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Four former and present Google executives, including Senior Vice President David Drummond are waiting for the confirmation of the order issued by an Italian prosecutor to stand trial for a video on a young man with Down syndrome posted on YouTube in November 2006.
The case caused a lot of rumours in public media in 2006 and it was already estimated that the prosecutors action would take a lot of time before presenting the case in front of a judge. The Google executives are to appear in a Milan court on 3 February 2009 facing charges of defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data. The action is the result of the investigation initiated on the basis of a complaint filed by Vividown, an Italian advocacy group for people with Down syndrome, and the boy's father.
The video posted on the site in 2006, filmed with a mobile phone, was showing an Italian youth with Down syndrome humiliated by four high school students. Google removed the video immediately after having received a complaint from the Italian Interior Ministry. The case was reported in 2006 in EDRi-gram, which underlined the fact that some important comments were not taken into consideration such as "the responsibility of parents and educators, the widespread deterioration of human and social values, the warping of culture and behavior", as explained by EDRi-member ALCEI. As in other cases, some people are using this opportunity to control free speech.
Google stated that the case could become a worrying precedent considering the trial against its employees is not justified. Google had already said in July 2008, when the case became public, that it would cooperate with the prosecutors "to show that all Googlers under investigation have no involvement in the Vividown case." A Google spokesman also stated: "We believe that this proceeding is not about Google Video and what happened, but about the internet as we know it - an open and free environment."
According to the EU legislation which is implemented into the Italian law, hosting sites don't have to monitor third-party content, but are only required to remove any content deemed offensive when notified about it. In this case, however, Google was treated as an Internet content provider.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/americasDealsNews/idUSTRE4A48VG20081105
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/153411/
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http://www.webtvwire.com/google-sued-over-offensive-video-italian-exec...
EDRi-gram: Google accused in Italy over shock video (6.12.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.23/italy_google
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http://www.alcei.org/?p=25