during a news report. Obviously, they must be entirely responsible for this war.

Also, it has just been discovered that if you hide a problem, it goes away.

Re:I'm sure glad

[Shin-LaC]

As stated in comments on the previous Slashdot post on the case, the perpetrators were already prosecuted in 2006.

Re:I'm sure glad

[grumpyman]

To further that argument, I think the main culprit is Al Gore, who invented the Internet. No?

I hope that the primary focus of the prosecution

[Interoperable]

was to punish the bullies (appropriately scaled to the age of the guilty parties)! The case against Google seems absurd in any case. It hinges on the fact that Google didn't remove the video after it was requested to. The reason was that the request was sent to the wrong address. Google may seem to be omniscient but if they didn't get the notice there is no rational case against them. In any case I doubt they're answerable to Italian law unless the prosecutors could prove to an American court that extradition is warranted.

Morons

[multisync]

Punish the kids who were doing the harassing. Google removed the video within a day, once someone actually bothered to contact them about it, and Google cooperated with Italian police:

The prosecutors had also failed to acknowledge Google's cooperation with the Italian police, Pisapia said. The bullying of the handicapped boy, which had been going on for two years, came to an end after Google identified the person responsible for posting the video and enabled the police to identify the boy's tormentors, he said.

Re:Morons

[Yvan256]

Once again, no good deed goes unpunished.

Peter Fleischer's blog on this...

[bahbar]

He's been commenting on the case itself a little bit here:
http://peterfleischer.blogspot.com/2009/11/ciao-italia.html
http://peterfleischer.blogspot.com/2009/11/today-in-milan.html
http://peterfleischer.blogspot.com/2009/11/european-law-on-hosting-platforms.html
This last one actually has law information in it.

A lesson to Google

[IndustrialComplex]

I hope this serves as a lesson to companies who seem to want the best of all worlds. I'm kind of glad that google is getting hit with this because it brings to light the problem with trying to cater to the demands of local governments. When Google began working with governments in foreign jurisdictions it opened the door to this type of activity.

Google would have a much more stable leg to stand on if they simply said 'We are a US company, we will follow US laws.' when China asked them to tailor GoogleChina to meet the party demands.

Similar to safe harbor protections when it comes to ISPs, if you 'fly the flag' of a specific country on the Internet, you are bound by that country's laws. That doesn't mean that the local governments can't block your service, but it should serve as protection when local governments attempt to apply their laws to a foreign company.

Re:A lesson to Google

[markus_baertschi]

I think it shows how Google lives the 'don't do evil' slogan. They try to be a good citizen everywhere. Unfortunately this is not easy, in Chine a good citizen does not talk about certain things, in the US you are not supposed to hide the same things. Sou you can not be a good citizen in both places at the same time. Google could choose not to be in China, but this would not help matters (it would be blocked by the great firewall).

Strike 2

[Rik Sweeney]

Strike 1

That's strike 2, Google. If you put one more foot wrong I'm changing my homepage over to Bing.

Lesson for Google

[SharpFang]

If anyone posts video of someone performing some illegal activity, delete it ASAP, don't tell anyone and sweep everything under the rug. The video was never there, you never saw anything and I'm sorry, Officer that I can't help you, am I free to go now?

At least that's what the court is trying to teach them.

Re:Lesson for Google

[markus_baertschi]

If their president is almost openly like that, drafting laws almost explicitly designed to stop his prosecution, why should other behave better ?

Re:Ironic

[Oscaro]

I don't know where you found this info, and I never heard anything about it (and I actually have born and live in Torino). Also there are no "cliffs" around Torino, and Torino has nevere been a citystate in ancient times: in fact it was born as a Roman military camp.

e-commerce directive say they go free

[lordholm]

Since Italy is in the EU, they are bound by the directive of e-commerse, especially articles 14 (hosting) and 15 (no obligation to monitor) are important:

Article 14 Hosting
1. Where an information society service is provided that consists of the storage of information provided by a recipient of the service, Member States shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for the information stored at the request of a recipient of the service, on condition that: (a) the provider does not have actual knowledge of illegal activity or information and, as regards claims for damages, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which the illegal activity or information is apparent; or (b) the provider, upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove or to disable access to the information.
2. Paragraph 1 shall not apply when the recipient of the service is acting under the authority or the control of the provider.
3. This Article shall not affect the possibility for a court or administrative authority, in accordance with Member States' legal systems, of requiring the service provider to terminate or prevent an infringement, nor does it affect the possibility for Member States of establishing procedures governing the removal or disabling of access to information.

Article 15 No general obligation to monitor
1. Member States shall not impose a general obligation on providers, when providing the services covered by Articles 12, 13 and 14, to monitor the information which they transmit or store, nor a general obligation actively to seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activity.
2. Member States may establish obligations for information society service providers promptly to inform the competent public authorities of alleged illegal activities undertaken or information provided by recipients of their service or obligations to communicate to the competent authorities, at their request, information enabling the identification of recipients of their service with whom they have storage agreements.

There is no discussion about it, they cannot be found guilty under EU legislation, and if Italy still sentences them, the Italian government can be dragged into the European court of justice, where they will most likely be found to be in violation of the e-commerce directive.

Take your place in line

[starfishsystems]

Google executives will have to take their place in line.

I plan to launch a similar action against these Italian politicians. After all, it was their country in which the crime took place. They stood by and permitted it to happen, didn't they?

To make matters worse, they haven't even responded to my letter demanding an apology. That's right. I sent it to Gino's Italian Deli in Montreal. It says "Italian Politicians" right on the envelope, so I know that it was addressed properly. If there was any doubt, it could have been forwarded to the Italian postal service.

There is no excuse. These people are criminals.

Media empire owned by a dictator

[thijsh]

There is no other word for the rule of Berlusconi than a smoothly veiled dictatorship...
An example of the abuse of his media empire: http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/11/10/italy-the-latest-fashion-%E2%80%93-blue-socks-against-berlusconi/
It sounds stupid, and it really is... but this is the only country in Europe where politicians can get away with smear campaigns, and only because this politician owns or influences most media in the country.

Something a little more scary is the immunity Berlusconi gave himself to prevent any convictions of his crimes... but that was ruled unconstitutional: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8295716.stm

Re:What is the deal here?

[canajin56]

As I recall, Google pulled the video within an hour of being notified it was even posted, and identified for police the IP address of the poster, allowing them to catch the actual bullies. The prosecutor is hoping to springboard into real politics by making a name for himself as the man who takes on big evil corporations, and the fact that they did everything right, and broke now laws, and cooperated with police extremely promptly, none of that matters.