Google: Italian Conviction of Employees Threatens Entire Internet
Three Google employees have been convicted in an Italian court because of a video none of them had a hand in filming or uploading to Google Video. Today, Google announced intentions to fight the ruling, which it says has grave implications for the future of free speech and the Internet itself.
The story started in 2006 when students in a school in Italy bullied an autistic classmate, then uploaded video of the bullying to Google Video, the company's original video site before acquiring YouTube. It remained up until Italian police notified Google, at which point Google took down the video, "within hours of being notified," according to Matt Sucherman, Google VP and Deputy General Counsel. Google even helped police find the person who uploaded the video, who was later prosecuted and sentenced to community service.
It sounds like an open and shut case, with Google doing its part to help, and yet the story takes an alarming left turn. A public prosecutor in Milan indicted four Google employees for criminal defamation and failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. Sucherman emphasized on the Google company blog today that these four employees – David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes – had no involvement with the video, whatsoever.
"They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it," Sucherman said. "None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed."
That didn't stop an Italian judge from convicting three of the four Google employees for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. The one silver lining in all of this is that all four were found not guilty of criminal defamation.
The ruling has shocked Google not only because the defendants were not involved with the video, but because of the implications this ruling has for the entire Internet.
Sucherman explained the slippery slope this ruling creates:
"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. The belief, rightly in our opinion, was that a notice and take down regime of this kind would help creativity flourish and support free speech while protecting personal privacy. If that principle is swept aside and 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."
Naturally, Google plans to appeal the ruling.
