Google not expected to check every upload
2013-02-27 21:11
Milan - Internet platforms like Google
cannot be forced to filter every video uploaded by
users without endangering freedom of thought and their own
functionality, an Italian court ruling made public on Wednesday
said.
The details of the ruling were made public 60 days after the
Milan court acquitted three Google executives of charges of
having violated the privacy of an Italian boy with autism by
allowing a video, showing him being bullied, to be posted on the
site in 2006.
The decision in December overturned a previous court ruling
in 2010 which had sentenced the executives to a six-month
suspended jail sentence, reigniting a debate about privacy over
the internet.
"The possibility must be ruled out that a service provider,
which offers active hosting can carry out effective, pre-emptive
checks of the entire content uploaded by its users," the court
said in the public ruling reviewed by Reuters.
"An obligation for the internet company to prevent the
defamatory event would impose on the same company a pre-emptive
filter on all the data uploaded on the network, which would
alter its own functionality."
The case arose in 2006 when four students at a Turin school
uploaded a mobile phone clip to Google Video showing them
bullying the boy.
The prosecutors accused Google of negligence, saying the
video remained online for two months even though some Web users
had already posted comments asking for it to be taken down.
Google said it had removed the video immediately after being
notified and co-operated with Italian authorities to help
identify the bullies and bring them to justice.
Google has always maintained that, as hosting platforms
that do not create their own content, Google Video, YouTube and
Facebook cannot be held responsible for content that others
upload.
