Three Google employees convicted by Italian government

Back in 2006, a video was uploaded to Google Video that depicted several school kids harassing and bullying an autistic classmate. Hours later, the Italian police notified Google of this video, and the search-engine giant immediately took it down. Google then worked with the Italian police to find out who uploaded the video, and that person and several other classmates involved were sentenced to ten months of community service. The story, however, does not end there.

David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (Google employees), were indicted by a local prosecutor in Italy. The reason? “[C]riminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code.” Although all four were found not guilty for criminal defamation, three of the four (David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes) were convicted for not complying with the Italian privacy code.

What does this mean though? Essentially, it means that these employees at Google Video were held responsible for the content that was uploaded to their servers. That’s right. Employees that had nothing to do with neither the actions nor the recording of the video were convicted merely because they work Google Video. Simply outrageous.

Google made the following statement to Facebook users:

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. 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.

Google is not letting this ride and is looking to appeal the case.

What do you think?

Source: Google Facebook