On 25th February Italy scored another record. A court judged 3 executives of Google guilty of violation of privacy, for providing a service. The case was about a video portraying an autistic teenager while he was bullied by his schoolmates.
There's a lot of disinformation about this particular case, most people think that the judgement is related to the range of time Google needed to remove the video, that was considered too high. It's definitely not the true, as most italians know.
To be completely clear, I'm italian, and I know pretty well what happens in my country even if I moved to the US. I'm also very critic, I believe that our political class is currently one of the worst Italy ever had, and this includes both who is at the government and the opposition.
The court believes that that video shouldn't have been hosted by Google at all. The explanation is apparently very simple: before publishing a video, Google should have checked if that video was violating the privacy of someone. Unfortunately this is not "bizarre" as Techcrunch said, it's perfectly normal, especially in Italy. It's probably not the case to talk anymore about the sentence itself, it's pretty obvious how stupid it is. The court cited China as an example for filtering content, it's pretty easy to see where we are going. Probably someone should tell this people that Italy is (still) a democracy.
I would like to write down a very simple timeline, let everybody think about this strange sequence of facts and eventually draw a conclusion without my commentary.
July 30, 2008:
Mediaset files a lawsuit against Google that is very similar to the Viacom one. The italian broadcasting company claims that YouTube is hosting copyrighted content, specifically the italian version of the "Big Brother" show. The lawsuit worths 500 millions of euros (780 millions of dollars). 10,000 euros every minute, for 325 hours of material. Google declares that Mediaset could use the same instruments other broadcasters are using to care about every copyright infringement (including RAI, the italian national television).
December 5, 2009:
There's a huge manifestation in Rome against the government, especially against our Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The most interesting thing is that the proponents, the so called "velvet people", started and organized everything on Facebook, without political parties of any kind - the opposition, in fact, wasn't even present. The manifestation receives very low coverage from the media, even with more than 1 million of participants.
December 12, 2009:
Silvio Berlusconi is struck in the face by a 42 years old man with mental problems, Massimo Tartaglia. The attack is filmed and soon reaches YouTube and many other social networks.
December 15, 2009:
Fabrizio Cicchitto, a parliamentary of the PDL, the Berlusconi party, talks about a "network of hate", pointing his fingers against journalists, judges, politicians and newspapers who oppose the Prime Minister, in his opinion they fomented the attack. The PDL also starts criticizing social networks starting from Facebook and the many anti-Berlusconi groups, because they help spreading the "hate". Suddenly, the many fan pages of Massimo Tartaglia disappear.
December 17, 2009:
A court in Rome judges Google guilty: for the first time a court recognizes the rights of a broadcaster over "another". You got it right, italian law considers YouTube a broadcaster and "content creator", exactly at the same level of Mediaset.
February 25, 2010:
The already cited Google affair. Google is judged guilty for the second time in 3 months.
March 1, 2010:
The so called "decreto Romani" is approved. This law states that every service that can be in competition with a TV broadcaster (basically only blogs, online news and search engines are safe) have the same obligations of a TV channel and guarantee for the content they host.
I will leave with a simple question: considering that 5 national channels over 6 are already in the hands of the government, can we still be considered a democracy ? Reporters sans frontières declassed us again, we are 49th now, between Romania and Hong Kong. Maybe this partially answers to my own question.
Nothing else to say, thanks for your time.
