Google case could set video precedents
p2pnet news view | Crime:- A court case in Italy involving four Google executives under criminal charges could set new rules for how video sharing websites operate, and how far they should go to control content, says the Financial Times.
Two company employees were accused of failing to check on content, said p2pnet almost a year ago, quoting Reuters, and going on:
“However, the two employees have become four and Italian prosecutors have ‘indicated’ they’ll press charges against them.”
According to the story, the four are: David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer; Peter Fleischer, its “top privacy executive”; George Reyes, former chief financial officer who’s “since retired from Google”; and, Arvind Desikan, “a senior product marketing manager,” all of whom are charged with criminal defamation against a disabled boy, and with breaching the Italian privacy code.
The case arose after a video of four teenagers beating and taunting a 17-year-old disabled boy in a classroom in Turin was posted on Google’s YouTube.
Italian prosecutor Francesco Cajani, “argued that Google should have acted to prevent the broadcast of the footage and that by failing to do so it breached the disabled boy’s privacy,” says the FT, adding:
“Google maintained that it removed the video as soon as the company became aware of it, and that the group had co-operated with investigators in identifying the four boys involved.
“Google said that ’seeking to hold neutral platforms liable for content posted on them is a direct attack on a free, open internet. We will continue to vigorously defend our employees in this prosecution’.”
June, 2009
Financial Times – Google executives face Milan trial, June 21, 2009
p2pnet - Google in trouble over Italian bullying video, July 28, 2008
Reuters – Italy opens probe into Google over bullying video, November 24, 2006
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June 22nd, 2009 at 11:19 am
” “Google said that ’seeking to hold neutral platforms liable for content posted on them is a direct attack on a free, open internet. We will continue to vigorously defend our employees in this prosecution’.”
At least they will defend this principle when the content is not claimed by a large corporate partner.
Those are pretty words.
Meaningless unless they are applied to everyone, equally
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Free and Open? neutral platforms?
Or is it free and open to be exploited to the extant allowable by the law under the guise of “free”?
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:23 am
At least they care to some extent about the freedom on the web.
They are trying to make sure that the messenger should not have to worry about what the packages contain.
What would happen to YouTube if one day there would be a message saying “We have been legally forced to verify that all the content we host are legal before we can make our service available again. A couple of hundred videos will be available by next week, and we will continue to verify that popular videos are legal and make them available. New videos could possibly be uploaded by the end of next year.”
YouTube would die.
And OneSwarm, etc, would explode in user activity (they have media preview, even for videos).
And remember that YouTube ain’t the #1 site I care about.
You know Twitter and it’s relationship with the Iranian people, and that delayed system update that would take hours? (They didn’t even want it to be down for a few hours if that delayed system update could help people)
You know every forum on the internet?
You know hard drive manufacturers?