Yesterday three Google executives were convicted in Italy of privacy violations. What did they do? They “allowed” some Italian teenagers to upload an awful video of an autistic kid being tormented, and didn't pull it down quickly enough. What's “quickly enough”? The court didn't say. How fast did Google pull it down? It depends on whose story you want to believe, but Google says they pulled it down within three hours of the first complaint they received.
Google will, of course, appeal this conviction (see their official blog post). It seems completely absurd to me, akin to holding UPS responsible because someone packed an awful video in a box and shipped it via UPS. If companies like Google actually became liable in many countries for the content uploaded by Internet users, the inevitable result would be that all the wonderful, free services like Google video would go away, or would require payment ‐ for those companies would have to decide between hiring armies of censors or simply dropping the problematic line of business.
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