
Serious threat to the web in Italy - alexandros
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/serious-threat-to-web-in-italy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FMKuf+%28Official+Google+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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niyazpk
Shooting the messenger, eh?

Why don't they convict the ISPs, Internet Cafe's or the Computer
Manufacturers?

They have the same responsibility as Google has on this issue.

~~~
yumraj
You forgot the camera (camcorder) manufacturer. After all, it was their
equipment that facilitated the so-called crime in the first place.

And, then, sue the god, for his/her creations did the crime.. And, if the god
can't be sued, well, sue the Pope.

Side note: The blog doesn't mention, but why did the Italians pick these 4
people. What is there connection, if any, to this whole episode?

~~~
oscardelben
Why do you use the term _the Italians_ as if all italians wanted this to
happen?

Unfortunately here in italy the vast majority of people don't know english so
they can't even be informed of what's happening outside the country.

~~~
yumraj
Sorry if I offended anyone, but that was not my intent.

My usage of "Italians" was just a common English shortening of "Italian
authorities" to "Italians" based on the context.

By "Italians" I did not mean Italian people, but just the Italian authorities,
that too specifically the ones involved in this case.

------
nickpp
I noticed that it is almost impossible to obey ALL laws all the time. Somehow,
somewhere there is a law I never heard about that I am breaking.

Why is this? Is it by design so that I am always culpable and can thus be
controlled/negotiated with?

Or is it just stupidity/contradictory laws, etc.

~~~
derwiki
I saw a really good TED talk where the speaker argued that we have far too
many laws right now: <http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_howard.html>

~~~
Groxx
One of the few useful ideas I read in Utopia stated that (paraphrased) it's
nuts to be bound by laws you cannot possibly comprehend within a year.

Makes a lot of sense to me, personally. Though I'll grant that won't happen,
it's an ideal to shoot for, instead of endlessly patching problems with laws
that noone can possibly comprehend the ramifications of due to the system's
complexity.

~~~
dnsworks
A year is a long time. If it took a year to comprehend all the laws that you
might be breaking, you're guaranteed to at least break some of them.

~~~
Groxx
This is as opposed to the lifetime+ of our current set of laws? I'm not saying
a year is a good number, just that it's a better goal to shoot for than we
currently have (more laws apparently == better).

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oscardelben
I'm ashamed of being italian. Also thepiratebay has been censored here. I'm
seriously looking to relocate in another country.

~~~
yumraj
Don't relocate, it's the easy way out, change the country.

Start with the politicians, the government and then the laws.

Last I checked, Italy was a democracy.

~~~
mattm
Let's see here:

Spend the next 20-30 years of your life trying to change the way institutions
do things and going up against people who want to keep the status quo because
it keeps them in power.

Or

Spend a few months preparing to move to another country that matches your
values.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

~~~
chadmalik
Right until your new chosen country does the same. If everyone does as you are
suggesting, pretty soon you will run out of options and every nation will be
the same.

~~~
jackowayed
No, what would happen if everyone did that is that a lot of people will say
"oh, <insert country here> is doing a really good job at maintaining freedom",
and so a bunch of freedom nuts move there and (we're assuming everyone does
it, remember) that'll be a large- and passionate-enough niche (they're
passionate enough to move for better freedom, remember) that they'll have
influence over the government and be able to keep it from happening.

Also, as much as we hate to admit it because it makes us feel insignificant,
"if everyone does it" is not a very good way to make decisions. Unless you
have a lot of influence over many, many other people, nobody else is going to
do it just because you did it.

------
weavejester
I'm wondering what the Italian authorities hope to gain by this. It's only a
matter of time before they suffer a high profile defeat in a higher court, if
not in Italy, than in the EU. Are they just trying to buy time, or haven't
they thought this through?

~~~
alexandros
Not everything is necessarily centrally planed. Perhaps a naive prosecutor
mistakenly pursuing something and trying to save face, perhaps some 'think of
the children' indignation, etc. The result however, is to demonstrate how out
of touch Italian law is with the Web.

I'm not grandstanding here, Greek law is also flawed, as is US law (e.g.
DMCA). It just never ceases to amaze me in how many ways national laws are out
of sync with the Web.

Perhaps it's a good thing in the long term though. By these blatantly idiotic
conclusions, it is plain for everyone to see that something in the reasoning
process is broken.

~~~
rms
It's also a good example of globalization working. No one country's law is
enough to stop the web.

~~~
dtby
I don't understand this line of reasoning. How would these convictions stop
the web? How will the reversal of these convictions keep the web from being
stopped? If it doesn't get reversed at the EU level does this mean that they
managed to stop the web? What if a similar conviction happened in Uzbekistan?

~~~
rms
To clarify, I think I first need to define globalization. I mean the current
world order where the wishes of all of the countries has someone become much
greater than any of the individual countries. On defining globalization, I
will quote the real rms: "...there are other kinds of globalization, the
globalization of cooperation and sharing knowledge". My real definition for
globalization is closer to world government, but those two words are not
nearly enough to describe the complexity of globalization.

I have a 3 hour lecture on DVD from a powerful Chinese CCP member/academic
talking mostly about globalization, I should really digitize it and post the
highlights sometime. If anyone wants to see this lecture, email me.

\--

The only country where a conviction like this would have been meaningful is in
the USA, because Google is from the USA and in some important ways the USA
owns the internet. Even if the conviction of the Google executives was upheld
at the EU level, it wouldn't do much more than cause Google to open up
divestment discussions with Europe, similar to their ongoing discussions with
China. Europe is not stupid enough to kick Google out, though China (and by
China I mean the rulers of the CCP, not the people of China) probably is that
stupid and evil.

By the way, though the Italian court system is clearly very flawed, I do give
them credit for being able to hold executives accountable for crimes committed
by the corporation.

------
davidedicillo
this might work as an answer to all those people who keep asking "why would
you leave a beautiful place like Italy??"

~~~
davidw
What's especially heartbreaking is that most of what's bad about Italy is
entirely self-inflicted, and quite possible, if not easy, to fix. Many of the
good things about Italy, however, are special, unique, and not at all easily
replicated elsewhere.

~~~
akadien
Like Ferraris.

~~~
davidw
* A _stunning_ variety of nature, from the snowy Dolomites to the north, to the sandy shores of Sicily, with a bit of everything in between... foggy plains, rolling hills, lakes, rivers forests, beaches, etc...

* Nearly as much cultural variety. I spent last weekend in Meran, which 100 years ago was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and is still mostly German speaking, with traditional Tirolean architecture. It's pretty much night-and-day with, say, Sicily, or the almost Greek looking bits of Puglia.

* A truly staggering amount of art and architecture that goes back 3000+ years, from Greek ruins in Sicily to, of course, the Romans, through the middle ages, and so on and so forth. This is really "fractal": you can see Rome and Venice and whatnot, but also see pretty interesting things in the smallest of regional towns.

* A generally pleasant climate.

* Good food. Really good.

* Beautiful girls:-)

Just off the top of my head.

~~~
brlewis
For a continual stream of photographic evidence of what David is talking
about, see <http://ourdoings.com/flapic/>

------
olliesaunders
It seems like every other day there are more examples of ill-conceived and
dangerous laws. It bothers me a lot.

------
hubb
"Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants -- David
Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes -- for failure to comply with the
Italian privacy code. All 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation."

is that last part a typo? or is my ignorance of legalese showing?

edit: ah, so apparently they were given a suspended sentence, but absolved of
the defamation part.

~~~
Super_Jambo
3 guilty of 'failure to comply with the Italian privacy code.'

0 guilty of 'criminal defamation'

Two separate charges.

~~~
Evgeny
What were they sentenced to, by the way? I didn't notice any mention of that.

Edit: found in the neighbor thread. "The three received a suspended six-month
sentence for the conviction on violating the youth's privacy."

~~~
Groxx
I wonder... did they? I'd bet the TOS / Privacy agreement prior to upload
would've mentioned something like "you are responsible for your content".

------
DanielBMarkham
Hey -- it's an old-fashioned political stick-up.

Don't be dense, Google. What they're telling you is that the right people need
to be paid-off or you're going to have more and more problems like this.

~~~
viraptor
Funny thing is that Google is quite capable of opposing a country like Italy.
They could simply cut all the traffic - search, documents, emails, g.apps,
everything. There are many people depending on G. for work every single day.
It's just not a sensible thing to do, financially. But if Italian prosecutors
start suing employees of google.it for example - who knows? I would risk
saying that Italy is less valuable and more annoying to Google right now, than
China ever was...

~~~
InclinedPlane
Yeah, I really hope google comes out throwing some strong punches at Italy
after this. The consequences of this ruling will have enormous chilling
effects on any social media company operating in Italy. If google was able,
eventually, to pass on China as a market based on standing up for its
principles then passing on Italy as a market should be a slam dunk.

~~~
roundsquare
As long as they go through all the proper channels first. Don't want anyone
complaining that they just wanted a press day. Unfortunately, this may take
sometime. However, I think it'll be worth it.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I think given this ruling there is a very strong case for Google to block
access from Italy to any of its sites that could run afoul of Italian privacy
law. That would include blogger, youtube, picasaweb, google docs, google
groups, wave, buzz, and possibly even gmail.

------
charlesju
I hope this was an isolated judge's opinion and not the final decision. Even
in America the justice system slips from time-to-time, but that's why there
are checks and balances so that decisions like this will have a chance to move
up the ladder and hopefully disappear at the higher levels of the justice
system.

------
badsectoracula
This reminds me when there was a site in Greece which was some sort of blog
aggregator for many other blogs. This site got in trouble (and closed, its
owner prosecuted, etc) when some other blog posted negative stuff about a
public person and that person decided to sue the aggregator.

~~~
tripa
It's happened in France as well, over year 2008. The aggregator was condemned
in February for 2500€, appealed and won in November.

------
robk
It wouldn't surprise me if Google ended commercial activity there for the
while (sales offices).

Also, this is certainly bad for david drummond. Having a conviction like this
as a lawyer surely must hurt your standing with the bar association in CA.

~~~
fierarul
I don't actually see why Google even bothered opening office in Italy. Italy
is part of the EU so they could easily use their Ireland office for invoicing
and everything else inside the EU.

Just as I don't think they have official offices in each US state they don't
need to have offices in each EU state.

They are just looking for trouble given the peculiarities of each state which
includes law and tax system but also gray stuff like corruption, political
pressure, etc.

------
jchrisa
I've got a blog post about why this might not be a bad thing here:

[http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/Imagine-
There...](http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/Imagine-There-s-No-
YouTube)

------
alexandros
What is interesting is that large corporations like google are taking on
national governments more and more like equals. First it was Google v. China,
now Google v. Italy. These are interesting times we live in...

~~~
andreyf
Hardly. So far, they have taken on one careerist prosecutor here.

------
mattjung
I don't understand why Google was not able to remove the video - which was one
of the most seen on the site - in time (means within few days instead of 2
months).

~~~
smanek
The Google blog says: _The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down
within hours of being notified by the Italian police._

What more can you reasonably expect them to do?

~~~
mattjung
How long would it have taken until such content had been removed at Hacker
News? I guess not more than 30 minutes. Two months = #fail. A simple flag-
feature would probably already do it... I hope Google draws the right
conclusion from this failure.

~~~
davidw
The right conclusion to draw is that doing business in Italy is a nightmare:

<http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/02/03/italy-vs-google>

~~~
mattjung
I disagree. The same conviction could have happened in any other European
country and very probably also in the United States. Any legal experts here?

~~~
Devilboy
That's just complete bullcrap. One of the reasons the DMCA exists in the US is
to protect companies like Google in exactly this type of situation. Many EU
countries have similar laws

------
viggity
According to the timesonline.co.uk article the video was online for a full
month before it was removed, and it was a top ranked video under "most
entertaining". I don't think this should have gone to trial, but I do think
its fair to say that Google should have done more. Does anyone believe they
only got one complaint after a month?

~~~
invisible
I think the likelihood that it was at the top of "most entertaining" for two
months is nil. I think the likelihood that it was on the site for 2 months and
the last 48 hours it was in the most entertaining section is high. It probably
got a total of 20-50 views before that, which may have resulted in 0
complaints given most people would just close the window.

------
tjogin
If anything, this is a serious threat to Italy's netizens. Certainly, the rest
of the world won't follow suit.

~~~
Groxx
We can hope. But with China censoring the internet to suit its political gain,
and with Australia trying to get Google to censor their searches too, and now
_this_ , it seems a lot of the world _is_ following suit.

------
oomkiller
Just black out the google page in italy until they overturn it, that will get
someone's attention.

------
InclinedPlane
And Italy adds itself to Iran, Venezuela, China, North Korea, much of the Arab
world, and Australia as countries who hate, fear, and wish to destroy the
internet and the horrible, horrible freedom it gives to individuals.

~~~
roundsquare
To be fair, a few idiots in the Itallian judicial system add themselves to
this list. Lets not paint the whole country with one brush.

------
Silhouette
While this doesn't sound like a good ruling and will presumably be overturned
later, I can't say I'm full of sympathy.

There has been an increasing trend in law to rely on blanket "safe harbour"
conditions when it comes to on-line activities. Those conditions act as a get
out of jail free card for big organisations, and I'm not sure that is healthy.
If you set up a service that can host content provided by others, and that
service is successful in large part because it enables people to break some
law (copyright, privacy, whatever), why _should_ you get a free pass? What you
are doing is _not_ then the same as a post office or phone provider, because
you are directly profiting and your business model is based in part on illegal
activities.

An extension of this idea is that several powerful corporations, Google among
them, have been pushing back the boundaries of the law concerning privacy,
personal data protection, intellectual property rights, defamation and so on,
as hard as they can. I am quite sure that _that_ is not a healthy trend.
Services like Google Groups and Google News are based on leeching the work of
others. Google Maps and Google Street View have serious privacy concerns, to
the extent that both have been partially blocked in several nations either by
law or just by large numbers of people turning out to physically block the
camera car from entering their village. Google Video/YouTube established
themselves based substantially on blatant copyright infringement. And then you
get things like the Buzz fiasco a few days ago.

All of this is done from behind a virtual shield where it is almost impossible
for anyone who is damaged by such actions to contact Google about it short of
filing a court action. The latter is prohibitively expensive in some
jurisdictions, notably including the US, in cases where the damage is not a
substantial direct financial cost that a court can award back, which basically
means the little guy can't stand up to the mighty corporation even in cases
where the corporation's behaviour is clearly unethical and/or illegal.

While I would certainly prefer to have robust laws implemented to protect
personal privacy and the like, and to see Google forced to comply with those
like anyone else, until that happens I half-welcome just about any non-violent
effort to check the Powers That Be and make them reconsider whether some of
the things they are trying to achieve are a step too far. Legal shenanigans
are a game Google likes, and turnabout is fair play.

~~~
mbreese
I'm not downvoting you because I think you make some good points, however, I
completely disagree with your characterization of safe harbor.

Safe harbor rules are what makes the internet of today work.

Today, content isn't just generated from large, powerful, corporations... it's
generated from us. For example, Hacker News is protected from any liability
this comment might have due to safe harbor rules. It's the reason YouTube can
exist. It's the reason why blogging services can exist. It's the reason
Twitter can exist (you can still argue whether or not it should though... ).
The point of safe harbor is to assign the liability for the content to the
creator, not the service that publishes it. The company that serves the
content is only liable after they've been notified. This is critical for
today's internet.

Any company that allows users to post content (messages, comments, videos,
anything) must have safe harbor protections to operate. If they didn't, then
they would be responsible for any liability for everything, so they'd have to
moderate every single comment, every single video, etc... Basically, this
would shut down the user-supplied content that rules the modern internet. What
we'd be left with is a computerized version of the one-way communications of
old-media.

That would be a bad thing.

Also, you're unnecessarily extending safe harbor protections to where they
don't exist. For example, Google Maps and privacy. This is Google's content.
They created it. They published it. And they are absolutely responsible for
making sure that they are compliant with any privacy regulations. This doesn't
fall under safe harbor at all.

Sure companies make mistakes with privacy, your example of Google Buzz is a
good one. However, don't confuse these issues with safe harbor. In this
specific case in Italy, it is safe harbor that is under attack. And that's a
bad thing for Italy.

~~~
loup-vaillant
You sound like we need YouTube to publish videos or that we need Blogger to
publish a blog. We don't. Well we do, but only because we have asymmetric
bandwidth, and no low-power, easy[1] to set up home server. The second we have
that is the second these platforms become obsolete. For many reasons, I would
very much like that.

About aggregation sites like Hacker News, you do have a strong point, though.

[1] I mean as easy as Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, Twitter… Any harder and it
won't work.

~~~
mbreese
_We don't. Well we do_

I agree... :) it would be nice for all of us to be able to "publish"
ourselves... but for the most part, even if we did have better low-power home
servers and enough bandwidth to serve the content, most people won't be able /
willing to set it up. So, I think in general, the mass-public will be stuck
with the Bloggers and YouTubes of the world.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Can't you imagine a home server which is _already_ set up?

------
dustingetz
I would absolutely LOVE to read the italian judge's comments.

------
jacquesm
earlier thread on the same subject:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1147620>

------
sliverstorm
I find it interesting the objections begin and end with 'it would be
impossible to review all content'. Not that I want that, but someone could
probably figure out a way.

Why does no one bring up the fact that it's completely subjective? What one
person finds offensive is completely different from another person. The
internet will suddenly consist only of kittens and puppies in an effort by
companies to avoid suits, and then someone will decide kittens and puppies are
offensive too.

(I understand Italy isn't seeking specifically to ban things that are simply
offensive, but that's the direction we'd go just seconds after letting a suit
like this one go through)

------
Confusion
The whole thing is so ridiculous that I expect something else is behind it.
Given Italy's track record with corruption, could it be that Google is being
punished for refusing to pay up?

------
banana
Well, if google wants to do business in italy, they may have to obey italian
law...

~~~
DanBlake
This isn't a issue of italian law. By all accounts, they shouldn't have been
prosecuted, never mind being found guilty. Its a issue of freedom on the web.

~~~
andreyf
Its absolutely an issue of Italian law - why do you think they keep arguing
and appealing in Italian courts?

~~~
dejb
They'll appeal to EU courts as a next move if they aren't successful in the
Italian courts. Some would argue that, morally, issues of information freedom
transcend those of the state and practically that Italy cannot go down the
path of trying to shut out the information age without hurting themselves
badly. Italian law can not change reality.

------
mo34
Google is fully responsible - the fact is that they prefer not to police their
networks for inoffensive content because that policy ultimately drives traffic
and revenue to their company; they should be forced to review videos BEFORE
they are published. Shame on them for allowing this filth.

~~~
sp332
20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. That means 1200 people
reviewing 24/7, making sure that the reviewer speaks the language(s) to watch
for profanity.

~~~
davidw
Nice statistic - where'd you get it from, out of curiousity?

~~~
sp332
<http://www.youtube.com/t/fact_sheet>

