Conviction of Google Executives in Italy Sets Dangerous Precedent
Some insensitive teens from a school in Turin, Italy picked on an autistic schoolmate, filmed themselves doing this disgraceful act and posted the video online – this was back in 2006. The video was uploaded to Google Video and was available for a few hours. When the Italian police notified Google, the video was taken down. Google even worked with the authorities to find out who uploaded the video.
The Court of Turin gave the person who uploaded the video a sentence of 10 months community service. The same sentence was handed to other teens that were involved in the incident. You would think that it all stopped here. Oh no, the public prosecutor in Milan decided to charge 3 Google employees (mainly David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer) and 1 former Google employee (George Reyes who left Google in 2008) with criminal defamation and failure to comply with the Italian privacy code.
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“To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed,” explained VP and Deputy General Counsel, Matt Sucherman.
Earlier this week David Drummond, Peter Fleischer, and George Reyes were found guilty to charges of failure to comply with the Italian privacy code and they were handed six-month suspended sentences. This sets a dangerous precedent. The court of law found Google employees criminally responsible for something the users did. The person who committed the crime should be punished, mainly the person who films and uploads content – NOT the employees of a hosting platform. It’s like saying the ISP (Internet Service Provider) is guilty of copyright infringement because the users share pirated content online – sorry, had a TPB (The Pirate Bay) flashback for a moment. Perhaps the fact that a court of law decided to impose a blockade on TPB had something to do with it.
“We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question. But we are deeply troubled by this conviction for another equally important reason. 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. European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence,” added Matt Sucherman.
According to International Outreach Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Danny O’Brien, the court’s decision poses a threat to the freedom of the web. It the intermediary, such as Google or whoever hosts your site, can be charged and accused for something a user has done, then they’ll have to prescreen everything that gets posted online. “The tools for free speech that everyone uses on the Net would grind to a halt,” said O’Brien.
Some insensitive teens from a school in Turin, Italy picked on an autistic schoolmate, filmed themselves doing this disgraceful act and posted the video online – this was back in 2006. The video was uploaded to Google Video and was available for a few hours. When the Italian police notified Google, the video was taken down. Google even worked with the authorities to find out who uploaded the video.