Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal - Charles Darwin
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Google's appeal in Italy is a blow for freedom
THE CONVICTION in Italy of a trio of Google executives is a blow against common sense and Internet freedom.
The ruling, which saw three Google bosses charged with trampling individual privacy, came about after a video of a bullying incident was posted on the firm's Italian Google Video website. Although that is a terrible thing to have happened, many people think that the court's ruling goes against common sense and is an example of the erosion of online freedom. Google is appealing the decision, which we think was wrong and incredibly stupid and could set a very bad precedent for all firms that provide access to user generated content.
Jon Fell of the legal firm Pinsent Masons said that the case should never have happened under European laws, specifically the EU E-Commerce Directive, which "protects service providers from liability for material that they neither create nor monitor but simply store or pass on to users of their service". Fell added, "The Italian ruling could threaten the operation of that exemption." Remarkably however, it did go to court, and the Italian judge forgot all about this part of European law.
Earlier this month Chad Hurley, co-founder and chief executive at Youtube, wrote, "When we registered the Youtube domain on February 14, 2005, we set out to create a place where anyone with a video camera and an Internet connection could share a story with the world. Five years into it, we're as committed as ever to the core beliefs and principles that guided YouTube's creation."
But few people would want to watch a video of a boy with Down's Syndrome being humiliated, and we suspect that being an enabler for this sort of abuse was far from Hurley's mind half a decade ago.
Indeed, this week Google said, "The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved. In these rare but unpleasant cases, that's where our involvement would normally end." However, end it did not.
Four Google execs were indicted by a pubic prosecutor in Milan for "criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code". Ultimately three were convicted on the privacy infringement counts, while they were all found not guilty on the defamation charges.
"In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload. We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question. Throughout this long process, they have displayed admirable grace and fortitude. It is outrageous that they have been subjected to a trial at all," said Matt Sucherman, vice president and deputy general counsel for Google in Europe etc.
He added that the firm is "deeply troubled by this conviction for another equally important reason," explaining, "It attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming "
"If sites like Blogger, Youtube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them - every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video - then the web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear."
It is hard to think of a workable solution to the problem, other than the convention that currently exists, but that the Milanese judge decided to ignore. Users moderate online content, to a greater or lesser degree, and flag for removal any item that is inappropriate to viewers. If Google had to vet each video that went online, or each blogger post, or every photo uploaded to a Picasa folder, it would have to employ thousands of monkeys on thousands of computers just to give each new post the non-opposable thumbs up or thumbs down.
According to Youtube's own factsheet there are millions of videos on the site. "People are watching hundreds of millions of videos a day on Youtube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube", it says.
Scanning all of this media would create an industry in its own right, and the web, which has revolutionised everything from friendships to news reporting, would lose all its realtime relevancy, and worst still, firms like Google would be accused of censorship, or for taking on a Big Brother type role, where it is not wanted.
Not everything that Google does is right, but here we think it is doing all it can. We'll follow its appeal with interest. µ
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The judge's position is from fantasy-land. It reads like the impossible nonsense that comes out of California.
What if Google were to file and endless stream of cases against members of the Italian government and every other company doing business in Italy since they must all be guilty of every crime committed by everyone working in their organizations?
First of all, Italian Law is not based on past decision made by judges, like in Common Law, but on Codes that implies that every judicial case must be covered by one law or another, otherwise a new law is required and the Parliament does it.
This is in reply to those imaging strange consequences from the application of this sentence.
Second, in Italy as I think in all the western civilization, there is personal responsibility from the journalist to the publisher, through the Editor in chief in matter of Media. Google is seen as a publisher by Italian law, not just as a simple mean by which data are passed through. Indeed google video is a publishing service and the fact that there is no restriction on the material that can be posted doesn't change the fact that the publisher is always responsible. Probably Internet has changed things, but not yet the Italian Law.
On top of that, I would like to know from the superior civilizations if someone has ever paid in your countries for the "wrong" statements about WMD in Iraq made by your governments and by your so respected media. That makes sense about what you consider right, wrong and moreover your opinion about personal responsibility. Bye
His reasoning is too stupid for words.
Let me give some samples:
1) A kitchen-knife-manufacturer should be pout in jail if some idiot kills somebody with it?
2) Phone company must be put in jail because you listen to porn?
3) Microsoft put behind bars because you use it to upload to You-tube?
4) Nokia put in jail because it's used to shoot the nasty video?
Get real, just because you provide a technology doesn't mean you are guilty.
All the technology was designed with a different way of use, to do us all good.
The abusers should be punished, not the creators of these products.
However, I do believe that people that sell/manufacture guns should be put behind bars if they are sold to the public.
As those products are designed to harm people with intent.
Im not talking about the trend of trampling over freedom and indvidual rights, though that certainly is disturbing enough. (And W: its *stupid* to distinguish between the rights of individuals and those of corporations - if a bad precedent is set, we *all* suffer.)
Im talking about the trend for (usually chickensh!t) lawsuits to end in an obviously-bad decision that leaves you wondering what the hell the court could have been *on*?
One could almost be forgiven for thinking that it is almost as if they deliberately nobble the original outcome, so that they all get paid again when it goes through on the inevitable appeal.
Not implyin nothin, just sayin.
Yet another rational, logical article explaining why the judge is wrong. The ruling probably had nothing to do with rationality and more to do with corruption, scared traditional media and bribed officials. Seen in that light the ruling makes perfect sense.
google has a fair old pile of moneys, unemployment is north of 10%. so, tbh:
"it would have to employ thousands of monkeys on thousands of computers just to give each new post the non-opposable thumbs up or thumbs down."
doesn't sound such a bad thing, as a job it's not as bad as flipping burgers?
You can expect nothing else from a country under Il Duce II, who owns not only the judiciary but nearly 100 per cent of the print and electronic "news" media and whose petulance at not controlling Google is making itself evident.
Ethiopia is next.
If Italy is still too immature to use such technology and services, let us take it away and they can remain backwards.
@Min-woo Kim
Drugs are bad mm'kay
@Tony
Google helped officials to find out who posted the video and later prosecuted. So it wasn't an anonymous posting.
But it does indicate several prevalent trends in our world today:
1) The refusal to take responsibility for one's own actions.
2) The acceptance of shifting personal responsibility or the actions of others to an innocent third party.
Which results in the notion that it is proper that someone like Joe Schoen (CEO of U-Haul) should be held responsible for the actions of Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma City bomber) since Timothy McVeigh used a U-Haul to construct, transport and detonate the bomb.
Or, case in point, the notion that one or more CEO's of a service provider are responsible for the actions of others.
Oh NOW we have to worry about freedom suddenly, now that a big corporation becomes the victim instead of all of us, like the wonderful freedom every youtube user is familiar with where they remove the sound because a song plays on the background, or where something is flagged 18+ because there's a kiss between 2 girls and the religious fanatics throw a fit.
Hell people have had content removed they created and owned and was 100% of themselves without any 3rd party material just because someone claimed it was copyright protected, when it was clear it wasn't if you looked, but appeals land on deaf ears.
And you can go on for days with examples.
But NOW we have to suddenly care because the ones with the control and money get a taste of their own medicine eh, so bloody typical.
But why should the poor bullied victim have no right to dignity while Google allows the perpetrators to post anonymously?
Google should just shut down any IP with an Italian origin.
I am not surprised at all this happened in Italy of all places.