Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Google Executives Found Guilty of Privacy Violations

An Italian criminal court judge found three Google executives guilty of privacy violations Wednesday in what may be a landmark case in Internet freedom. An Associated Press story reports, "This could help define whether the Internet in Italy is an open, self-regulating platform or if content must be better monitored for abusive materials." And it's likely not to stop there.

The judge ruled that three Goggle executives did not act quickly enough in pulling down a video --uploaded by some teenagers - showing bullies abusing an autistic boy. The video, which immediately went to the top of the most-viewed list, was posted before Google bought YouTube.

Google says it's impossible to prescreen thousands of hours of footage uploaded daily to sites like YouTube and considers the ruling a threat to freedom on the Internet. Not censorship, argue the prosecutors in the case, but balancing freedom of expression with the rights of an individula.

Google will appeal.

4 comments:

fatima almarzouqi said...

How can Google monitor every video that goes on youtube, they are not the police. Google should not be held responsible for monitoring content but they do have an obligation to do something about it fast if it is pointed out that certain content is inappropriate.

Noura Fahed said...

Yeah that's true! how can Google keep an eye to all videos being uploaded to their server?! Every one is responsible on what they upload and what they download to watch. However, you don't have to watch every thing being posted in the server. If you think it is inappropriate then don't watch it!!

Fatima . M . Al Ali said...

They shouldn't blame Google Executives, but google users who should be blame because they are who upload the video.

I think this will be be a good case to think about monitoring such these video before uploading them.

To protect human rights and prevent them, if such of these video uploaded normally, then everyone will kill someone or beat someone will record what he or she is doing and upload it to share it with people.
these people are careless and they don't care about people's emotions, so they have to solve this problem and monitor these types of video

Khawla al-Muhairi said...

I'm with them because google is not responsible. If google took it off, maybe they will load it again!!