6 Months Suspended Sentence for Google
The BBC reported today that :
An Italian court has convicted three Google executives in a trial over a video showing a teenager with Down’s Syndrome being bullied.
Is it just me or is the screws of justice actually starting to turn, I know Google will appeal against this and David Drummond, chief legal officer at Google quoted that :
“I intend to vigorously appeal this dangerous ruling. It sets a chilling precedent,” he said.
“If individuals like myself and my Google colleagues who had nothing to do with the harassing incident, its filming or its uploading onto Google Video can be held criminally liable solely by virtue of our position at Google, every employee of any internet hosting service faces similar liability,” he added.
Personally I believe that Google need to start taking account of their actions. Last Monday on my radio show Strikepoint I kind of went on a large scale rant after Google again sent my children to places I don’t want them to go, which made me want to block Google from my home :
Seriously “best toys” is something my kids do search and I don’t want, or like the fact that Google is pushing them to Sex Toys..I have no reason for even letting them sign up for Gmail.
Dave
Mr Whizz 1182 days ago
Nice promotion of Google Chrome in your advertising Dave….
you’ll ban them from your home but take advertising revenue from them?
SooperT 1182 days ago
I think the court-ruling is bad news for the Internet and sets a really bad precedent.
I work for a web hosting company & this ruling (should it not be overturned) could mean we’re liable for all the content on our servers. If this becomes the case, hosts may become increasingly cautious about which customers they take on, or how they respond to reports of say libel on their servers.
They may prefer to err on the side of caution and suspend a customer on the basis of an unsubstantiated claim from say mega corps legal team rather than take the risk of being directly liable for their customers actions. Quite a few regular blogs skirt close to the libel line (its peoples opinion) and could fall foul of this.
As for the best toys example – thats clearly not great for kids. But you can always use a different search engine.
DaveN 1182 days ago
@sooperT The internet is like the bloody wild wild west, we have TV watershed in the UK to protect kids… the internet does not ..
@MrWhizz yer and I use adwordsshocking isn’t but I’m an Internet Marketer not a freedom rights activist
Matt 1182 days ago
http://www.onetakemedia.netDave, with respect, there are plenty of good internet filters out there that can make the internet a fairly safe place to be. I think that already with the Safe Search filters Google and others do a pretty good job at keeping results kid friendly as possible.
Lets not shoulder off the sole responsibility of raising kids right on a corporation or the government.
Tim Shapcott 1182 days ago
There’s plenty of offerings for child friendly search out there – of all people you should have that side of things sorted !?!? Perhaps Google are missing a trick by not having a ‘Kids search’ option amongst the safe search options?
Meanwhile, if you in anyway supply/offer/deal or direct persons to illegal content you should be held accountable.
DaveN 1182 days ago
@tim agreed my kids use Kidzui, the school likes IE and Google thou
Dave Ashworth 1180 days ago
http://www.returnondigital.com/dave-ashworth.phpSorry, but I have to stick up for Google here, well, in particular for the individuals who now hold a criminal record without actually doing anything.
Surely, if they think there was a charge to answer then Google as a whole should’ve got a fine or something.
Looking at it simplistically, does this mean if a serial killer buys a new hammer on his Barclaycard, then goes out and kills people with said hammer, are Barclaycard in some way responsible?