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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Italienisches Urteil hinsichtlich Googles Führungskräfte...
Finally, the Court of Milan made public the opinion that backed the indictment of a couple of Google's executives charged of Italian Data Protection Act infringement for not removing a violent video from the company's video sharing platform, video.google.com. The opinion of the Court tells basically what I "guessed" in a previous article, while analyzing the charges against the managers.
Thus, to put it short, Google's people have been indicted because they failed to verify, under the Italian Data Protection Act, whether all of the people depicted in the video positively consented to its upload. It did not matter that the service agreement binded the user to publish legally obtained content only.
As I've written and told in serveral places, this is a wrong decision.
Wrong from the legal perspective, for it sets on ISP's side a hidden duty of pre-emptive control over users' activity.
Wrong from the social perspective, for it breaks the tie between a crime and its "author" and reinforces the idea of "faida" (the collateral vendetta of the ancient barbarians.)
Court decision (only in Italian, 24.02.2010)
http://speciali.espresso.repubblica.it//pdf/Motivazioni_sentenza_Googl...
Google's executives indictment in Italy. Here are the reason's why
(13.04.2010)
http://blog.andreamonti.eu/?p=245
Google convictions reveal two flaws in EU law, not just Italian law
(3.03.2010)
http://www.out-law.com/page-10805
EDRi-gram: First decision in the Italian criminal case against Google
executives (24.02.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.4/decision-italy-vs-google-execut...
(contribution by Andrea Monti - EDRi-member ALCEI Italy)