Apparantly , some Italian google executives have been sued for hosting Google in Italy, and allowing google to host a user-posted video where some school teens are bullying an autistic classmate. While the video is obviously terrible in and of itself, apparantly Italian internet laws are so old, Google is being held responsible.
"The case involves online videos showing an autistic boy being bullied by classmates in Turin, which were posted in 2006 on Google Video, an online video-sharing service that Google ran before its acquisition of YouTube.
Prosecutors charged that the videos violated Italian personal privacy protections. They said the clips were removed only after complaints from Vivi Down, an Italian organization representing people with Down syndrome, whose name was mentioned in the videos.
...
Google insists that under European Union law, video-sharing sites and other Internet companies are protected from liability for the content of material posted. But it is a gray area, according to legal experts.
The relevant E.U. law, which has been implemented in Italy, was adopted a decade ago, before user-generated content was the popular phenomenon it is today. While Internet service providers are clearly protected from so-called intermediate liability for the content they convey, the law does not specifically address user-generated content."
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for sticking it to the big corporate exec when they deserve it, but this is NOT google's fault. This is the fault of some punk kid whose parents should get sued... not google.
Full story can be found here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/technology/companies/25google.html
*sigh* More strangeness soon, I imagine...
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