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Serious threat to the web in Italy
- pnelly 17y agoThat's absolutely insane. But surely not many countries would follow Italy's line in this case?, eventhough it's well documented that some countries have a far more strict policy than others re. censorship. Hopefully the challenge will be successful, and this will be an isolated case. by the way, they were given 6 months suspended jail sentences: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000092-264.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000092-264.html I have some italian friends, and they've told me about this censorship also. Berlusconi doesn't even try to hide it apparently. One has to ask how someone like this can get elected - I suppose the answer is that he controls the media!! Italians, you have my sympathy...
- oscardelben 17y agoI'm ashamed of being italian. Also thepiratebay has been censored here. I'm seriously looking to relocate in another country.
- vladocar 17y agoMe too. The government (Berlusconi) is controlling all the media besides Internet. They are trying to kill the last free medium.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoBut isn't Berlusconi in a constant tug of war with the judiciary? In what way do you think he has influence on this particular decision?
- gtufano 17y agoThe idea is that a tight control on free media would ease the control of public opinion by the media he controls. Beside the war with the judiciary, he controls directly the three main generalist TV channels and, indirectly, the three channels of public TV. The less "video" are on air, the best for his control. Beware, it's a political idea and, in Italy, it's matter of serious discussion. I'm just explaining for a "non Italian" audience independently from the fact that I endorse or not the idea. My opinion is that this government is generically hostile to the free information and to the fact that there is something out of control, there is no need for "special" theories... the plain, old, obscurantism is more than enough. btw: in this country is forbidden to have WiFi hotspots without having control on who have access to the Internet. Whoever have an open WiFi AP is considered an ISP so he must have many months nogs and so on... Scary, I know...
- davidw 17y agoI think the OP's point is not without some sense: Berlusconi is always criticizing the judiciary, and frankly, in this case I'd criticize the judiciary too, so perhaps it even lends a bit of weight to his argument. Well, I don't really think so, as I think he's up to his hair implants in corrupt schemes, but still, it bears considering.
- yumraj 17y agoDon't relocate, it's the easy way out, change the country. Start with the politicians, the government and then the laws. Last I checked, Italy was a democracy.
- mattm 17y agoLet's see here: Spend the next 20-30 years of your life trying to change the way institutions do things and going up against people who want to keep the status quo because it keeps them in power. Or Spend a few months preparing to move to another country that matches your values. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
- chadmalik 17y agoRight until your new chosen country does the same. If everyone does as you are suggesting, pretty soon you will run out of options and every nation will be the same.
- viraptor 17y agoLast time I was thinking about it, I got to a more optimistic solution... but time will verify what is true. A couple of ideas: If someone moves around, he/she's probably more capable of adaptation than many others. He/she's probably also more intelligent than an average Joe. They're also less likely to have a family and probably around the age where they might want one. So it's quite probable, that it's really a migration of talent. This talent positively influences the destination country (as do the taxes you pay there)... In the end - one might hope that by migrating, you're not only helping themselves, but voting with their actions and supporting the laws they accept... Oh well... time to go back to reality ;)
- jackowayed 17y agoNo, what would happen if everyone did that is that a lot of people will say "oh, <insert country here> is doing a really good job at maintaining freedom", and so a bunch of freedom nuts move there and (we're assuming everyone does it, remember) that'll be a large- and passionate-enough niche (they're passionate enough to move for better freedom, remember) that they'll have influence over the government and be able to keep it from happening. Also, as much as we hate to admit it because it makes us feel insignificant, "if everyone does it" is not a very good way to make decisions. Unless you have a lot of influence over many, many other people, nobody else is going to do it just because you did it.
- olliesaunders 17y agoIt seems like every other day there are more examples of ill-conceived and dangerous laws. It bothers me a lot.
- weavejester 17y agoI'm wondering what the Italian authorities hope to gain by this. It's only a matter of time before they suffer a high profile defeat in a higher court, if not in Italy, than in the EU. Are they just trying to buy time, or haven't they thought this through?
- alexandros 17y agoNot everything is necessarily centrally planed. Perhaps a naive prosecutor mistakenly pursuing something and trying to save face, perhaps some 'think of the children' indignation, etc. The result however, is to demonstrate how out of touch Italian law is with the Web. I'm not grandstanding here, Greek law is also flawed, as is US law (e.g. DMCA). It just never ceases to amaze me in how many ways national laws are out of sync with the Web. Perhaps it's a good thing in the long term though. By these blatantly idiotic conclusions, it is plain for everyone to see that something in the reasoning process is broken.
- rms 17y agoIt's also a good example of globalization working. No one country's law is enough to stop the web.
- dtby 17y agoI don't understand this line of reasoning. How would these convictions stop the web? How will the reversal of these convictions keep the web from being stopped? If it doesn't get reversed at the EU level does this mean that they managed to stop the web? What if a similar conviction happened in Uzbekistan?
- rms 17y agoTo clarify, I think I first need to define globalization. I mean the current world order where the wishes of all of the countries has someone become much greater than any of the individual countries. On defining globalization, I will quote the real rms: "...there are other kinds of globalization, the globalization of cooperation and sharing knowledge". My real definition for globalization is closer to world government, but those two words are not nearly enough to describe the complexity of globalization. I have a 3 hour lecture on DVD from a powerful Chinese CCP member/academic talking mostly about globalization, I should really digitize it and post the highlights sometime. If anyone wants to see this lecture, email me. -- The only country where a conviction like this would have been meaningful is in the USA, because Google is from the USA and in some important ways the USA owns the internet. Even if the conviction of the Google executives was upheld at the EU level, it wouldn't do much more than cause Google to open up divestment discussions with Europe, similar to their ongoing discussions with China. Europe is not stupid enough to kick Google out, though China (and by China I mean the rulers of the CCP, not the people of China) probably is that stupid and evil. By the way, though the Italian court system is clearly very flawed, I do give them credit for being able to hold executives accountable for crimes committed by the corporation.
- banana 17y agoWell, if google wants to do business in italy, they may have to obey italian law...
- DanBlake 17y agoThis isn't a issue of italian law. By all accounts, they shouldn't have been prosecuted, never mind being found guilty. Its a issue of freedom on the web.
- andreyf 17y agoIts absolutely an issue of Italian law - why do you think they keep arguing and appealing in Italian courts?
- dejb 17y agoThey'll appeal to EU courts as a next move if they aren't successful in the Italian courts. Some would argue that, morally, issues of information freedom transcend those of the state and practically that Italy cannot go down the path of trying to shut out the information age without hurting themselves badly. Italian law can not change reality.
- dtby 17y agoIts a issue of freedom on the web. That's an overly broad characterization. It has no impact on the vast majority of web users.
- mo34 17y agoAgreed - Italy is a sovereign nation with the ability to make and enforce laws. If Google doesn't like it, they can stop doing business there, or suffer the consequences or breaking those laws.
- nickpp 17y agoI noticed that it is almost impossible to obey ALL laws all the time. Somehow, somewhere there is a law I never heard about that I am breaking. Why is this? Is it by design so that I am always culpable and can thus be controlled/negotiated with? Or is it just stupidity/contradictory laws, etc.
- mseebach 17y agoEither way, the "first" world is ripe for a revolution. The internet has opened the eyes of a lot of people to a kind of freedom and self-government that was all but forgotten. Combined with the entitlement bomb that's ticking under the entire system, something will change soon. I'm not referring to a 70s-style revolution with public executions of the ruling class etc., but I'm predicting some radical changes in the democratic/political system. Transparency, accountability, fewer and simpler laws and significantly smaller government.
- andreyf 17y agohahahahaha. Oh, you kids... :)
- wizard_2 17y agoI hope what mseebach is predicting happens, but I do think something will eventually end up happening. Every week it seems I hear of impossible to enforce laws trying to regulate behavior or thought. (just today, trying to make open source using countries suspect, everyone is probably a federal criminal, etc) Trying to fight technology with regulation (drm, dmca, etc). I hear misleading announcements every morning on my commute saying the police have the right to search me without cause. (They can't unless you agree, yet.) In the past 10 years things like this seem to be escalating and technology seems to have sped it up. Loosely and with a grain of salt; Content filtering and monitoring lead to tor, unjust laws lead to the EFF and ACLU, censorship of news lead to wikileaks, etc. People will eventually get radicalized, wont they? Honestly I probably don't know my history very well, maybe this is just SOP for humanity, a constant back and forth. Just do us a favor, if something does start happening and you do opt out, don't make it harder on the rest of us. ;-)
- davidedicillo 17y agothis might work as an answer to all those people who keep asking "why would you leave a beautiful place like Italy??"
- davidw 17y agoWhat's especially heartbreaking is that most of what's bad about Italy is entirely self-inflicted, and quite possible, if not easy, to fix. Many of the good things about Italy, however, are special, unique, and not at all easily replicated elsewhere.
- akadien 17y agoLike Ferraris.
- davidw 17y ago* A stunning variety of nature, from the snowy Dolomites to the north, to the sandy shores of Sicily, with a bit of everything in between... foggy plains, rolling hills, lakes, rivers forests, beaches, etc... * Nearly as much cultural variety. I spent last weekend in Meran, which 100 years ago was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and is still mostly German speaking, with traditional Tirolean architecture. It's pretty much night-and-day with, say, Sicily, or the almost Greek looking bits of Puglia. * A truly staggering amount of art and architecture that goes back 3000+ years, from Greek ruins in Sicily to, of course, the Romans, through the middle ages, and so on and so forth. This is really "fractal": you can see Rome and Venice and whatnot, but also see pretty interesting things in the smallest of regional towns. * A generally pleasant climate. * Good food. Really good. * Beautiful girls:-) Just off the top of my head.
- brlewis 17y agoFor a continual stream of photographic evidence of what David is talking about, see http://ourdoings.com/flapic/ http://ourdoings.com/flapic/
- 17y ago
- hubb 17y ago"Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants -- David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes -- for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. All 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation." is that last part a typo? or is my ignorance of legalese showing? edit: ah, so apparently they were given a suspended sentence, but absolved of the defamation part.
- Super_Jambo 17y ago3 guilty of 'failure to comply with the Italian privacy code.' 0 guilty of 'criminal defamation' Two separate charges.
- Evgeny 17y agoWhat were they sentenced to, by the way? I didn't notice any mention of that. Edit: found in the neighbor thread. "The three received a suspended six-month sentence for the conviction on violating the youth's privacy."
- Groxx 17y agoI wonder... did they? I'd bet the TOS / Privacy agreement prior to upload would've mentioned something like "you are responsible for your content".
- alexandros 17y agoWhat is interesting is that large corporations like google are taking on national governments more and more like equals. First it was Google v. China, now Google v. Italy. These are interesting times we live in...
- andreyf 17y agoHardly. So far, they have taken on one careerist prosecutor here.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- niyazpk 17y agoShooting the messenger, eh? Why don't they convict the ISPs, Internet Cafe's or the Computer Manufacturers? They have the same responsibility as Google has on this issue.
- brlewis 17y agoWas the video played in the courtroom as part of the trial? Why don't they convict the judge?
- castis 17y ago... and the TV manufacturer along with the stand the TV was sitting on. TVs should, at this point, have significant technology to figure out that someone is getting beat up on the display and stop the user from viewing it.
- epochwolf 17y agoI don't think that would sell too well. Most of American Television is people getting beat up. (Even CSPAN! if you count verbal abuse)
- mo34 17y ago>>They have the same responsibility as Google has on this issue. No, they don't. Google owned and operated the site that hosted the video; they have the full responsibility for insuring that they abide by Italian law. Guilty as charged.
- tjogin 17y agoNot according to EU law. Which I think takes precedence.
- mo34 17y agoIf it's overturned in the EU court of law, fine - that's the process. Really, I find it quite surprising that there is so much opposition the ruling; the video is horrible, it is disgusting, it is wrong. Bravo for Italy (and China for that matter) for identifying and trying to do something about a serious issue.
- robk 17y agoIt wouldn't surprise me if Google ended commercial activity there for the while (sales offices). Also, this is certainly bad for david drummond. Having a conviction like this as a lawyer surely must hurt your standing with the bar association in CA.
- jacquesm 17y ago> Having a conviction like this as a lawyer surely must hurt your standing with the bar association in CA. I highly doubt the bar association in CA would not be able to make up their mind for themselves and see a politically motivated judgement when they see one.
- fierarul 17y agoI don't actually see why Google even bothered opening office in Italy. Italy is part of the EU so they could easily use their Ireland office for invoicing and everything else inside the EU. Just as I don't think they have official offices in each US state they don't need to have offices in each EU state. They are just looking for trouble given the peculiarities of each state which includes law and tax system but also gray stuff like corruption, political pressure, etc.
- houseabsolute 17y ago> Having a conviction like this as a lawyer surely must hurt your standing with the bar association in CA. By what mechanism?
- badsectoracula 17y agoThis reminds me when there was a site in Greece which was some sort of blog aggregator for many other blogs. This site got in trouble (and closed, its owner prosecuted, etc) when some other blog posted negative stuff about a public person and that person decided to sue the aggregator.
- tripa 17y agoIt's happened in France as well, over year 2008. The aggregator was condemned in February for 2500€, appealed and won in November.
- mattjung 17y agoI don't understand why Google was not able to remove the video - which was one of the most seen on the site - in time (means within few days instead of 2 months).
- daniel-cussen 17y agoGoogle has virtually no human support. Who do you call to have it removed? Instead of hi-tech hi-touch, google is hi-tech no-touch. Not that I agree with the verdict, but yeah, two months is excessive.
- smanek 17y agoThe Google blog says: The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. What more can you reasonably expect them to do?
- mattjung 17y agoHow long would it have taken until such content had been removed at Hacker News? I guess not more than 30 minutes. Two months = #fail. A simple flag-feature would probably already do it... I hope Google draws the right conclusion from this failure.
- davidw 17y agoThe right conclusion to draw is that doing business in Italy is a nightmare: http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/02/03/italy-vs-google http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/02/03/italy-vs-google
- jacquesm 17y agoearlier thread on the same subject: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1147620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1147620
- viggity 17y agoAccording to the timesonline.co.uk article the video was online for a full month before it was removed, and it was a top ranked video under "most entertaining". I don't think this should have gone to trial, but I do think its fair to say that Google should have done more. Does anyone believe they only got one complaint after a month?
- invisible 17y agoI think the likelihood that it was at the top of "most entertaining" for two months is nil. I think the likelihood that it was on the site for 2 months and the last 48 hours it was in the most entertaining section is high. It probably got a total of 20-50 views before that, which may have resulted in 0 complaints given most people would just close the window.
- mo34 17y agoGoogle is fully responsible - the fact is that they prefer not to police their networks for inoffensive content because that policy ultimately drives traffic and revenue to their company; they should be forced to review videos BEFORE they are published. Shame on them for allowing this filth.
- sp332 17y ago20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. That means 1200 people reviewing 24/7, making sure that the reviewer speaks the language(s) to watch for profanity.
- mo34 17y agoExactly - it's fairly obvious why Google has made the conscious decision not to do this, it costs a lot of money and their business model suffers. Ok - so they run the risk of breaking national laws and take the consequences when it happens. I'm not sure this is the most ethical or moral business model but it's what they have decided to do.
- davidw 17y agoNice statistic - where'd you get it from, out of curiousity?
- sp332 17y agohttp://www.youtube.com/t/fact_sheet http://www.youtube.com/t/fact_sheet
- tjogin 17y agoIf anything, this is a serious threat to Italy's netizens. Certainly, the rest of the world won't follow suit.
- Groxx 17y agoWe can hope. But with China censoring the internet to suit its political gain, and with Australia trying to get Google to censor their searches too, and now this, it seems a lot of the world is following suit.
- Silhouette 17y agoWhile this doesn't sound like a good ruling and will presumably be overturned later, I can't say I'm full of sympathy. There has been an increasing trend in law to rely on blanket "safe harbour" conditions when it comes to on-line activities. Those conditions act as a get out of jail free card for big organisations, and I'm not sure that is healthy. If you set up a service that can host content provided by others, and that service is successful in large part because it enables people to break some law (copyright, privacy, whatever), why should you get a free pass? What you are doing is not then the same as a post office or phone provider, because you are directly profiting and your business model is based in part on illegal activities. An extension of this idea is that several powerful corporations, Google among them, have been pushing back the boundaries of the law concerning privacy, personal data protection, intellectual property rights, defamation and so on, as hard as they can. I am quite sure that that is not a healthy trend. Services like Google Groups and Google News are based on leeching the work of others. Google Maps and Google Street View have serious privacy concerns, to the extent that both have been partially blocked in several nations either by law or just by large numbers of people turning out to physically block the camera car from entering their village. Google Video/YouTube established themselves based substantially on blatant copyright infringement. And then you get things like the Buzz fiasco a few days ago. All of this is done from behind a virtual shield where it is almost impossible for anyone who is damaged by such actions to contact Google about it short of filing a court action. The latter is prohibitively expensive in some jurisdictions, notably including the US, in cases where the damage is not a substantial direct financial cost that a court can award back, which basically means the little guy can't stand up to the mighty corporation even in cases where the corporation's behaviour is clearly unethical and/or illegal. While I would certainly prefer to have robust laws implemented to protect personal privacy and the like, and to see Google forced to comply with those like anyone else, until that happens I half-welcome just about any non-violent effort to check the Powers That Be and make them reconsider whether some of the things they are trying to achieve are a step too far. Legal shenanigans are a game Google likes, and turnabout is fair play.
- mbreese 17y agoI'm not downvoting you because I think you make some good points, however, I completely disagree with your characterization of safe harbor. Safe harbor rules are what makes the internet of today work. Today, content isn't just generated from large, powerful, corporations... it's generated from us. For example, Hacker News is protected from any liability this comment might have due to safe harbor rules. It's the reason YouTube can exist. It's the reason why blogging services can exist. It's the reason Twitter can exist (you can still argue whether or not it should though... ). The point of safe harbor is to assign the liability for the content to the creator, not the service that publishes it. The company that serves the content is only liable after they've been notified. This is critical for today's internet. Any company that allows users to post content (messages, comments, videos, anything) must have safe harbor protections to operate. If they didn't, then they would be responsible for any liability for everything, so they'd have to moderate every single comment, every single video, etc... Basically, this would shut down the user-supplied content that rules the modern internet. What we'd be left with is a computerized version of the one-way communications of old-media. That would be a bad thing. Also, you're unnecessarily extending safe harbor protections to where they don't exist. For example, Google Maps and privacy. This is Google's content. They created it. They published it. And they are absolutely responsible for making sure that they are compliant with any privacy regulations. This doesn't fall under safe harbor at all. Sure companies make mistakes with privacy, your example of Google Buzz is a good one. However, don't confuse these issues with safe harbor. In this specific case in Italy, it is safe harbor that is under attack. And that's a bad thing for Italy.
- charlesju 17y agoI hope this was an isolated judge's opinion and not the final decision. Even in America the justice system slips from time-to-time, but that's why there are checks and balances so that decisions like this will have a chance to move up the ladder and hopefully disappear at the higher levels of the justice system.
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoHey -- it's an old-fashioned political stick-up. Don't be dense, Google. What they're telling you is that the right people need to be paid-off or you're going to have more and more problems like this.
- viraptor 17y agoFunny thing is that Google is quite capable of opposing a country like Italy. They could simply cut all the traffic - search, documents, emails, g.apps, everything. There are many people depending on G. for work every single day. It's just not a sensible thing to do, financially. But if Italian prosecutors start suing employees of google.it for example - who knows? I would risk saying that Italy is less valuable and more annoying to Google right now, than China ever was...
- InclinedPlane 17y agoYeah, I really hope google comes out throwing some strong punches at Italy after this. The consequences of this ruling will have enormous chilling effects on any social media company operating in Italy. If google was able, eventually, to pass on China as a market based on standing up for its principles then passing on Italy as a market should be a slam dunk.
- roundsquare 17y agoAs long as they go through all the proper channels first. Don't want anyone complaining that they just wanted a press day. Unfortunately, this may take sometime. However, I think it'll be worth it.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoI think given this ruling there is a very strong case for Google to block access from Italy to any of its sites that could run afoul of Italian privacy law. That would include blogger, youtube, picasaweb, google docs, google groups, wave, buzz, and possibly even gmail.
- sliverstorm 17y agoI find it interesting the objections begin and end with 'it would be impossible to review all content'. Not that I want that, but someone could probably figure out a way. Why does no one bring up the fact that it's completely subjective? What one person finds offensive is completely different from another person. The internet will suddenly consist only of kittens and puppies in an effort by companies to avoid suits, and then someone will decide kittens and puppies are offensive too. (I understand Italy isn't seeking specifically to ban things that are simply offensive, but that's the direction we'd go just seconds after letting a suit like this one go through)
- oomkiller 17y agoJust black out the google page in italy until they overturn it, that will get someone's attention.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoAnd Italy adds itself to Iran, Venezuela, China, North Korea, much of the Arab world, and Australia as countries who hate, fear, and wish to destroy the internet and the horrible, horrible freedom it gives to individuals.
- roundsquare 17y agoTo be fair, a few idiots in the Itallian judicial system add themselves to this list. Lets not paint the whole country with one brush.
- Confusion 17y agoThe whole thing is so ridiculous that I expect something else is behind it. Given Italy's track record with corruption, could it be that Google is being punished for refusing to pay up?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- jchrisa 17y agoI've got a blog post about why this might not be a bad thing here: http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/Imagine-There-s-No-YouTube http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/Imagine-There...
- dustingetz 17y agoI would absolutely LOVE to read the italian judge's comments.