i.p. news

     Google said on its blog that there is a serious threat to the web in Italy, after three of its employees were convicted of violating Italian privacy laws last February, because of a video that was posted to YouTube.
    
     The case started when in 2006, when students of a school in Turin filmed the bullying of a classmate and uploaded the video to YouTube – a phenomenon known as ‘happy slapping’. According to Google, the video was immediately taken down when it was brought to their attention by the police, and after that they actively cooperated with the local authorities to identify the students involved. And indeed, e few years earlier several students involved were convicted to 10 months community service by the court of Turin. Nevertheless, the public prosecutor decided to press charges against four Google employees, of whom three were convicted to a six month suspended jail sentence, even though, as Google puts it, ‘none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed’.
    
     Interestingly, the Italian Court did not apply the Italian implementation of the EU Directive on Commercial Content (2000/31/EC), which, broadly speaking, limits the liability of service providers as long as they comply with a notice and takedown procedure. There is some debate as to whether or not this directive applies to YouTube, as it is aimed primarily at ‘traditional’ service providers like ISPs, which function solely as a gateway and do not have anything to do with the content they are an intermediary for, whereas sites which host user generated content, like YouTube, are more involved. This debate has implications for copyright law as well, since the directive absolves service provider regardless of whether their liability would come from violations of privacy law or copyright law. In August 2009, a Dutch Court found that the popular bittorrent website Mininova (which had a notice-and-takedown procedure) didn’t fall under the Dutch implementation of 2000/31/EC, since it was involved with the content; for instance, it categorized torrent files hosted (LJN BJ6008).
    
     Meanwhile, Google has made the present case into a matter of principle, saying the verdict attacks the principles on which the internet was built, and that it’s common sense that only the person who uploads a certain video should be held liable. It also feels it has the law on its side, stating that the Directive 2000/31/EC was drafted specifically to provide a safe haven from liability for hosting providers, which it clearly thinks YouTube is. Google is set to ‘vigorously’ appeal the verdict, and if the case works its way up the system, it could have serious implications across the entire EU regarding the interpretation of Directive 2000/31/EC and it’s national implementations.
    
     Source HERE