Italian Court Comes To Its Senses, Says Google Execs In US Not Responsible For Kids Uploading Video
from the about-time dept
Earlier this month, we wrote about how an Italian court was considering the appeal by three Google execs of their earlier criminal conviction over some kids uploading a video to Google Video. The whole case was really bizarre, putting the liability for the kids uploading the video on some US-based execs who had nothing to do with it. As we noted when the conviction came down, legal experts believed that the judge had made a serious mistake in reading the law. Of course, it took three years to get to the appeal, and Italian prosecutors were still demanding that these execs be put in jail.Thankfully, however, the appeals court has overturned that ruling and said that the execs are not personally liable. Giovanni Maria Riccio, an Italian legal expert, agreed that "this is a landmark decision," especially concerning secondary liability. As he noted "it makes clear that monitoring obligations cannot be imposed on ISPs and that, in any case, these obligations are not connected with the financial benefit gained by intermediaries." As we had been arguing from the beginning, if Italian prosecutors won out in the long term, the potential incentives for foreign companies to make their services available in Italy would have been greatly diminished. Now, if Italian courts would only stop sending scientists to jail for failing to predict an earthquake...
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Filed Under: intermediary liability, italy, secondary liability
Companies: google
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I'm probably reading this wrong, but wouldn't potential liability increase, not diminish, if the prosecutors had prevailed?
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No, I wrote it wrong. Brain got shifted mid-sentence. Fixed... it's "incentives -> diminished" and "liability -> increased" but I started with one and ended with the other.
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Keep up the good work, Mike.
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Hope that clears it up for you.
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or out_of_the_blue.
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This has been addressed a number of times, but I think you ignore the answer because you don't like it. Google was not notified a couple of months earlier. Comments were made on the YouTube page. That's not notification.
And yes, there is a well-established and easy procedure for take-downs.
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Glad you helped us clear that up, out_of_the_asscrack.
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