Asher Ricard

Google Executives Convicted In Italy



Posted: Thursday, February 25, 2010

by Asher Ricard

In what is proving to be one of the most bizarre turn of events, three Google executives have been convicted in an Italian court over a video showing an autistic teenager being bullied.

Mind you, the executives were not the ones who posted the video. In essence, they are convicted for a video that someone else filmed and put on YouTube.

According to Italy, the Google employees were guilty of breaking Italian law by allowing the video to be posted online. The three employees, Peter Fleischer, David Drummond, who is Google's chief legal counsel, and George De Los Reyes, received suspended six-month sentences, while a fourth defendant, product manager Arvind Desikan, was acquitted. Take note that George De Los Reyas was Google's chief financial officer and no longer even works for them.

The convictions do not even fit the crime. None of these people were directly responsible for this video being put on YouTube.

The ramifications of this decision are endless. Lets just imaging every business owner being held liable for everything posted on their site. Talk about no longer having freedom of speech. Anything that could be construed as slander, even if it is not would have to be taken down. Can you imagine trying to police that?

But that is just it. Freedom of speech is an American freedom. The internet takes away all of those freedoms when it is going into other countries. How is the internet govern? Can sites headquartered in other countries really be held liable for what is seen in a different country? Who is going to enforce that?

Google says it has no plans to pull out of Italy. I don't know that I could be that nice. I think I would just block the country. It is easier then dealing with these trivial cases in my opinion or the endless amount of resources that will have to be spent to police uploads in the future.

Italy is also pursuing cases against net giants such as Yahoo and Facebook. I am curious to see how this will all play out since there is no central governing/policing agency over the internet. Do they want internet access in their own country blocked?

As for Google, I hope Italy sees the absurdity of these cases soon and overturns their decisions.

This Article has been viewed 435 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)
» left by Brendan McCarthy
 2 years 79 days ago.
7 fans.
Yes, some of their laws are really strange.
» left by Linda DeWitt
 2 years 77 days ago.
67 fans. Follow Linda DeWitt on twitter!
It will be interesting to see what comes out of all of this. I should think everyone would pull out of Italy. Then Italy would probably have a riot on their hands. Good article.
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