Thursday, February 25, 2010
Google and Italy: its not unusual...
I have blogged on my freedom of expression blog about yesterday's case, but one important point needs to be made: this is not an isolated example of a crazy judge and prosecutor, but part of a worldwide trend away from Notice and Take Down and towards raising the costs of content hosts by requiring pre-screening of illegal content. Turkey and Germany (maybe!) are amongst countries to do so recently. A worldwide catalogue is being published by the Open Net Initiative in April.
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Blogged about this as well (in Dutch, alas, lousy Google translation below), with a slightly different reading of the case.
http://tinyurl.com/yd3ngxl
Haven't seen the Judge's opinion yet, but based on what I've read about the judgment it seems pretty tight. And here's why: the first prong of the test for the 'hosting' safe harbor in the eCommerce directive (art. 14) is that the hosting party may not have actual knowledge or information of any illegal activity as regards the hosted files.
Given that this video apparently has topped the 'most watched' lists for months, it may be hard for Google to meet this first part of the test. Also, note that Google has discontinued 'most watched' and similar listings as of lately.
I'm not saying I agree with the verdict—-for it was certainly motivated by the intent of going after Google—-only that the verdict may well be in line with the eComm dir after all...
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