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Google bosses convicted in Italy

Infinite Chaos

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An Italian court has convicted three Google executives in a trial over a video showing a teenager with Down's Syndrome being bullied.

The Google employees were accused of breaking Italian law by allowing the video to be posted online.

Judge Oscar Magi absolved the three of defamation but convicted them of privacy violations.

The UK's former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said the case gave privacy laws a "bad name".

The three employees received suspended six-month sentences, while a fourth defendant was acquitted.
News Source

Interesting, there were other ways this could have been dealt with - such as recognising that Google had pulled the video anyway and the four bullies had been expelled from their Italian school.

Google says it has no plans to pull out of Italy and that it will vigorously appeal the case.

At the moment there is no indication that a similar case could or would be brought in any other European country.

Italy does seem determined to pursue such cases though and similar ones are ongoing against other net giants, such as eBay, Yahoo and Facebook. Its motives in pursuing such cases are less clear.
 
It is the conservative Berloscoloony campaign against the Internet in Italy. This is just the first part of many. The Italian government has big plans to curb the Internet in Italy..

why... because the Internet was used against Berlocoloony when he was caught with his pants down on camera. He managed to get the pictures banned in Italy because he controls most of the media, but he could not prevent it being spread over the Internet and that pissed him off.

For example, they are pushing for a registration requirement to upload pictures and video onto the Internet. The reason.. too clamp down on sexual and abusive content.. funny considering that Berloscoloony's nuddie pictures with his prostitutes would fall under that... ironic no?
 
It is the conservative Berloscoloony campaign against the Internet in Italy. This is just the first part of many. The Italian government has big plans to curb the Internet in Italy..

why... because the Internet was used against Berlocoloony when he was caught with his pants down on camera. He managed to get the pictures banned in Italy because he controls most of the media, but he could not prevent it being spread over the Internet and that pissed him off.

For some reason that just sounds like a tin foil hat conspiracy.

For example, they are pushing for a registration requirement to upload pictures and video onto the Internet. The reason.. too clamp down on sexual and abusive content.. funny considering that Berloscoloony's nuddie pictures with his prostitutes would fall under that... ironic no?
Pushing for registrations in order to do something that many people here in the US considers a right sounds like something a liberal would do.
 
It is the conservative Berloscoloony campaign against the Internet in Italy. This is just the first part of many. The Italian government has big plans to curb the Internet in Italy..

why... because the Internet was used against Berlocoloony when he was caught with his pants down on camera. He managed to get the pictures banned in Italy because he controls most of the media, but he could not prevent it being spread over the Internet and that pissed him off.

For example, they are pushing for a registration requirement to upload pictures and video onto the Internet. The reason.. too clamp down on sexual and abusive content.. funny considering that Berloscoloony's nuddie pictures with his prostitutes would fall under that... ironic no?
Inventing your own language now? :lol:
 
For some reason that just sounds like a tin foil hat conspiracy.

Hardly. The Italian government started to push its new Internet crackdown after their dear leader was caught with his pants down. After all he threatened and tried to sue media all over Europe for publishing the pictures lol. It is no tin foil hat conspiracy by any means.

Pushing for registrations in order to do something that many people here in the US considers a right sounds like something a liberal would do.

Then it sucks that it is a conservative that is doing it eh? And it is not only registrations but a policing of the internet they are trying to do.
 
It is the conservative Berloscoloony campaign against the Internet in Italy. This is just the first part of many. The Italian government has big plans to curb the Internet in Italy..

why... because the Internet was used against Berlocoloony when he was caught with his pants down on camera. He managed to get the pictures banned in Italy because he controls most of the media, but he could not prevent it being spread over the Internet and that pissed him off.

For example, they are pushing for a registration requirement to upload pictures and video onto the Internet. The reason.. too clamp down on sexual and abusive content.. funny considering that Berloscoloony's nuddie pictures with his prostitutes would fall under that... ironic no?

Italy pushes for an expansive definition of privacy that stifles investigations into personal matters: "This is an evil right-wing campaign to destroy freedom and liberty."

Countries like the UK have similarly strong privacy/libel laws that have the exact same effect: ".........."
 
Italy pushes for an expansive definition of privacy that stifles investigations into personal matters: "This is an evil right-wing campaign to destroy freedom and liberty."

Countries like the UK have similarly strong privacy/libel laws that have the exact same effect: ".........."
They'll pull out the old "if you have nothing to hide" bit next.
 
Italy pushes for an expansive definition of privacy that stifles investigations into personal matters: "This is an evil right-wing campaign to destroy freedom and liberty."

Countries like the UK have similarly strong privacy/libel laws that have the exact same effect: ".........."

Sorry but that is in no way the same thing.

Italy only started to push for an "expansive definition of privacy" when the leader of the country got caught on camera with nakid hookers. They only went after the Internet because their leader could not block said images from being spread on the Internet.

The British are not trying to stop freespeech on the Internet or anywhere else. Yes they have very harsh privacy/libel laws, but guess what.. Berloscoloony could have sued in the UK against the original picture takers which came from the UK.. but did he? No, because he could not win and since the pictures were already out there, what would be the point. Instead he went after controlling his own little universe even more by hitting down on the only major thing that he does not own.. the Internet.
 
It is the conservative Berloscoloony campaign against the Internet in Italy. This is just the first part of many. The Italian government has big plans to curb the Internet in Italy..

why... because the Internet was used against Berlocoloony when he was caught with his pants down on camera. He managed to get the pictures banned in Italy because he controls most of the media, but he could not prevent it being spread over the Internet and that pissed him off.

For example, they are pushing for a registration requirement to upload pictures and video onto the Internet. The reason.. too clamp down on sexual and abusive content.. funny considering that Berloscoloony's nuddie pictures with his prostitutes would fall under that... ironic no?

Clearly... he needs a dirt nap.
 
Sorry but that is in no way the same thing.

Italy only started to push for an "expansive definition of privacy" when the leader of the country got caught on camera with nakid hookers. They only went after the Internet because their leader could not block said images from being spread on the Internet.

The British are not trying to stop freespeech on the Internet or anywhere else. Yes they have very harsh privacy/libel laws, but guess what.. Berloscoloony could have sued in the UK against the original picture takers which came from the UK.. but did he? No, because he could not win and since the pictures were already out there, what would be the point. Instead he went after controlling his own little universe even more by hitting down on the only major thing that he does not own.. the Internet.


His motivations are irrelevant to the question of whether the laws are demonstrably worse than the UK's. You think that the UK's laws don't have an impact on free speech in their country? Talk to a first amendment practitioner at a major international media company and ask them about the special procedures they use to keep things out of the UK. Papers have explicitly carved out particular sections of articles, have blocked UK IPs from accessing portions of the website, and have even changed content in order to avoid the multitude of lawsuits.

Here's one particularly interesting example: After 9/11, there was a lot of interest around the world as to the involvement of rich Saudis in funding various terrorist groups. Because sharia law requires tithing, most of the wealthy people in SA were just chucking money at various charities without doing much diligence, in order to meet their religious obligations. As a result, some of that money was ending up in bad hands. As various UK newspapers started investigating this and reporting on early attempts by the US to monitor these funds, the Saudis who were being named filed a barrage of lawsuits in the UK. The general counsels of a couple dozen major companies got together to decide what to do, and initially agreed that they were going to go forward and fight the claims. Two days later, every single paper other than the Wall Street Journal Europe backed out and decided to settle with the Saudis. The WSJ got involved in an 8 year battle that they lost at the early stages (thanks to ****ty initial judges), but managed to win in the House of Lords. However, because of the fact that every single other company had settled, news reports about Saudis and terror financing have effectively evaporated from the entire UK.

When you have the entire news media being too cowed to run stories of critical public importance for the fear that the figures involved will sue and win, your laws are no longer serving the public interest.
 
His motivations are irrelevant to the question of whether the laws are demonstrably worse than the UK's. You think that the UK's laws don't have an impact on free speech in their country? Talk to a first amendment practitioner at a major international media company and ask them about the special procedures they use to keep things out of the UK. Papers have explicitly carved out particular sections of articles, have blocked UK IPs from accessing portions of the website, and have even changed content in order to avoid the multitude of lawsuits.

Here's one particularly interesting example: After 9/11, there was a lot of interest around the world as to the involvement of rich Saudis in funding various terrorist groups. Because sharia law requires tithing, most of the wealthy people in SA were just chucking money at various charities without doing much diligence, in order to meet their religious obligations. As a result, some of that money was ending up in bad hands. As various UK newspapers started investigating this and reporting on early attempts by the US to monitor these funds, the Saudis who were being named filed a barrage of lawsuits in the UK. The general counsels of a couple dozen major companies got together to decide what to do, and initially agreed that they were going to go forward and fight the claims. Two days later, every single paper other than the Wall Street Journal Europe backed out and decided to settle with the Saudis. The WSJ got involved in an 8 year battle that they lost at the early stages (thanks to ****ty initial judges), but managed to win in the House of Lords. However, because of the fact that every single other company had settled, news reports about Saudis and terror financing have effectively evaporated from the entire UK.

When you have the entire news media being too cowed to run stories of critical public importance for the fear that the figures involved will sue and win, your laws are no longer serving the public interest.

And congrats on derailing the thread by taking focus away from Italy and on to the UK for some reason. And you should know better.
 
His motivations are irrelevant to the question of whether the laws are demonstrably worse than the UK's. You think that the UK's laws don't have an impact on free speech in their country? Talk to a first amendment practitioner at a major international media company and ask them about the special procedures they use to keep things out of the UK. Papers have explicitly carved out particular sections of articles, have blocked UK IPs from accessing portions of the website, and have even changed content in order to avoid the multitude of lawsuits.

Here's one particularly interesting example: After 9/11, there was a lot of interest around the world as to the involvement of rich Saudis in funding various terrorist groups. Because sharia law requires tithing, most of the wealthy people in SA were just chucking money at various charities without doing much diligence, in order to meet their religious obligations. As a result, some of that money was ending up in bad hands. As various UK newspapers started investigating this and reporting on early attempts by the US to monitor these funds, the Saudis who were being named filed a barrage of lawsuits in the UK. The general counsels of a couple dozen major companies got together to decide what to do, and initially agreed that they were going to go forward and fight the claims. Two days later, every single paper other than the Wall Street Journal Europe backed out and decided to settle with the Saudis. The WSJ got involved in an 8 year battle that they lost at the early stages (thanks to ****ty initial judges), but managed to win in the House of Lords. However, because of the fact that every single other company had settled, news reports about Saudis and terror financing have effectively evaporated from the entire UK.

When you have the entire news media being too cowed to run stories of critical public importance for the fear that the figures involved will sue and win, your laws are no longer serving the public interest.

Of course this is slightly off-topic, but briefly, you are both right and wrong. Right inasmuch as many people, (Saudis have done it, so have several American companies and individuals) use the UK as a country in which to seek recompense for perceived libel. It does have an effect on the freedom to read and hear certain opinions. The worst of it is that sue someone for libel costs, big time, hence it's only really available to the wealthy.

However, there is a good side to it. No journalist can publish scurrilous and damaging allegations about someone else without being able to back up their claims with solid evidence, evidence that can stand up in court. If you can't prove what you are saying then you have no right to say it in public without consequence.

I'd be interested to know what kind of protection someone has from malicious falsehoods in other countries.
 
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