Editorial: It's Gobbledy Google in Italy

OPINION: A court ruling this week in Italy has set a new, and unpalatable, benchmark on the freedom of the worldwide web.

It also has the potential to pull the rug from social networking sites such as Facebook, and forums like those on Trade Me, because it holds the administrators of those sites liable for the content on them.

Google's senior vice-president and chief legal officer David Drummond, former Google Italy board member George De Los Reyes and global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer were handed six-month suspended jail sentences this week by a Milan court which held them responsible for repulsive video footage of a Down's Syndrome boy being bullied in Italy. The video was posted on to the Google site in 2006. For its part, Google removed the violating footage as soon as it knew of it and helped track down both the bullies in the video and the person who had posted it. But that was not enough for Judge Oscar Magi in Milan. He ruled the three Google Inc executives violated the privacy of the bullied boy by letting the video be posted and then viewed on the site in 2006.

Google will appeal the six-month suspended jail terms and said the verdict "poses a crucial question for the freedom on which the internet is built", since none of the three employees found guilty had anything to do with the offending video. The company's senior communications manager, Bill Echikson, summed up the ramifications of the decision, saying that if hosting platforms like Google Video, YouTube and Facebook can be held responsible for content that others upload, "then the freedom that we know, the web we know, will cease to exist".

To put it into perspective, the decision raises questions over the liability of, for example, Facebook if someone takes exception to a lewd picture which may feature them on someone's homepage. In 2007 a video of a 14 and a 16-year-old beating up a third teenager in Hastings was posted on YouTube. In the same circumstances in Italy YouTube could now be liable for providing the platform for it to be broadcast. In the Hastings case Judge Bridget MacIntosh emphasised the role of the internet by saying it had been effectively used as a weapon to further humiliate the victim and to glorify the attack.

Google answers that if it is liable for everything posted on its site, then the postal service should be similarly liable when it delivers hate mail. The point is valid. If the same logic used in Milan was applied to guns, then gunmakers could face a murder charge without pulling a trigger. That said, it is not cut and dry. There is growing support for the view that tobacco companies should be held more accountable for damage their products have caused, even though they do not inhale. Internet sites which allow public access should be required to exhibit a degree of social responsibility. But the requirements implied in the Milan decision go beyond a degree. Google did show a high level of responsibility in this case. Judge Magi's decision is out of touch with reality, and it is to be hoped other countries see that.

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