Italy risks internet Stone Age

Image via CrunchBase

DISTRACTED while thinking how to begin this column, I clicked on an email from a friend. She had sent me a YouTube video in which a tidy cylindrical shape on a shoulder strap unrolled to become a computer.

Almost every day, someone sends a YouTube clip or invites me to join them in Facebook or LinkedIn or something called Friendster.

When trying to find a way to contact a possible source last week, I Googled him and found he had Twitter but no listed phone number or email address. Maybe I should drop the curmudgeonly attitude and sign up myself.

None of this is remarkable, which is what makes an Italian judge's order last week ''astonishing'', as a Google spokesman put it.

Judge Oscar Magi in Milan found three Google executives guilty of invading the privacy of a disabled teenager in Turin. They didn't know him, didn't photograph him, nor were they aware of it when someone else posted a video of him being bullied by high-schoolers.

When Italian police informed Google it was hosting the video, employees took it down and helped authorities locate the teenager who posted it. She was prosecuted and sentenced to 10 months' community service.

Nonetheless, Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, its global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, and former chief financial officer George Reyes now stand convicted in Italy of invading privacy. Each got suspended sentences of six months in jail. They are the first internet executives to be held criminally liable for something some outsider posted.

In Italy, executives are punished when their company does wrong. (In another context, I recently argued in favour of punishing individuals instead of companies, by the way. But in that case, somebody clearly did something wrong.) As for the Google matter, if these men or this company can be convicted in this case, then to operate comfortably in Italy, internet hosts must monitor content submitted by users and weed out any ahead of time that may offend the law.

On a practical level, the volume of user-generated content is too great to scrutinise, even if national mores allowed that sort of censorship.

Internet executives all over the world should be very, very nervous. If that were the law in the United States, it probably would have killed eBay, YouTube, Facebook and the rest before they got started, says Eric Goldman, who teaches law and technology at Santa Clara University in California.

''Rulings like this absolutely suppress entrepreneurial innovation,'' he says. Goldman suspects it is no coincidence that the US is the global leader in creating new enterprises based on user-generated content.

The US is a country with a free-speech tradition, and a 1996 law shields internet service providers from liability for content their users post. ''Congress has said it's safe to be an innovator,'' says Goldman.

Judge Magi has said it isn't. His ruling, if it stands, will chill speech and squelch the spirit that makes the internet an ever-evolving creature - engaging, educating, entertaining and connecting us in ways we could not imagine a few minutes ago.

From an American perspective, the ruling is crazy. Cultural differences help explain why we look at these things so differently. Americans don't know what it's like to be invaded by another country, as Italians do, or to feel as though a centuries-old culture and deeply held values are being swallowed up and trashed by technological invaders.

The ruling comes at a time when Europe is pushing back against American dominance on the internet. The European Commission has launched a preliminary investigation into Google for possible antitrust violations, for one thing. For another, Italy is considering a law that would create greater restrictions on internet companies, making them subject to the same sort of laws that govern television.

As for the case at hand, it's no wonder it caused a furore in Italy when the video exposed an innocent youngster to ridicule around the world. And even though his parents dropped their complaint against Google, I understand why a group that advocates for the disabled, Vivi Down, kept the case going.

It should be a crime to bully a vulnerable child and another crime to expose his humiliation to a global audience.

But Google took down the video when told of it. Google helped find the teenager who posted the video. Google and its executives acted responsibly, not criminally.

And if Italy wants to hold them responsible, it should anticipate a future without the internet innovations that freer countries in the world enjoy.

Now, how did they make that computer roll up like that?

Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/italy-risks-internet-stone-age-with-trial-of-google-executives-20100228-pb4u.html