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Matt Sucherman, Google's VP and Deputy General Counsel - Europe, Middle East and Aftrica, said "In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved.
"But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees '”David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed."
It would seem that the general thrust of both of these cases is to demand that the service provider (Google in both of these instances) would have to vet EVERY posting prior to it going live on the internet.
One wonders just how strongly Google is contemplating removing all presence in Italy and Brazil until the local authorities wake up to themselves.
Which brings me a little closer to home, and the attacks on another messenger.
