An Italian court is to decide whether four senior Google executives should face prison, over the broadcast of a video clip showing a boy with Down’s Syndrome being bullied by his classmates.
The long-running trial, which centres around a three-minute clip showing four schoolboys making fun of the teenager and hitting him over the head at their school in Turin, in 2006, is being seen as a test case for the control of content on the internet.
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Google removed the clip within 24 hours of being alerted of the upload. Prosecution lawyers argue that the broadcast still amounted to a breach of privacy and was defamatory as the company failed to adequately control content on the site. They say the Google had a "legal obligation to prevent" the video from airing in the first place.
The Google executives standing trial are David Carl Drummond, head of Google Italy's managing board; George De Los Reyes, a board member; Peter Fleitcher, in charge of privacy protection in Europe; and Arvind Desikan, head of videos for Europe.
They each face up to three years in jail and a fine if convicted.
That executives of an Internet firm could be held liable for user-generated content THAT WAS TAKEN DOWN WITHIN 24 HOURS is absurd. That people totally unrelated to the specifics of a very sad and tragic case can be sent to jail for three years is just ridiculous.
Seriously, there should be no case here. To put people behind bars for providing a free online publishing service is like bringing medical malpractice to our industry. Society doesn't need this.