
Google fights to keep four executives out of prison over video clip - jacquesm
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6855178.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=4947818
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WilliamLP
The real culprits are the makers of the video camera, for not requiring any
recorded video to be sent to a moderator first before storing a single bit.

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robk
Hilarious and ridiculous. Google could legitimately afford to pull out of all
business in Italy, close all offices and reject traffic from IP addresses
originating in Italy. It'd be interesting to see that as a precedent.

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michaelkeenan
I am not a lawyer and I really have no idea how these things work...but
wouldn't Google's stockholders sue the executives if they made a decision like
that? It would surely harm their profit and the stock price, so wouldn't it be
a breach of fiduciary duty?

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radu_floricica
Tongue in cheek as it was, this suggestion would most likely improve google
profits long term.

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hristov
The way things are in Berlusconi's Italy, I would not be surprised if this
case is being kept alive by his friends to benefit his media companies which
are undoubtedly pissed off at youtube.

Imagine if Rupert Murdoch became president of the US. That is, in a nutshell,
the situation with Berluscony and Italy.

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pstuart
Murdoch did by proxy for 8 years. It wasn't pretty.

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enobrev
It's hard to consider a free and public internet service provider as a
"content provider." In the case of television and print, this makes sense as
the people providing the content are under the employ of the organizations
distributing said content. This is definitely not the case for content-driven
sites based upon public submission.

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jrockway
This is the end of user-created content in Italy.

Fortunately other countries are not this irrational. Today.

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jacquesm
It's totally nuts.

24 hours is probably a little on the sluggish side for a response, but still
well within the accepted normal response time for a takedown notice (or a
cease and desist).

I really fail to see how the executives can be directly held personally
responsible for this, and how it could possibly amount to 3 years in jail
_and_ a fine if they're found guilty.

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noverloop
if they are guilty, they'll just go to a higher court and so on until they are
allowed to go to the European courts where they certainly would win the case.
It might take a few years to get there tough

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weavejester
That's my thought too. There might be political pressure in Italy to hinder
competition to traditional media, but once this goes to the European courts,
it's only going to go in Google's favour.

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tlrobinson
YouTube isn't profitable yet, is it? Google should just block Italy from
accessing YouTube for awhile.

(That said, I have no idea if YouTube is at all popular in Italy. This could
backfire if another video site fills it's place)

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dtf
Crazy. What on earth are Vivi Down hoping to achieve?

EDIT: ok, it appears they want Google Italia to switch to premoderation.

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jacquesm
As if that's even remotely feasible.

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dschobel
Of course it is. It will far bit of money and man power but it's not
infeasible by any stretch of the imagination.

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jacquesm
Feasible = economically feasible. According to some youtube stats on average
every minute 10 hours of video is uploaded, that means that you'd have to have
people screening 2 manyears of video _every_ day, that translates if you take
into account three shifts of workers to about 2000 ftes.

If one of those happens to be slacking on the job when that privacy invading
video comes by you are _still_ open to a lawsuit, and now you have a much
bigger problem liability wise because by screening you took responsibility for
the content.

That 10 hours every minute is a november 2006 figure, no idea what the current
amount is.

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dschobel
First of all, videos originating in Italy would be a substantially smaller
subset of the global figures so I don't believe the task is so
incomprehensibly vast as you may think.

Second, I think the legal complaint here is that there is no _attempt_ at
screening the content until it has already been published.

I obviously don't agree with it, but it's what's being contested by the
plaintiffs. And I think just showing you have safe-guards in place would show
a proper intent and meet a standard of reasonable prudence.

But back to the technical issue of screening.

The solution is easy. Drop the realtime requirement. Say:

"hey, sorry Italians, we have to screen everything, we've got 100 people
working on it around the clock and your video will get uploaded in two week's
time. We'll email you when it's ready."

It'll make youtube less attractive, sure, but every other video publisher
(vimeo, justin.tv, et al) would have to do the same thing so all in all, the
courts will be happy, the italian users will have a diminished service, and
the world will spin on.

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jacquesm
From some other pages about this case:

(italics mine):

"Prosecutors say they _are aware_ Google cannot screen all videos, but
maintain the company didn't have _enough_ automatic filters in place as well
as warnings to users on privacy and copyright laws. They also say Google
didn't have _enough_ workers assigned to its Italian service in order to react
quickly to videos flagged as inappropriate by viewers."

So, they already know screening isn't feasible, for the rest it's really only
about a matter of degree, and that should carry jail terms ?

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dschobel
I'm not defending the prosecution's legal position, only your claim that it
would be infeasible to screen the content.

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jacquesm
You're entitled to your opinion that it's feasible.

Just as I'm entitled to mine, and it seems to be shared by Google, and the
prosecution in this case.

Of course that is not a guarantee that I'm right.

But let's just say that maybe for 5 years or so I operated an office with
people screening live video and because of that I'm all too aware of how
fallible that is. You'd have to screen double, have an open channel between
your screeners and the uploaders, and you'd need positive identification of
everybody in every video uploaded.

And our screening parameters were a lot less strict than what google/youtube
would have to operate under in order for this to be done so that in the future
this could not have happened.

For one, any video that has a person in it could be construed as a breach of
privacy, so now you have to figure out who that person is, maybe ask their
permission and so on.

The burden of proof that a video is ok to upload should lie with the uploader,
only they have the ability to make that call, everybody else is missing just
too much context.

And why would a child with Downs have different privacy rights than anybody
else ?

So a ruling that would be favourable to the plaintiffs would quickly be seized
by follow ons from other people that felt that their privacy was somehow
violated, possibly in different media (text ? photographs ?) and so on.

If there ever was a slippery slope example than this would be it, and I think
it really ought to stop right where it is at this point.

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catweasel
I agree with the prevailing sentiment here regarding censorship of user
submitted content on sites like youtube. I can also see it would make more
economic sense for google to simply deny the service to Italy if the case
succeeded. But wait a minute! Doesn't google already censor content for China?

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drusenko
It's not about retroactively censoring, it's about proactively making sure the
content isn't there in the first place, aka monitoring, which would be
impossible at scale.

Also, monitoring would open Google up to even more liability: "We're not quite
sure if this video is illegal, let's bring it to court. Hey, the courts have
found this video to be illegal! And you reviewed it and approved it. You're
responsible!"

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poutine
Google does proactively censor:

Search for June 4th: google.com 2,780,000 hits, google.cn: 164 hits

Try posting a blog entry and reference "June 4th" in it and see if it ever
shows up in google.cn

Don't be evil, unless there's yuan at stake...

