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...

Filed Under: intermediary liability, italy, secondary liability
Companies: google

Japanese Police Arrest 2Channel Founder Because Users Talk About Illegal Stuff Occasionally

from the here's-your-award dept

As we wrap up 2012, I think it's an appropriate time announce the first annual "Most Incorrect Law Enforcement Action Of The Year" award (yes, I just made that up). While it would be obvious hyperbole to claim that law enforcement in general is somehow inept or evil, it's been a hallmark year for silly LEOs. We once again saw several countries attempt to make it illegal for citizens to film police in action, despite such filming often occurring in public places. We also discussed how the German government whoopsie'd its way into informing the world of all the ways it monitors its citizens. Seriously, if you're going to go all 1984 on us, at least have the capability to not shove it in my face. These are just a few examples we've seen this year.

That said, for the truly deficient aficionado, you just can't beat the Japanese police, who recently announced charges against the founder of 2Channel (the super popular Japanese forum site), named Hiroyuki Nishimura, because some users of the site have been found to discuss illicit narcotics. And it all appears to have stemmed from one nonsense news report on one single little 2Channel post.

Since last year 2channel, Japan’s largest internet forum, has been subject to pressure from Tokyo police. According to a January 2012 post by Avery (2channel Fights Police Pressure, So-Called “Viral Marketers”), the whole police investigation began after Fuji TV aired a sensational news report about drug dealers making posts on the site. The news report was aired only a few days after 2channel users helped organize street protests condemning Fuji TV’s alleged anti-Japanese bias.

"Their evidence for the drug trade was a single post from 2010 that used code words to refer to MDMA, marijuana, and cocaine….investigators are calling 2ch a “hotbed of crime” because moderators did not delete the single post from 2010. (Over 1,800,000 posts are made on 2channel every day.)"

So, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way, because then we can really have fun. 2Channel is Japan's largest internet forum. It's huge. Policing every post on it would be similar to owners of a private beach checking each individual grain of sand on their property. If such forums are going to exist, forum operators need to be protected from these kinds of charges in order to survive. On top of that, just as with Craigslist, dedicated law enforcement officers should be able to make at least some use of the forums themselves for their own activities, but not if they attack the site's owners.

Great, the normal stuff out of the way. Now let me explain why these charges are really stupid.

Nishimura will be charged with abetting drug dealing. However, some twitter users have pointed out that the statute of limitations for the drug law in question is 3 years, and Nishimura sold 2channel more than 3 years ago.

Oops. So charges are being brought against the guy who simply founded the site that someone else may have once used to talk about something illegal, even though he sold the site 3 years ago and the statute of limitations has expired. I'm certain Unites States LEOs will soon be bringing charges against the long-rotting corpse of E.L. Cord, founder of American Airlines, since terrorists used a plane of his to attack the World Trade Center. I mean, they really have no choice at this point, assuming they want to make a late entry into this year's "Most Incorrect Law Enforcement Action Of The Year" award.

Filed Under: 2chan, drugs, forums, japan, secondary liability, statute of limitations

Italian Prosecutor Still Wants To Put Google Execs In Jail Because Of A Video Uploaded By Some Kids

from the secondary-liability-mess dept

Back in 2008 we were amazed that prosecutors in Italy were seeking to put four Google execs in jail, claiming that they were liable for a video that was uploaded to Google video, showing some kids mocking another child who is autistic. Google even took down the video after being notified of it -- and the video itself was evidence used to go after the kids for their actions. And yet, for reasons that still make no sense, prosecutors deemed that four Google execs should be found criminally liable for the fact that some kids uploaded that video. The execs in question did not taunt the child. They did not make the video. They did not upload the video. They were unaware of the video's existence. It is solely because they work at Google, and Google was a tool used by these kids to incriminate themselves, that prosecutors went after them.

Making matters even more ridiculous, three of the four execs were then found guilty and given "suspended" 6 month jail sentences (meaning they didn't actually have to go to jail). A reading of the ruling by an Italian legal expert noted that the judge appeared to confuse different parts of the law to come to that conclusion. Part of the issue was that because some users "complained" in the Google Video comments, prosecutors claim that Google should have known and taken down the video (because, they apparently think that people at Google read every single comment).

Google appealed, of course, and Italian prosecutors are still arguing that the execs belong in jail for reasons that still escape me. At best, all this is doing is telling tech execs to not do business in Italy, because the country apparently has completely wacky secondary liability laws that mean you might be criminally liable (i.e., face jailtime) if anyone uses your service to do something mean to another person. The easiest way to avoid that kind of liability: don't do business in Italy at all.

Filed Under: italy, secondary liability, videos
Companies: google

Washington State Stops Trying To Defend Unconstitutional Law Criminalizing Service Providers

from the moving-on dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about a ridiculous state law up in Washington that sought to place liability on service providers for the actions of their users, all in the name of "protecting the children!" The Internet Archive quickly sued to stop the implementation of the law, winning a quick injunction blocking the law from being put into place. The court made it pretty clear that the law appeared to violate Section 230 of the CDA, the federal law that grants service providers clear immunity from certain user actions.

While the case had continued to move forward, Washington has now decided to stop trying to defend the law, effectively letting it die. Of course, you might still wonder why it was passed in the first place, but of course, the answer to that is basic politics. Either way, some states like to fight these kinds of things through multiple levels of appeals, wasting taxpayer money all the way, so it's nice that Washington state seemed to know to stop digging early on in the process.

Filed Under: intermediary liability, secondary liability, washington
Companies: backpages, internet archive

German Court Holds Internet User Responsible For Passing On Unknown, Encrypted File

from the knowing-the-unknowable dept

A natural response to the increasingly harsh enforcement of laws against unauthorized sharing of copyright files is to move to encrypted connections. It seems like a perfect solution: nobody can eavesdrop, and so nobody can find out what you are sharing. But as TorrentFreak reports, a German court has just dealt a blow to this approach.

The case involves RetroShare, which describes itself thus:

RetroShare is a Open Source cross-platform, Friend-2-Friend and secure decentralised communication platform.

It lets you to securely chat and share files with your friends and family, using a web-of-trust to authenticate peers and OpenSSL to encrypt all communication. RetroShare provides filesharing, chat, messages, forums and channels

That sounds pretty safe, but TorrentFreak explains why it wasn't in the current case:

This week a Hamburg court ruled against a RetroShare user who passed on an encrypted transfer that turned out to be a copyrighted music file. The user in question was not aware of the transfer, and merely passed on the data in a way similar to how TOR works.

The court, however, ruled that the user in question, who was identified by the copyright holder, is responsible for passing on the encrypted song.

The judge ordered an injunction against the RetroShare user, who is now forbidden from transferring the song with a maximum penalty of €250,000 or a six month prison term. Since RetroShare traffic is encrypted this means that the user can no longer use the network without being at risk.

That's because the user can't know what's in an encrypted file passing through his or her system, and thus cannot guarantee that it is not the song in question. In truth, this situation is partly the user's own fault:

RetroShare derives its security from the fact that all transfers go through "trusted friends" who users themselves add. In this case, the defendant added the anti-piracy monitoring company as a friend, which allowed him to be "caught."

But even if the court case in Hamburg is a result of fairly exceptional circumstances, it creates an awful precedent: that German users are responsible for encrypted contents passing through their connection, even though there is no way they can know what they might contain. Unfortunately, this is of a piece with a previous ruling by a German court that people can be fined for what others do with their open wifi connections, regardless of whether they knew what was going on.

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Filed Under: encryption, file sharing, germany, intermediary liability, liability, secondary liability
Companies: retroshare

Australian Court: Google Must Pay Guy $200k Due To Image Search Turning Up Gangsters

from the pics-pics-pics dept

With Google still holding the search engine crown, they're obviously going to be the target of a myriad of lawsuits. Defamation has played a role in the legal life of the search giant for some time now, even though the entire basis for technology behind the search results is in what the internet community at large does, rather than any active role by Google. That's what makes this kind of thing so silly. We previously wrote about autocomplete defamation cases, for instance, in which autocompletes are generated based on common searches, but people still want to hold the search engine accountable. We also had the story about the minority owner of the Miami Heat who didn't like the fact that a picture of him doing his best dog-with-peanut-butter-in-its-mouth impression showed up in search results. But, hey, at least he was suing over a picture that actually was him.

Not so for Milorad Trkulga, an elderly man from Melbourne, Australia, who has been awarded $200,000 from Google because the search engine's image results also conjured up pictures of Tony Mokbel, an apparent "Australian gangland figure."

The images were posted after Mr Trkulja was shot in the back by an unknown gunman while eating with his elderly mother at a St Albans restaurant in June 2004. When Mr Trkulja's name was typed into Google's image search, photos had appeared of him alongside gangland figure Tony Mokbel.

From what I can gather at the following related link, Trkulja was indeed shot while at a restaurant as part of some kind of infamous gangland wars that occured in 2004, hence the bridging link to a gangster. When news publications wrote up the story, they included images of both Trkulja and Mokbel, which likely caused their pictures to show up together in a search of the former's name. Trukulja, for reasons that escape me, thought that this was defamation and took Google to court. Google argued that they weren't publishing any of the material, only indexing search results. This, apparently, did not impress the jury.

However, the jury found Google's defence of the images broke down because it did not take any steps to remove the images from its searches once Mr Trkulja's lawyers contacted the company. The jury found the search engine was not liable for the search results themselves, as Mr Trkulja had incorrectly filled out a form for reporting offensive material by not including the URL of the content to which he objected.

And this is where I go from bemused to confused, so perhaps there's an expert in Australian law out there somewhere who can help out on this one. The jury decided that Google merely indexing results doesn't matter if Trkulja asked them to take the images off of search results, even though the jury acknowledges they aren't liable for those results and find that Trkulja didn't provide the actual URLs of the pictures he wanted removed. That would be like me walking up to a random person on the street, tapping them on the shoulder, telling them I didn't like something they said once but couldn't remember exactly what it was that offended me, demanded an apology, and then got a free down payment on a mansion when said random person didn't comply.

Beyond that...what the hell? So images of gangsters showed up in image results because you got shot in Australian gangland wars (seriously, I thought you guys all fought with machetes). How is any of this a problem? I imagine that if you have an atypical name, search results of all kinds of people are going to show up in Google. Hell, let's just test it out with my own name and see what happens. I'm sure the first image result of my name, Timothy Geigner, won't be all that bad.


Oh, hell no. This injustice will not stand. Mike, get our lawyers on the phone. It's mansion time.

Filed Under: australia, gangsters, jury, search results, secondary liability

Liability For Users May Be Worldwide Russian Roulette For Online Services

from the lowest-common-denominator dept

The Russian social network vKontakte has been held liable in a copyright case for the second time this year. Music label Gala successfully claimed damages again, because vKontakte's users are able to (and do) upload its music and videos to the social network.

This series of court cases may have prompted Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook to speak to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev about copyright laws on a recent trip. It is no secret that people do upload a lot of music videos to Facebook as well, so Facebook -- or any social media service for that matter -- could easily become the next litigation target in Russia.

Music recommendations via social networks have an important function in the modern music industry, because they are great tools for artists' marketing and consumers' awareness of new music alike. The question is then, whether the rest of the social media landscape and the culture of sharing and recommending have anything to worry about, following the two rulings from Russia. After all, Russia is a huge market, so global services may be pushed to regulate by code the types of content that is uploaded or linked to. Strict laws in one country can have effects on the way a service operates in another country.

Although details on Russian information law regarding intermediary liability and copyright exemptions are a little sketchy when one cannot read Russian, there does not seem to be a Russian equivalent of the safe harbor provisions in the US DMCA or the EU E-Commerce Directive. Russian services seem to so far have relied on a framework of laws, such as an exception in the fairly new Russian Federation Civil Code (Part IV, 2008), which allows for private copying and a subsequent levy on computers or digital media carriers, and the fact that initiator should be liable for copyright infringements, not the intermediary.

The vKontakte website looks and feels pretty much exactly like Facebook, but there's a key difference: Users are able to search all uploaded media on the social network, not just in their circle of friends. Although all sorts of content is accessible on Facebook, it has taken care to make content available mainly within groups of friends or when artists publish the works themselves on their own pages. The former likely falls under private copying exemptions, or fair use in the US, whereas the latter is simply a great promotion.

The same cannot be said for service like YouTube and Twitter. Most content uploaded or linked to by their users is searchable and publicly accessible. YouTube, of course, has the technical capacity to filter a portion of copyright protected works. However, no further special care is taken to keep the circulation of content limited. With this in mind, it is interesting to note the reaction by IFPI, the international arm of the RIAA, who celebrate this second ruling:

"The IFPI suggests that the 11 licensed digital music services in Russia have 'not developed to their full potential' because of the easy availability of free music on vKontakte. But rather than simply restricting its upload and search capabilities, the real question is whether, like Baidu in China, vKontakte can become a licensed partner for the music industry rather than a foe for the long term."

IFPI tries to push the social network to purchase licenses for the works their users are sharing on its service. This is made possible by the absence of rules exempting intermediaries, such as social networks, from liability for the actions of their users. Much can be said about the negligence with which vKontakte made uploaded content available to its whole user base. However, when comparing vKontakte to the services of Twitter and YouTube, it suddenly becomes apparent that any user-generated content service that operates worldwide may well be playing Russian roulette with their own liability for their users actions.

This is not to say that services should refrain from buying licenses from rights holders. However, in order not to start a technical race to the bottom, where user-generated content services adhere to the strictest copyright law the world has to offer (with all its negative consequences) in their aim to expand into new territory quicker than competitors, some reflection is needed on the global norms regulating intermediaries. Cases such as this one should ideally trigger new discussions and considerations at the international level. Maybe Zuckerberg can hold his next talk about global copyright at venues such as at the WIPO or the WTO.

Filed Under: file sharing, russia, secondary liability
Companies: facebook, vkontakte

Brazilian Judge Overreacts, Orders Arrest Of Head Of Google's Operations In Brazil Over Refusal To Censor YouTube Video

from the secondary-liabiity dept

We've noted in the past that Brazil doesn't seem to have much of a concept of safe harbors for secondary liability, as it's blamed Google for actions of its users in the past, even once ordering that YouTube be shut down, or blocked due to a video that someone didn't want seen. Once more, the Brazilian courts are at it again. Last week, a judge apparently ordered Google to take down a YouTube video that attacked a mayoral candidate for the city of Campo Grande. Google refused, and the judge, Flavio Peren, has responded by ordering all Google services be shut down for 24 hours and that the head of Google's operations in Brazil, Fabio Jose Silva Coelho, be arrested.

To say that this is an extreme overreaction, would be an understatement. Because of one video, about one local mayoral candidate (which, thanks to this publicity many more people are likely to see), all of Google should be blocked for people in Brazil and the head of Google's operations in Brazil should be arrested? Talk about a disproportionate response. Not only is it extreme, it makes no sense. Google didn't create or upload the video. It's just hosting it. If the video is illegal, blame whoever created it and uploaded it.

Google is appealing the ruling, but it still seems extreme. Google's transparency report has noted in the past that Brazil is perhaps the most aggressive country when it comes to content removal requests -- but that only suggests that someone should be thinking more carefully about how fast the Brazilian courts are to issue these kinds of injunctions without seeming to understand Google's role.

Filed Under: brazil, censorship, defamation, fabio jose silva coelho, flavio peren, secondary liability, shutdown, youtube
Companies: google

Anti-Islam Movie Actor Sues Producers, YouTube To Have Film Removed

from the cat's-outta-the-bag dept

Not long after I had written my opinion that YouTube should absolutely not censor the disgusing anti-Islam movie that has inflamed oft-flammable parts of this rock we all live on together, interesting news began filtering into the bloodstream. Actors in "Innocence of Muslims" began accusing its producers of misleading them about the roles they played, dubbing dialogue over their performances, and other bizzare tactics that had supposedly been used to keep those in the film from knowing what the end product was going to look like.

[Lily] Dionne was one of about 79 cast and crew who say they were "grossly misled" when they answered casting calls on Craigslist, Backstage magazine and other publications in July 2011 for a film that was described as "an historical Arabian Desert adventure."

But from the beginning, Dionne said the cast and crew had questions, including why the central character in a period piece had a Western name.

"We did wonder what it was about. They kept saying George. And we were like, 'This is the Middle East 2,000 years ago. Who's George?'" she said.

According to Dionne, the actors were then brought back after shooting to do the dubs, but the producers had them speak isolated lines and words, completely out of context. For instance, they were asked to simply say the name "Mohammed" and nothing else, with no explanation as to why. 79 cast and crew members have since released a statement claiming they were taken advantage of.

Now, one actress, Cindy Lee Garcia, has gone a step further and sued the man who produced the film, as well as YouTube, to, among other things, get the film taken down.

In a 17-page complaint filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the lawsuit from Cindy Lee Garcia also names YouTube LLC, the video-sharing website on which the video is posted, and its parent company, Google Inc., as causing irreparable harm to Ms. Garcia for refusing to remove the content from their site.

"The lawsuit is not an attack on the First Amendment or the right of Americans to say what they think," but it demands the content be pulled off because "Ms. Garcia in no way consented to the use of her performance, image or likeness in such an offensive and file film," Garcia's attorney, M. Cris Armenta, said in a statement.

A couple of things strike me here, so I'll take them in order. First, I'm unaware of how a film's director could be sued for slander (another aspect (pdf) of Garcia's lawsuit) because of the way he/she decides to portray the actors in their films. Slander should be out the window, since Garcia and the others were playing fictional roles, and so are not portrayed to be anything at all beyond the characters they were playing. Could Kevin Bacon sue Sleepers director Barry Levinson because the result of post-production for the film made his character look just a tad too child-rapey? The privacy violation and likeness rights violation in the suit seem equally ridiculous. She consented to be in a film! It's understandable why she's upset, but if that's allowed, imagine how many actors would start suing every time a film edit is a disaster and makes them look bad.

As for the "fraud" claim, that may be the strongest of a bunch of very weak claims. You could make the case that the various elements of fraud are present, but almost every one of them is a stretch.

In any case, today the judge refused to order an emergency takedown of the video—though the lawsuits will move ahead.

Even if there is a civil suit to be had here, targeting YouTube and requesting they take the film down has all the hallmarks of a head-in-the-sand approach (beyond raising questions of secondary liability). The cat is not only out of the bag at this point, it's protesting at its local US Embassy. The damage is done. I can certainly understand* the distress actors feel over the worldwide reaction to a film they probably thought would never be seen, but that doesn't mean the film has to come down. Google, thus far, agrees, and has refused to remove the video beyond censoring it in certain countries.

*One caveat: the trailer for this film was released in May. Where the hell were all these outraged actors back then? Why is it only now the film has made the news that they are releasing statements, speaking out, and filing lawsuits? Did none of these actors bother to view the movie they were in before the mainstream media picked this up?

Filed Under: fraud, innocence of muslims, lawsuit, privacy, publicity rights, secondary liability
Companies: youtube