An Italian court has found three Google executives guilty of privacy violations for allowing a video to be published that shows an autistic teenager being bullied.
The three executives, Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer, Chief Legal Officer David Drummond and former Google Italy board member George De Los Reyes received suspended six-month sentences, while a fourth defendant, Product Manager Arvind Desikan, was acquitted.
The prosecution in the case argued that Google broke Italian privacy laws by not seeking the permission of all involved parties before the video was permitted to go online. Google, meanwhile, has noted that decision is patently absurd with respect to common sense.
“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,” said Matt Sucherman, Google VP and Deputy General Counsel for the EMEA region. “None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video’s existence until after it was removed.”
“In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload. We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question,” Sucherman continued.
Sucherman also noted that the ruling of the Milan court does not concur with the conventions of the European Union, of which Italy is a member.
“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,” he said. “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.”
Such a ruling sets a chilling precedent, which suggests that hosts are broadly responsible for the content uploaded to their site. This contravenes numerous multi-national agreements which absolves hosts of responsibility, provided they comply promptly with takedown requests.
While it is unlikely that the case will be concluded as it has begun, Google has vowed to appeal the decision on principle, saying that many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits brought by the Internet could disappear if hosts were suddenly responsible for vetting all user content.
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