Four Google executives face charges in a Milan court. Their crime? Google allowed (or, perhaps to be more precise, failed to stop) the posting of a video in which four young thugs mock a boy with Downs Syndrome.
Obviously, the video is objectionable. However, in free societies, it's also perfectly legal--as is lots of other objectionable content on YouTube, such as white supremacist parades, flaming dog poop, and the video for "Total Eclipse of the Heart." The slope down which you tumble when you start policing content that someone might find objectionable isn't just slippery, it's practically frictionless.
Life in the Web 2.0, cloud computing, everything's-a-service-for-everything-else world makes the circles of responsibility even harder to draw. What responsibility does Facebook have for someone posting an objectionable video, hosted on YouTube, on their personal page? Does tweeting the link to the video ensnare Twitter in this web of sin?
And if you think "objectionable content" is hard to police, just you wait until you get into the whistleblower laws. What's might be legal, or just a minor infraction, in one country is a serious crime in another. Even the notion of what constitutes a state secret varies widely between, say, Denmark and China.
This prosecution may have more to do with Italian politics than Italian law. That's not the same as saying, however, that it's a sure thing that Google will win the case.
I agree with you general point - Google should be a "public carrier" much like a telecom in this example, and thus no more responsible for this video than AT&T is for you planning a criminal act while talking over its telephone lines.
However, I just watched "Total Eclipse of the Heart" - that's an amazing song with an amazing video. Come on - just because the genre is terrible doesn't mean it's not wonderful in its own horrific retarded 80s power ballad way.
It's like trashing John Coltrane because you hate all jazz music.
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The video speaks for itself: Flying choir boys with glowing eyes! Fencers! Football players! Ninjas! Jets! Sharks!
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