Italian court convicts Google of privacy violations
Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 2:16 pm
Story
CN: Boys post vid on YouTube of beating up another kid. Google then acquires YouTube, after the vid is posted. Google helps authorities to identify the kids and get them prosecuted. Down Syndrome advocacy group pushes for privacy violation prosecution. Four years later, top Google execs are held accountable for violating the victim's privacy by hosting the content that his aggressors posted and were convicted for.
CN: Boys post vid on YouTube of beating up another kid. Google then acquires YouTube, after the vid is posted. Google helps authorities to identify the kids and get them prosecuted. Down Syndrome advocacy group pushes for privacy violation prosecution. Four years later, top Google execs are held accountable for violating the victim's privacy by hosting the content that his aggressors posted and were convicted for.
MILAN – An Italian court convicted three Google executives of privacy violations Wednesday because they did not act quickly enough to remove an online video that showed sadistic teen bullies pummeling and mocking an autistic boy...Prosecutors had insisted the case wasn't about censorship but about balancing the freedom of expression with the rights of an individual...
In the first such criminal trial of its kind, Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three in absentia to a six-month suspended sentence and absolved them of defamation charges. A fourth defendant, charged only with defamation, was acquitted....
Thanks to the footage and Google's cooperation, the four bullies were identified and sentenced by a juvenile court to community service. The events shortly preceded Google's 2006 acquisition of YouTube...
This is just retarded. This is the kind of ruling that it should come down to "Oh, you want to make a ruling like this that is totally illogical? Ok, have fun without Interwebs (and cut their line).