Italian prosecutors are charging Google with privacy violations over a posting on Google’s Italian-language website of Italian youths teasing a student with learning disabilities. Google is arguing it is a search engine, not a newspaper and can’t possibly monitor everything on its site. -DB
International Herald Tribune
February 3, 2009
By Elisabetta Povoledo
MILAN – Four executives of Google went on trial Tuesday, accused of crimes stemming from the posting of a video on its Italian-language Web site in a case that could have wide-ranging implications.
Prosecutors in Milan charge that the Google officials violated Italian privacy laws by allowing the posting of a cellphone video in 2006 that showed four youths taunting a student with learning disabilities.
The officials did not handle the posting directly, marking the first time that charges had been brought against representatives of a user-generated site for hosting an image without the subject’s express approval, prosecutors said.
“What is at issue is whether or not privacy laws that apply to newspapers or to the radio also apply on the Web, or whether it is a sort of free port where anything goes,” said Alfredo Robledo, one of the prosecutors in Milan who brought the charges after two years of investigation. “We are raising the issue to show that there are holes in Italian legislation.”
The three-minute video, which was posted on the Italian Google video site, showed the youths in Turin ganging up on a classmate. The four were tried in a court for minors in Piedmont and were sentenced to community service.
Prosecutors say that the video was online for two months before it was removed. A lawyer for the Google executives said the video was removed six hours after they learned of it.
“It’s an important precedent, and opens a wide door on privacy issues and their application vis-à-vis new technologies,” said Guido Camera, the lawyer for Vividown, a Down syndrome advocacy group that has asked to be admitted as a civil plaintiff in the criminal procedure because the association is named in the video.
The hearing Tuesday was adjourned until Feb. 18 to allow the court to rule on this and other procedural issues.
Giuliano Pisapia, one of the defense lawyers, said Tuesday that it would be impossible for Google to monitor everything that appears on its video site.
“It is a principle that goes against freedom of expression, and is tantamount to censor,” he said. “Besides, Google is a search engine, not a newspaper.”
The defense is also arguing that Italian laws were not violated because the server is not based in Italy, but in the United States.
In a statement, Google said that bringing the case to court was wrong.
“It’s akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post,” the statement said. “What’s more, seeking to hold neutral platforms liable for content posted on them is a direct attack on a free, open Internet.”
The four executives are David Drummond, a Google senior vice president; George De Los Reyes, its former chief financial officer; Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy council; and Arvind Desikan, who was responsible for Google Video for Europe, according to court papers.