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Google Italy Execs Convicted Over YouTube Bullying Video
FTWinston writes "Three Italian Google executives have been convicted of privacy violations in Italy over the contents of a YouTube video showing a boy with Downs syndrome being bullied — despite the fact that the video was removed as soon as it was brought to their attention, and that Google assisted the authorities in locating those who posted it. Prosecutors argued that Google should have sought the consent of all parties involved with the video before allowing it to go online. Quite how they were meant to achieve this is another matter."
Google has responded by saying this is a Serious threat to the web.
Don't the Italians have an appeals process?
In the worst case, Google could go to the European Court of Justice since the European E-Commerce directive "says that "technical intermediaries" – web content hosts – are not liable for bad content but the creators or video posters are."
See this Euractiv article for more.
The video was NOT removed as soon as it was brought to Google's attention.
According to the prosecutors the video remained online for two months even though web users had already asked for it to be taken down.
It is also worth mentioning that Google execs will not serve jail time because in Italy sentences of less than three years are commuted for people without criminal records.
I dunno. The "immediately" part only applies if you start counting from the first letter-from-lawyer. If you count from when Google Italy actually received the first written complaint about the video, then it took more than 2 MONTHS before anything happened. (and there's no indication anything would've happened at all, if not for the lawyer-attention)
No, GP is right. The reason we have stupid laws is because we have stupid and/or corrupt politicians. The judge in this case isn't necessarily either stupid or corrupt - quite often an astute judge who recognises a stupid law will set up a trial case (preferably by finding against someone big enough to take care of themselves like Google) which they know will almost certainly go to appeal. Once it goes to appeal, any precedent set is more binding on the lower courts...
...Except that italy's judiciary (as the judiciary of most of the world, except the former british empire) does not operate under common law, but civil law. Under civil law, precedents do not matter, only the law (as written by the legislative branch) and its interpretation matter.