(Friday, February 26, 2010)
You may have heard about the recent conviction of three Google executives in an Italian court for violation of privacy. This article on the UK site Telegraph is a good summary. Basically, a video was uploaded to Google Videos in 2006, which reportedly showed an autistic child being bullied; after the video had been on the site for two months, Google removed it promptly after receiving a complaint from the Italian Interior Ministry. Some sources have reported that the victim in the video was a child with Down's Syndrome, but that appears to be a misunderstanding of the case; a Down's Syndrome organization in Italy became involved with the case since their name was mentioned in the video. In any case, pretty much everyone agrees that Google did the right thing in their handling of the case, removing the video and cooperating with the authorities in their investigation. The perpetrators were caught and punished. It should come as quite a shock that three arbitrary Google executives were held responsible and received six-month jail sentences -- for violating the child's privacy -- even though they were unaware of the video until alerted by the authorities and removed it soon afterwards.
It's true that the sentences were suspended: none of the execs will spend any time in jail for these offenses. And it's true that protection of privacy is a serious matter on the Internet. But anyone with the slightest common sense knows who was responsible for this violation of privacy: the user who uploaded the video to Google Videos. Blaming Google for the violation is as absurd as blaming the highway department for an offensive billboard that someone puts up along the road. Blaming these particular executives makes even less sense, as they didn't even work in Italy. But apparently that's the way Italian law works. This bizarre situation seems to have come about as a result of confusion in the definition of what constitutes an Internet service provider as opposed to a content provider. Google argues that they should be held accountable according to the rules for service providers, but their opponents claim that Google should be treated as a content provider.
A good deal of the comments on this case have revolved around the particulars of the video in this case, but there are much larger issues at stake. The key issue is not the content of the video itself, as outrageous as it might have been, but the simple act of violating someone's privacy. Comments to the effect that Google could simply check the content of all videos uploaded to their sites for offensive or illegal content, and prevent them from being published in the first place, miss the point entirely. Perhaps a company with the vast resources of Google could actually pull off such a Herculean task. But even Google, with all its resources, can't possibly check every single video to check for potential violations of privacy. No one but the people involved with producing the video can know if anyone's privacy has been violated. A video with similar content might be produced by actors intending to spread awareness of the problem of bullying, so it's not the content of the video itself that's the sole problem. Screening videos for content won't solve anything.
The real problem is the precedent that this case would set. Any organization doing business in Italy that provides a means for users to upload videos would need to make sure that each uploaded video is free of potential legal issues, or face jail time for their executives. As this would be a huge liability and an enormous expense to screen each video, it would effectively become infeasible to provide such a service in Italy. But even if someone managed to overcome these obstacles, they would undoubtedly err on the safe side, rejecting countless videos that might have been perfectly reasonable. And it would be unwise to assume that this abuse of the legal system would stop with Italy. It's cases like this that bring out the absurdity of how laws are made and enforced. Anyone who knows anything about organizations like Google, or sites like YouTube, can see that this decision is a bad idea. But the Italian courts can only enforce the laws as they are written, and if the wording of the law allows absurd interpretations, lawyers will simply do their job and twist the definitions to suit their clients.
Ultimately, Italy's loss would be a loss for everyone, since all of us would be deprived of the contributions of Italian users to the vast collection of videos from around the world that Google Videos once provided, and sites such as YouTube (owned by Google) currently provide. You might not think that would be such a big loss, but YouTube is a fascinating resource, and looking for the few gems among the vast collection of mediocre video clips can be an interesting sort of treasure hunt. You can find performances on unusual musical instruments, or backyard sightings of wild animals, or tips for your favorite video games. Would a resource this valuable be possible if the executives of the hosting company were criminally responsible for each and every video posted to it, even if they remove videos promptly in response to complaints? Or would YouTube end up just the same as that other tube in the room -- mostly full of commercial productions tailored to appeal to broad audiences, with only the occasional touch of personality to remind us of what could have been? In the balance between protection of privacy and freedom of expression, there are good, sane approaches to take, as opposed to the insane approach that the Italian court system has taken. Google has already proven that it is responsive to complaints; the system worked as it was intended to do. As more users become active and aware of issues such as these, the response to such problems may even become more efficient over time. The Italian court system ought to take a hint from Google's motto: don't be evil.
