Google Execs Face Trial In Italy
The case was brought against David Drummond, Google's senior vice president and chief legal officer; George Reyes, its former chief financial officer; and Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel; and a fourth defendant not yet identified, according to Reuters. The prosecutor, Francesco Cajani, ordered the defendants to appear in a Milan court today to face charges of defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data, stemming from an offensive video uploaded to Google's site in September 2006.
That cell phone video shows four male high school students in a school in the Italian city of Turin harassing a 17-year-old boy with Down syndrome. It was uploaded to Google Video in September 2006. It was among 200,000 videos uploaded to the site daily, according to Google.
Two months later, following a complaint from an advocacy group, Vividown, Italian authorities asked for the video to be taken down. The company and the Italian government have stated that within 24 hours of being notified, the video was removed. Under European Union law, Internet service providers are not responsible for monitoring third-party content on their sites. However, they are required to remove content considered offensive if they receive a complaint about it.
According to the International Association of Privacy Professionals Web site, between Nov. 6 and 7, 2006, Google received two separate requests for the removal of the video: One was from a user, and another from the Italian Interior Ministry, the authority responsible for investigating Internet-related crimes. Still, prosecutor Cajani decided that by allowing the 191-second clip onto its site, Google executives had broken the law.
"To our knowledge, this is the first time an individual has been criminally charged for violation of data protection laws that occurred by the company he or she works for," Trevor Hughes, executive director of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, said in a statement reported by The New York Times. "This suggests that privacy is going to be more of a battleground."
Google issued a public statement in response to the lawsuit: "As we have repeatedly made clear, our hearts go out to the victim and his family. We are pleased that as a result of our cooperation the bullies in the video have been identified and punished. We feel that bringing this case to court is totally wrong."