Italian court convicts Google execs over video

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/24/BUHC1C6KIQ.DTL

In a case that could have broad implications for Internet use around the world, an Italian court convicted three Google Inc. executives Wednesday of criminal charges for failing to quickly remove an uploaded video.

Officials at the Mountain View company pledged to appeal, saying if the verdict is allowed to stand, “the Web as we know it will cease to exist.”

Legal experts agreed the case raises troubling questions for all U.S. Internet companies that do business globally.

“It absolutely is a threat,” said Danny O’Brien, international outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation of San Francisco.

“If intermediaries like Google or the person who hosts your Web site can be thrown in jail in any country for the acts of other people and suddenly have a legal obligation to prescreen everything anyone says on their Web site before putting it online, the tools for free speech that everyone uses on the Net would grind to a halt.”

Judge Oscar Magi found three of Google’s executives – global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer, chief legal officer David Drummond and retired Chief Financial Officer George Reyes – guilty of violating Italian privacy laws.

In absentia, the executives were handed six-month suspended sentences, although the judge also cleared them, along with a fourth executive, of defamation charges.

The case revolves around a video uploaded to Google Video in 2006 showing an autistic boy in Turin being pummeled and insulted by teenage bullies at school. The video was uploaded before Google bought the more popular YouTube.

The video drew 5,500 views in the two months before Google Italy pulled it dowwn two hours after being notified by police. The boy’s father and an advocacy group for people with Down syndrome complained the video violated privacy protection laws.

Prosecutor Alfredo Robledo told the Associated Press the verdict upheld privacy principles and put the rights of individuals ahead of those of businesses. He said the case will force Google and other firms to be held accountable for screening videos hosted on their sites.

“This is the big principal affirmed by this verdict,” Robledo said. “It is fundamental, because identity is a primary good. If we give that up, anything can happen, and that is not OK.”

Internet principles

In a company blog post, Google vice president and deputy general counsel Matt Sucherman called the ruling “astonishing” because “none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video.”

The verdict “attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built,” he wrote.

The benefits of the Web could disappear if “sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board are held responsible for every single piece of content that is uploaded to them,” he said.

Support for Google

A host of U.S. technology associations jumped to Google’s defense.

“Most troubling, what happens in Italy is unlikely to stay in Italy,” said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “The Italian court’s actions today will surely embolden authoritarian regimes and be used to justify their own efforts to suppress Internet freedom.”

Ed Black, chief executive of the Computer and Communications Industry, said he believes the ruling will be found inconsistent with European Union laws governing Internet content.

But, he added, “this is an example of a bird in the tunnel telling us how easily it could get way out of control. This is not the only instance of countries or governments lashing out rather clumsily with blunt instruments about things they don’t like on the Internet.”

Local distinctions

Indeed, firms large enough to have an Internet presence in other countries have faced numerous skirmishes over local distinctions of laws such as copyright and intellectual property. Recently, Google has become embroiled in a dispute with China, saying it will stop censoring search results in that country after attacks on the Gmail accounts of human rights advocates there.

For those firms, there are no easy answers, said James Burger, an intellectual property attorney with the Washington, D.C., law firm Dow Lohnes.

“I could see Italy arguing we should adopt their law in this instance,” Burger said. “There is a larger problem, which is: How do we deal with U.S. companies being slammed abroad for acts that are legal in the United States?”

Pressure on Italy

Jason Schultz, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley, said it’s unclear whether Italian officials will try to apply the ruling more broadly.

“There will be a lot of pressure on the Italian government to rethink this shortsighted approach once the Italian citizenry realizes how limiting it will be to only have access to government-approved media,” Schultz said.

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David Cage Already Has New Ideas.

Sorry I haven’t been postin’.I just didnt have time.

from computerandvideogames.com

Heavy Rain producer David Cage has said he already has “ideas that will be implemented in [Quantic Dream’s] next game”, with hints that it could support Sony’s motion controller.

“You can always improve, and we have other ideas that will be implemented in the next game,” Cage told the UK Official PlayStation magazine, having previously confirmed that it won’t be a sequel to Heavy Rain.

“And there are also other devices coming that we’d like to explore,” added Cage. Consider that Heavy Rain was originally designed for motion controls”, and Cage has admitted to having “a lot of interest” in the PS3 wands, and we see that as a not-too-subtle hint as to what could be in store.

Cage went on: “You can always think of new ideas and new things especially with this format because it’s so contextual. There are so many things you can do, just adding new words to the narrative language using the interface, and it’s almost an endless thing.”

You can read the full interview in the latest issue of the Official PlayStation Magazine UK, on sale this Thursday. Buy your copy of Official PlayStation Magazine and have it delivered to your door.

Ratings for Online games Urged in China

BEIJING, Dec. 8 — Young Internet users may soon find their access to violent online games unplugged.

Under a system similar to film classification, the Ministry of Culture is planning to introduce a rating system for online content, including games, that would only allow players older than a certain age to join in.

“We will ask the game operators to improve the rules of their game, adjust product structure and crack down on vulgar style. We need to raise the cultural content in online games,” said Tuo Zuhai, deputy director of the marketing department at the ministry.

“Enhancing the content of online games is the current focal point of our work,” he said at China’s Seventh International Digital Content Expo.

Some netizens, however, have questioned the feasibility of the ministry’s plan and the likelihood of it accomplishing its goals.

“I wonder if it’s possible,” a netizen named Flowerci posted on the game section of Tianya.cn, a popular online forum.

“The film classification system has not even been successfully implemented in China, and the Internet is even more complicated than film,” Flowerci said.

China’s Internet industry has developed rapidly in the last decade. According to research from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of China’s netizens has surpassed 300 million. More than half of them are younger than 25 years old.

Those younger netizens are the targeted group of online games, which explains why sociologists and other professionals are insisting on a classification system to limit the youths’ access to bloody, violent and obscene content, just as the film classification system attempts to do.

“In the period of immaturity, youths are particularly curious about sex,” Tao Hongkai, a guest professor of Huazhong Normal University, said on a Topics of Focus program on State broadcaster CCTV on Nov 6.

“Even if there are no graphic rape pictures and scenes in the game, the design of the woman characters with scanty clothes also stimulates the youths,” he said.

He has heard of cases where online players later meet in real life and their online relationship affects how they expect the other person to behave, potentially leading to problems.

While experts say keeping young people away from certain sites is a positive move, netizens wonder how the system would actually keep them from accessing the sites.

“How can the Internet classification be possible without a working real-name system? Who knows my age on the Internet? I may even use my parents’ ID to pass the check during the registration,” another netizen named Talenteer questioned.

The number of online players in China has reached 217 million and the sales revenue has reached 20.8 billion yuan ($3 billion) in 2008, making China the world’s second largest online games market after the United States.

Unlike their players, however, at least one operator of an online game is welcoming the government initiative.

“This is a very welcome system,” said Serena Shao, a game planner at Our Game Co., Ltd.

“It even helps us to satisfy our customers. For example, we will be able to add different elements depending on the age of our players,” Shao said.

“Some elements may not be suitable for youths but OK for adults,” she explained. “In this case, the playability of online games could be raised as well.”

China’s online game market has benefitted from the rapid development of the Internet as well.

China’s online game revenues are expected to hit 73.1 billion yuan ($10.7 billion) in three years, driven by growing Internet penetration in the world’s most populous country, reported Reuters.

The Ministry of Culture also posted a statement on its website on Nov 13, ordering the online game operators to limit virtual marriages and player-versus-player combat content. Ministry officials asked them to enhance socialist values in the games.

(Source: China Daily)

~poptropica500 Ξ