Right to reply: Italy’s privacy ruling on Google- a sign of things to come?
- Added:
- Feb 26, 2010
The Italian court's decision this week to convict three Google executives on privacy charges for not blocking a video showing a disabled child being bullied has reignited the debate over privacy and responsibility on social media sites. In this ‘Right to Reply’ article, Tia Fisher of eModeration , says this case highlights how bands and media owners still face many hurdles when it comes to user generated content.
It does not seem reasonable to expect a publishing platform to take responsibility for all content that appears on it, and the ruling seems unfairly harsh. However, a crucial aspect to the case is whether Google were guilty of not taking down the content quickly enough.
At the time of writing there are some aspects of the case which remain unclear:
- Whether the video did in fact remain up an unnecessarily long period of time: it seems that Google says it took the content down within hours of it being reported, and helped the Italian police with investigations. The prosecution says the video was up for two months, even though users had posted objections.
- Whether the objections were in the form of comments only or whether the ‘flag inappropriate content’ button was used.
- If the latter, how long it was after receiving a flagged objection that the content was taken down.
The other point of interest is that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has an enormous axe to grind in the form of his Mediaset network, the only major private TV network in Italy.
Berlusconi's government is currently pushing through new measures that would give the state control over online video content and force anyone who regularly uploads videos to obtain a license from the Ministry of Communications.
Although unlikely that this verdict would have been found in any other European country than Italy, it does throw into sharp focus the issues that social networks (and also brands who have a presence on those networks) need to address in terms of protecting users.
By Tia Fisher
Business Development Manager
eModeration
Tia Fisher is keeping a close eye on the debate on the eModeration blog: http://blog.emoderation.com, and updating the blog as grey areas become clearer.
eModeration has also published a white paper looking at the issues facing brands on social networks, including analysis of who has responsibility for content. Moderation in Social Networks can be downloaded free from http://www.emoderation.com/about/publications.
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