Google employees charged over videos posted online - wtf

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Crazy decision by the Italians here - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010...ficial+Google+Blog)&utm_content=Google+Reader

In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved. In these rare but unpleasant cases, that's where our involvement would normally end.

But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees —David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. 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.

Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants — David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes — for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. All 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation. In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload.

Google employees are being charged for uploading some videos, which are disgusting, but they have nothing to do with them. They seem to be blaming the platform they are hosted on!

Weird?!
 
Not really.

You let people play on your property - you get done if they do something naughty.

If you can't monitor what happens it's still your problem.
 
If you provide a medium that allows people to post offensive videos, you really can't complain if someone does so and you get to carry the can - silly googlers.
 
If you provide a medium that allows people to post offensive videos, you really can't complain if someone does so and you get to carry the can - silly googlers.

That is easy to say but going by wiki, 20 hours of video are uploaded each minute, which is far more than can be humanly checked. Surely if they put warnings in place to say that offensive material is not allowed and they do remove it within hours, should they be blamed?
 
Although I do think it's a bit odd it makes sense in a way. Forum owners are responsible for the content on their forums, file hosters can get done for hoting illegal material so video sites can also be done for hosting material.
 
Although I do think it's a bit odd it makes sense in a way. Forum owners are responsible for the content on their forums, file hosters can get done for hoting illegal material so video sites can also be done for hosting material.

It is usually only if they support the content and do not follow legislation and remove the items.

This is not what google do, they do work with authorities and remove such content. It is totally ridiculous.
 
Hotwired, that makes sense. However in this case they are singling out individuals who helped resolve the issue instead of attacking the entire service. There are disclaimers about content filtering that help absolve services such as Google from stuff like this, though nothing can ever be perfect. Google should have been attacked and their corporate lawyers involved, not individuals.

If your kid trips someone else on your property and they break their arm and sue, are they suing your kid or the homeowner?
 
If your kid trips someone else on your property and they break their arm and sue, are they suing your kid or the homeowner?

what are they suing for.

You can't just sue. You have to prove that a foreseeable outcome was not mitigated.
something google and others mitigate by working with authorities and removing such items.
 
if it is possible for them to do so, why doesn't google simply remove its google video app from italian users so that they can neither upload nor view? that would be my reaction if I were google. replacing it with this message:

'We no longer offer this service to users in Italy, because the Italian legal system makes it unfeasible for us to do so'
 
What I want to know is how come Sony (or whichever camera manufacturer) hasnt been charged for allowing this to be filmed on one of their devices?

Stupid judgement.

not quite valid methinks, because recording it onto a video camera does not instantly make it accessible to anyone with an internet connection...not only that but they have no control over what people do with their device, Google could institute such control (not feasibly obv but theoretically)

(I disagree with the judgement btw)
 
not quite valid methinks, because recording it onto a video camera does not instantly make it accessible to anyone with an internet connection...

(I disagree with the judgement btw)

While I agree with what you've just said, surely without the camera the video would never be able to be uploaded in the first place... and I wasn't being too serious, more trying to point out the absurdity of the judgement.
 
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