Italian Judge Cites Profit as Justifying a Google Conviction

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Italian Judge Cites Profit as Justifying a Google Conviction
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
Published: April 12, 2010

ROME — An Italian judge convicted three Google employees in February of violating privacy laws because the Internet company had sought to profit from a video of an autistic boy being bullied by classmates, according to a judicial reasoning in the case released on Monday.

That verdict was the first to hold the company’s employees criminally responsible for content posted on its system. It prompted outrage on the part of the American ambassador to Italy and widespread accusations that the Italian judiciary was trying to muzzle a free Internet.

But in the 111-page reasoning, the judge, Oscar Magi, said that the Internet was not an “unlimited prairie where everything is permitted and nothing can be prohibited.” Instead, he wrote, there were laws regulating behavior and if those laws were not respected, “penal consequences” could ensue.

On Feb. 23, Judge Magi handed three Google employees six-month suspended sentences but cleared them of defamation charges. In Italy, corporate executives are held legally responsible for a company’s actions. Judge Magi said that Italian defamation law did not apply in this case, and he wrote that he hoped that that legal void could be filled.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/business/global/13google.html?ref=world

[valerief]

1. Yes. Leave abusing autistic boys to the Vatican. nt

[chollybocker]

2. Bwaa!

"Come with me, little boy, and I'll google you in the apse."

So true. You'd think the Italians would be more intersted in actual abuse, rather than a video of abuse.

[24601]

3. Yeah, God forbid anybody makes any profit on anything. Today

GM,tomorrow, or in a month or year, we nationalize Google. New Motto, "All the searches the government agrees you can see, of course as long as your search taxes are currently paid-up"

[Odin2005]

5. You think it's right to profit off of the bullying of a special needs kid?

I'm sorry, that's just wrong.

[24601]

6. No, I believe that profit, or lack of it, is irrelevant to the issue. Right

and wrong are not dependent on whether a profit was made.

[Odin2005]

4. As an autistic person who was a victim of bullying I say BRAVO!