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The Italian judiciary places Google on the bench

Has the end of the web 2.0 arrived? According to the worried reactions of Google towards the sentence that last week condemned three of its executives in Italy to six months of prison (suspended sentence), the danger is real.

Luca Tancredi | 3 March 2010


Photo: Esparta  Palma
On the 8th of September 2006, a group of adolescents from an institute in Turin hung a gruesome video on Youtube where two boys were beating up another boy suffering from a serious syndrome of autism (the one who recorded the video was another friend of the three). After two months (in which the controversial video succeeded with 5,500 views and 800 comments, amongst 'funny' videos ’), before the press started talking about the case, Google removed this shocking content of its website. "The video was totally reprehensible and we withdrew it a few hours after we were notified by the Italian police", said Matt Sucherman, vice president and legal deputy of Google for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
 
The company of Palo Alto added: "We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading the video, who was later sentenced to 10 months of community service by a court of Turin, as did several others of his friends who were also involved. Google did everything in its power in a situation of this kind".

Accusations towards Google's leaders follow two directions: defamation and breach of the law on privacy. The disabled child's family had withdrawn the complaint against the American colossus after the conviction of the adolescents. By contrast, the association for the protection of children affected with Down syndrome, Vivi Down, who had also taken action in this case (it was a civil party in the process), decided to continue the trial.

Judge Oscar Magi rejected that Google, by the mere fact of offering hospitality to the defamatory video in the Youtube page, were complicit in the libel. There has not been "the principle that seeks a legal obligation for preventive control of everything that is hung on the network", explained relieved the defence of the multinational firm, led by Giuliano Pisapia, a former independent MP for the left party Rifondazione Comunista.
 
What is left of the web 2.0 if privacy breaches were attributed to the supplier and not to the users?  However, the judge sentenced the supplier for breach of the strict Italian law on privacy, whose major driver was the jurist Stefano Rodotà. Still, the motivations of this case issue are still missing (in Italy, the judge has 90 days to provide a writ). Therefore, it is very difficult to comment on the outcome without knowing the details of legal reasoning that has led the judiciary to consider Google guilty.

Despite this uncertainty, tempers have been heating up a lot: the condemned say to be "outraged" and envision a "dangerous precedent" against freedom of the network, something akin to Chinese censorship. The ambassador of the United States rhetorically referred to the speech of the secretary of state, Clinton, against China: “A free Internet is a human right of integrated nature that must be protected in the free societies. Although all nations must protect themselves against abuse, the existence of offensive material should not be an excuse to violate this fundamental right".

The lawyer Guido Sforza, president of the Institute of innovation policies, uses a a very appropriate example to describe what happened: "It is as if the railway companies had to respond to breaches of the law on privacy if they left travellers, maybe aloud, talk about facts or events which may jeopardize the privacy of thirds. The railway companies, of course, earn a business with the transportation of its passengers. However, it is excessive to assume that they are responsible for injuries to privacy caused by their travellers".

So for the moment it can be assumed that the sentence could refer to the fact that Google, in its rules of employment, is not sufficiently explicit with its privacy rules (for example, the authorization of another person present in a video or photo is imposed).

Although, as the monthly Wired  highlights, in the  service conditions the user "acknowledges that all information (such as data files, written text, computer software, music, sound files or other sounds, photographs, videos or images) it has access to through its use of services is the sole responsibility of the person who has originated such content”. It could then briefly be about a formal error of Google, which could be fixed by simply adding a few lines to the conditions of service.

Users or suppliers?

Are we, as the English would say, before a classic storm in a teacup? A lack of motivation of the sentence still is not clear. According to some observers, judges could consider, at least in this case, not to implement the directive on electronic commerce, i.e., the irresponsibility of the vendor to the activities that users perform with their services.

In fact, just the themes relating to privacy are anticipated as exceptions. But this is the key issue: what is left of the web 2.0 if the protection of the privacy of all individuals potentially damaged by the material posted on the network is attributed to the supplier and not the user?
 
In this sense, Stefano Rodotà observes in an interview: "If the sentence is based on the fact that Google has not removed the video with an offensive behaviour, it would be enough with the proper application of existing rules, involving no censorship of the network control". Every minute, only on YouTube alone, 20 hours of videos are posted.

A DIFFERENT INTERNET Clearly, as Marco Pancini, head of Google Italy said, "if blogs, Facebook, Youtube were considered responsible for monitoring each video, it would mean the end of the Internet as we know it today." Privacy and respect for the dignity of people are unwavering principles.

However, as the digital magazine Punto informatico states "to transform the network we know into a great television where the contents (as happened a while ago) are produced only subject on the brokers who can be rely on" it would be a retrograde step that would not benefit anyone.

The challenge is to find the right balance between activity, potentiality and freedom of the web 2.0 and the protection of privacy and of the weakest. If the fourth power-Deadline had been run today, perhaps Ed Hutcheson-Humphrey Bogart would have concluded the movie with, "That's the web, baby. The web. And there's nothing you can do about it".

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