Italian Politician Tries To File Charges Against 4,609 YouTube Commenters

from the thin-skin,-much? dept

Boing Boing points us to a story coming out of Italy, concerning what appears to be a former politician with a... colorful past, Salvatore Cuffaro (he was apparently found guilty of helping the Mafia), who is upset about the comments on a YouTube video that involves himself, but which is from the early 90s. So, he's "laid charges" against all 4,609 commenters (since then, many more have commented). I'm not familiar enough with the legal system of Italy to quite understand what these charges mean, but the link above comes from an Italian political party, Italia dei Valori, which apparently is considered "anti-corruption." Apparently, that party is offering to cover the legal defense of any of the commenters who need the help. The translated text from Italia dei Valori isn't entirely clear -- and I'm not even sure what's wrong with the video or the commenters, or what people are being charged with exactly -- so please help fill in the blanks in the comments. However, any time you have a politician even threatening to sue thousands of YouTube commenters, you know something has gone wrong.

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How Do You Claim Antitrust Against Someone Who Has A Smaller Marketshare?

from the ah,-the-internets dept

Last week, we noted that Italian investigators were looking into Google News for alleged antitrust violations in not telling newspapers how it ranks stories. As ridiculous as that assertion is in the first place, it looks even more ridiculous when you realize (as Erick Schonfeld figured out) that Google News is actually a much smaller presence online than Italy's two largest newspapers online. It makes you wonder how you claim an antitrust violation against someone, when your own marketshare is larger and you control the established brand names in the market.

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Italian Newspapers Get Gov't To Investigate Google For Not Sharing Ranking Secret Sauce

from the seriously-delusional dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in the news that Italian regulators have begun an investigation into Google, at the request of some Italian newspapers. The complaint is a typical one from newspapers who seem slightly clueless about how Google works. They say that Google News is unfair -- even though they can opt-out, but don't. The newspapers falsely claim that if they opt-out of Google News, they also have to opt-out of Google Search. That's simply untrue. But even if it were true, I'm not sure what the point would be. Getting traffic is a good thing. It's unclear why Italian newspapers (or any newspapers) don't like it.

In fact, the whole idea that Google News is unfair for sending traffic is undermined by the other complaint from the newspapers: that Google doesn't reveal how it ranks stories:

Because Google does not disclose the criteria for ranking news articles or search results, he said, newspapers are unable to hone their content to try to earn more revenue from online advertising.

Of course, that's silly. First, plenty of people have figured out how to optimize for Google -- there's a whole industry called SEO that does that. That doesn't mean that Google needs to reveal the secret sauce. But the best response to the demand for Google to reveal how it ranks stories comes from Danny Sullivan, who turns the story around, and wonders how newspaper would feel in the other direction:

No newspaper editor of any quality would allow an external interest to walk into their newsroom and demand to know exactly how to guarantee a front page article about whatever they want. But that's what the Italian papers seem to desire. Google has an editorial process for producing rankings, one that's done using automation -- but the papers seem to want to bypass those editorial decisions.

Exactly. The newspapers are basically demanding that their stories get ranked higher, but how would newspaper editors feel about the subjects of stories in the paper demanding that their stories be on the front page. After all, being on the front page would get the subject of a story more attention, and the newspaper isn't paying those subjects -- so the newspaper is "getting all the value." -- at least according to newspaper logic.

Sullivan also does a good job highlighting how useless it would be if the newspapers did get the details on how Google ranks stuff, because then everyone would just start writing stories to get to the top of the list, and any "advantage" would be lost. Separate from that, shouldn't we be just a bit troubled to find out that the newspapers are interested in figuring out how to write stories that top Google, rather than writing stories to better inform the populace?

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Is A Blogger Strike The Best Way To Fight Back Against Laws Designed To Quiet Bloggers?

from the doesn't-seem-like-it dept

Last month, we wrote about a proposed law in Italy that would likely have serious chilling effects on bloggers and other independent online producers, by setting up fines for not pulling down content if someone accuses the site of defamation (not upon a court verdict, just upon accusation). In response, bloggers throughout Italy went on a "blog strike" to protest the proposed law. However, CitMediaLaw points us to a blog post raising the question of how a blog strike accomplishes that goal? If anything it would seem to do the opposite. By silencing themselves, and not talking about the issues, it keeps those issues out of the discussion for whatever period of time. Instead of silencing, why not do what the bloggers do best and talk about the problems of the law so that many more people are aware of them?

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Italian Recording Industry Sues Pirate Bay As Well

from the but-of-course dept

Another day, another lawsuit for the Pirate Bay team. This time, it's taking place in Italy, where the local recording industry associations FIMI (Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana) and FPM (Federation against Musical Piracy) have announced plans to sue three of the individuals believed to be responsible for The Pirate Bay. This isn't a huge surprise. A year ago, after complaints about The Pirate Bay, a court ordered ISPs to block access to the site, only to have a court overturn that ruling. And, of course, in the end all it really did was bring a lot more attention to The Pirate Bay in Italy. Considering that The Pirate Bay doesn't appear to have any operations in Italy either, it's not entirely clear that this lawsuit actually matters. And, also, there's the issue that the three guys being sued here claim to not have any ownership of The Pirate Bay at all.

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Couple Taken 400 Miles Off Course By Trusting Their GPS

from the at-some-point,-don't-you-begin-to-question... dept

It really is amazing to see some of the stories about people shutting off their brains (and often their own eyes) in order to believe everything that their GPS device tells them. The latest example involves some Swedish tourists in Italy, who wanted to go to Capri, but mistyped it into the device as Carpi, an industrial town in Northern Italy, 400 miles away from the beautiful isle of Capri. Apparently, it didn't occur to them as they drove (and drove and drove) that perhaps things weren't right. According to tourist officials, after being informed, the couple got back in the car, and turned around to head in the right direction.

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Italy Proposes Law To Force Bloggers To Take Down Content Claimed To Be 'Defamatory'

from the silencing-dissent dept

We've noticed in the past that there have been an awful lot of questionable anti-internet laws proposed in Italy over the past few years, and it appears that's not ending any time soon. The latest, as pointed out by CitMediaLaw is a proposed new law that would potentially fine bloggers as much as $18,000 if they do not remove content called defamatory within in a short period of time. Note that this is not content that a lawsuit finds to be defamatory, but merely content that someone declares to be defamatory. In other words, it's a great way to force bloggers to delete any content someone doesn't like. As the article notes, with so much of the mainstream media in the country owned by the Prime Minister himself, having alternative outlets for news and information is important -- but this bill would put serious chilling effects on those alternative outlets. In response, a bunch of bloggers have apparently gone on "strike" and refused to post content one day to protest the proposed law.

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Italy Is The Latest Country To Realize IP Address Alone Does Not ID File Sharers

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

For many years, people who understand these things have pointed out that an IP address alone does not accurately identify who was doing any sort of file sharing. In many cases, it doesn't even accurately identify who was paying for the connection being used. Yet, the industry has often relied on IP addresses as definitive proof of file sharing. Only recently have courts begun to recognize how that's a problem. So it's nice to see that an Italian court is now recognizing that IP addresses alone are not enough to identify a file sharer, and even throwing out cases that don't have much more in the way of evidence. Still, in most of the various cases, it's never really about getting people to court. The industry prefers to scare people with a letter implying it has the evidence, and then getting people to pay up a "settlement fee" before they can defend themselves, because that's a lot cheaper than going to court.

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Italy's Troubling View Of The Internet

from the sucks-to-be-an-internet-startup-in-Italy dept

For some unclear reason, this weekend there was a fair amount of press coverage of the fact that Italian officials are suing The Pirate Bay in court. This lawsuit has been ongoing, so there really isn't much new -- other than the recent verdict in Sweden, which is now in dispute over conflict of interest charges against the judge in the case. In Italy, the case first made news last summer, when a prosecutor on the case ordered ISPs to start blocking The Pirate Bay. However, what was really odd was that ISPs weren't just told to block the site, but to funnel all the traffic to a site run by the major record labels. That was quite questionable. Even if The Pirate Bay were found to be illegal, to hand that traffic over to the labels raises plenty of ethical questions. Either way, a judge rejected the ban for the time being, though it could be reinstated later.

But what's struck me is how many of these sorts of stories have been coming out of Italy lately, raising lots of questions about officials there and how they view the internet. The other high profile case involves the decision to charge Google execs with criminal charges because some kids put up a questionable video on YouTube -- which YouTube took down within hours of finding out about it (and, which officials used to track down the kids who misbehaved in the video). It's difficult to think up any reason that would make Google execs criminally liable for a video of dumb kids being uploaded to its site. We're still wondering why other tools used in the video aren't also being charged (for example, one part of the video involved kids throwing a tissue box at a disabled boy -- so, clearly, the execs at the tissue-maker should be equally liable).

However, that's hardly all of the oddities coming out of Italy lately. Of course, like France, the country is looking to implement a three strikes law, but has also required all blogs to register with the government. Then there were the folks who ran an online music store, where they had officially licensed the music for sale, but the IFPI claimed they didn't get all the right licenses, and an Italian court sent them to jail for this (rather than just fining them or passing an injunction). Oh right, and Italian cops have been asking for a back door to listen to Skype calls. And... finally, recently we wrote about a law that the gov't was considering that would ban anonymity online in Italy -- and it just so happened that the law was written by entertainment industry representatives. Add all these up, and it seems that Italy appears to be an incredibly anti-Internet country. You'd have to imagine that can't be good for business.

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Italian Proposal To Ban Anonymity Online Written By DVD Industry

from the pass-through-legislation dept

Boing Boing has a post talking about a variety of rather ridiculous anti-internet laws being proposed in Italy. There's a proposal that would require bloggers to register with the government, and another that would require ISPs to block access to certain sites for publishing content it doesn't like. Nothing like repressive governments not wanting to allow freedom of speech to people.

However, even more interesting may be some of the details on the final piece of legislation mentioned in the post: banning any anonymous posting online. Despite all of the problems with bad laws in the US, at least (for the most part) there's been a respect for the right to anonymous speech. An anonymous (ha ha!) Techdirt reader sent in some other details about that anonymity bill. Specifically, the politician who put forth the legislation, posted the details via a Word document on her site, which allowed people to download it and see who created the document. Turns out it wasn't the politician -- but the president of the DVD production association. In other words, it certainly has appearances suggesting lobbyists from the entertainment industry wrote the law, and this politician just put her name on it. In some places people might call that infringement, or at the very least, plagiarism... But, apparently, the entertainment industry has no problem with politicians plagiarizing the legislation they hand over.

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Italian Judge Declines To Dismiss Lawsuit Charging Google Execs As Criminals For YouTube Video

from the bad-law dept

The judge in Italy hearing the ridiculous case charging Google executives with criminal charges (which could lead to jail time) because of a video uploaded to YouTube, has declined to dismiss the case, and will allow it to proceed. The lawsuit is ridiculous on many levels, and it's difficult to see any common sense explanation for why it should be allowed to proceed.

The case involves a video of some kids taunting a boy with Down syndrome, which was uploaded to YouTube. The very fact that it was uploaded to YouTube actually allowed the kids in question to get caught and punished appropriately for their actions. In other words, by any reasonable thought process, the video helped bring these kids to justice. YouTube and Google should be thanked. Instead, Italian authorities are trying to put five of their execs in jail for this. Those execs had nothing to do with the making of the video. They had nothing to do with the uploading of the video. Most of the execs being charged aren't even in Italy. They had nothing at all to do with any of this. Not only that, but Google appears to have acted quite admirably in this situation. Once they were alerted to the video, they had it pulled down off the site within hours.

But, one of the lawyers working on the case against Google states: "The outcome of this will be to determine how big companies like Google should be expected to act." What's unclear is how Google could have acted in any more reasonable a manner than what it did. The reality may be that the outcome of the case will determine whether any service provider will allow their services to be used in Italy. After seeing this case, I would imagine that many online service providers are now considering blocking access to all Italian ISPs. The liability (possible jail time?!?) is way too high for simply allowing people in Italy to use your service.

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Italian Cops Complain That They Can't Listen In On Skype

from the attention-criminals dept

Italian police are complaining that criminals there are increasingly turning to Skype to communicate, having discovered that it's essentially impossible for the cops to listen in on their conversations. Italian police aren't the first to notice this: German authorities were caught talking to a vendor that offered some cumbersome Skype-tapping software, while Skype itself didn't deny that the Chinese government had the ability to monitor Skype conversations. Lots of countries have banned Skype, often to protect the revenues of incumbent (or state-owned) telecom operators, but its encryption -- apparently strong enough to frustrate police around the world -- could provide more ammo for future bans, particularly in repressive nations. Italy, though, could be an interesting place for this battle to play out. While police there love their wiretaps, politicians don't: after a number of political figures have been embarrassed by leaked recordings of their conversations, they're trying to change laws to limit the cases for which wiretaps can be used, and to bar the reporting of details from wiretaps until after convictions are delivered in criminal cases. Perhaps instead of trying to change the law, Italian politicians could just start talking on Skype instead.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Ridiculous Criminal Trial Of Google Execs Begins In Italy

from the bad-news-all-around dept

eWeek has a report noting that the ridiculous criminal trial of four Google executives in Italy is starting this week, with the surprise news that one of the execs in question, Google's Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer, is expected to appear. The eWeek report oddly credits the news of the trial to the International Association of Privacy Professionals, claiming they broke the story on Monday -- but plenty of folks have been covering this story for many months. The only bit of news is that the trial has begun, and that Fleischer made the mistake of traveling to Italy to give a talk at the University of Milan, where he was taken into custody.

The trial, however, makes a mockery of just about any bit of common sense out there -- on so many different levels. First of all, as described when the charges were first released, the issue was a video that was uploaded to Google of some kids taunting a disabled boy. The video was up for about two days before Google was made aware of it -- at which point it was immediately taken down. So why are random Google execs being tried for criminal charges? I can't figure it out at all. First, Italy actually does have a law that protects internet service providers from liability for the actions of their users. That's good... but for some bizarre reason, it doesn't count Google as a service provider.

Even so, there's absolutely no fathomable reason for why anyone would think that Google's execs should be charged with anything. Google, the company, had no proactive role in uploading the videos. The execs in question had absolutely nothing to do with the video at all. Google was actually proactive in removing the video as soon as it became aware of it. And, most ridiculous of all, the video itself was actually useful as evidence to charge the kids who taunted the disabled boy. By charging the Google execs under criminal statutes, all prosecutors are doing is making sure that in the future, no such evidence exists. As we noted when this story first came out, the kids in question apparently hit the disabled boy with a packet of tissues as well. It would seem like the tissue company is much more responsible for what happened than Google. So why aren't we seeing charges filed against the tissue company execs?

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Redlight Camera Operator Arrested For Scam Involving Shortening Yellow Light Timing

from the it's-about-money,-not-safety dept

We already know that at least six US cities have been found to have illegally reduced the timing on yellow lights at intersections where red light cameras were installed. However, over in Italy things have gone even further, with the guy behind one red light camera system now getting arrested for being a part of a scam involving decreasing the time on yellow lights from the required 5 seconds to 3 seconds. Apparently a bunch of police officers and municipal government employees are under investigation as well -- though it was a suspicious police chief questioning why they were seeing so many red light offenders, that resulted in the scam unraveling.

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Jailtime Seems A Bit Harsh For Online Music Store Owners Who Didn't Get All The Right Licenses

from the why-not-just-make-them-pay-up? dept

Most readers here probably know the story of Allofmp3.com -- a Russian website that signed a licensing deal with a Russian music licensing group ROMS. The site was immensely popular because (a) it sold un-DRM'd files (back before that was common) and (b) sold music incredibly cheaply. The recording industry should have taken this as a lesson in how to create a super popular online music store -- but instead it freaked out, and nearly created an international diplomatic incident in threatening Russia with economic sanctions unless it shut the site down. The problem was that since it had the ROMS license, it was legal in Russia. In fact, Allofmp3.com even tried to pay the record labels some money -- which they refused. The record labels, of course, insisted that the ROMS license wasn't sufficient, but no Russian court ever agreed. Eventually the site was shut down, though it lives on at MP3Sparks. However, it's lost a lot of steam because the site has been blocked from accepting most common forms of payment.

Law Professor Michael Scott points us to the news of what appears to be a similar offering in Italy -- except that, in this case, the operators of the site have been sent to jail. The only news that I can find on this is from the IFPI site -- which is obviously a bit biased, but it does look like the owners of the site did get a license from the Italian Authors' Society (SIAE), which they believed was sufficient. A lower court agreed, but the appeals court has sided with the record labels.

But here's the kicker: the operators of the site have now been sent to jail for criminal copyright infringement. Already I have problems with most criminal copyright infringement cases -- because, by any reasonable standard, copyright is a civil dispute -- it's an issue between two businesses. In this case, it's even more egregious because it seems clear that the site wasn't just some random guy selling MP3s he had no right to, but had clearly tried to obtain the correct licenses. However, these days, when to do just about anything with music you need to get numerous different licenses (Peter Jenner, back at MidemNet, claimed that you needed 33 different permissions to do pretty much anything with music in Europe, though others disagreed), it seems fairly ridiculous to throw someone in jail for not being able to figure out every single party that has to sign off on something -- especially when you were lead to believe that you had what you needed via the Authors' Society.

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Italian Politicians Look To Push Through French-Style 3 Strikes Law

from the shock-and-awe dept

Italy is the latest European country to fall under the mesmerizing claims of a recording industry that feels the need to punish file sharers by kicking them off the internet. Apparently, Italian politicians are looking to implement a French-style "three strikes" law that would kick people off the internet for their third accusation (not conviction) of file sharing. They're doing this, despite the fact that the EU Parliament has rejected the idea as violating basic civil rights. This is the latest in a long line of attempts by the recording industry to get Italy to attack file sharers. There was the silly attempt to force ISPs to redirect Pirate Bay traffic to an industry website -- which, of course, only drove more traffic to The Pirate Bay in the long run (and was also rejected by a higher court in Italy). Then there have been attempts to get an ISP tax put in place to pay for all that "piracy." So, now it seems that the industry may be succeeding in at least getting a 3 strikes law in place, despite the lack of any logical argument for such a rule.

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Italy Moves Forward With Plan To Prosecute Google Execs Over Online Video

from the bad,-bad-precedent dept

Earlier this year, we were somewhat stunned that prosecutors in Italy would be charging four Google execs with criminal charges, because some kids had posted a video of themselves taunting a boy with Down Syndrome on Google's Italian video hosting site. The execs in question obviously had absolutely nothing to do with the video. The kids who filmed and uploaded the video have been charged separately, and it makes absolutely no sense to then charge executives at the company that provided the tool. Why is Italy not also charging the executives of the company who made the mobile phone that was used to film the video? Or the executives of the ISP that was used to upload the video? Or the administrators of the school where the video was filmed? Any of those would make just as much sense as suing Google execs.

We had hoped that, perhaps, an inkling of common sense would come into the proceedings, but instead, it appears that the Italian prosecutor is moving forward and demanding the execs appear in court for a trial starting early next year. If this moves forward, it sets a horrible precedent, effectively allowing prosecutors to blame just about anyone who is tangentially connected to a crime. It's a travesty of justice, and the Italian justice system should be ashamed that it's even gotten this far.

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Italian Authors Want A 'You Must Be A Pirate' Tax On All DSL Connections

from the you're-a-criminal! dept

Plenty of countries have different types of "blank media" levies, which act as something of a "you must be a criminal!" tax. Basically, industries have convinced governments to force consumers to pay a lot more, on the assumption that they're all criminals, and rather than pushing the industries to innovate new business models, they just get to collect that "tax." In the US, the RIAA has suggested such a tax should be added to broadband connections, though there seems little chance of that happening any time soon.

However, Sean alerts us to an effort under way in Italy to do exactly that. Apparently the Society of Authors and Editors has asked the government to impose a tax on all DSL connections (the article's in Italian, but Google has a decent translation). Hopefully this is one of those outlandish proposals that goes nowhere, but it's worth paying attention when these sorts of proposals are being pushed, as they have the inevitable tendency to spread.

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Has Italy Outlawed Unregistered Blogs?

from the if-you-outlaw-blogs,-only-outlaws-will-have-blogs dept

Over the past year or so, we've noticed a string of stories coming out of Italy that suggests a rather odd legal viewpoint when it comes to the internet. There was the government's decision to release everyone's tax returns publicly online. Then there was an effort to put some Google executives in jail over videos that were uploaded to Google (not by those executives), and then, of course, Italy's attempt to ban access to The Pirate Bay (since rescinded).

However, the latest report is that Italy was able to force a blog offline permanently by using a law that requires news publishers to register with the government. A judge ruled that since a blog has a headline and some text, it counts as a news publication, and thus anyone who hasn't registered has violated this law. Of course, a politician (who used to be in favor of the law) is now warning that this could make an awfully large number of websites in Italy illegal, if the law is interpreted strictly. Basically, the Italian government now has the ability to force pretty much any blog site offline if they don't like the content, just by making this type of claim.

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Court Says Italy Can't Block The Pirate Bay

from the ah,-pesky-laws dept

Lots of people were surprised back in August when a prosecutor in Italy told Italian ISPs they needed to start blocking The Pirate Bay. That was problematic for a variety of reasons -- from why ISPs should be responsible for filtering content to why The Pirate Bay had no chance to tell its side of the story to (the most questionable of all) the fact that ISPs were told to redirect people to a site run by the record labels. But, of course, as with any of these blocks, the attention only served to drive more traffic to The Pirate Bay in Italy.

Still, even ordering the blocks in the first place seemed highly questionable, so The Pirate Bay asked an Italian court to reverse the order -- and that's exactly what's happened. The court has ordered that the bans be lifted. So, it appears that all the Italian prosecutor did was drive a lot more traffic to The Pirate Bay by getting it a lot more attention, without being able to actually ban the site.

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