Wednesday, February 24, 2010
In another European case I’ve blogged about before (here, here, and here), yesterday an Italian court convicted three Google executives of criminal privacy violations in a case arising out of a 2006 YouTube video of the bullying of an autistic boy, posted to YouTube by his abusers. The court imposed suspended three- to six-month sentences on [...]
In 2006 a video was posted on YouTube of four Italian teenagers taunting another teenager with Down’s Syndrome. Some months later Italian authorities notified Google of the video. Google removed it, but its troubles did not end. Civil and criminal charges were brought against four Google executives for violating Italian privacy law by not obtaining [...]
Here are a few of things accumulating in my browser tabs: Google: Most takedown notices are illegitimate. (This is over a month old. Where have I been?) “According to a story in PC World, Google says 57 percent of the takedown notices it has received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act were sent by businesses [...]
Readers interested in a fundamental question of Internet law–and students who wrote the “Incivil Disobedience” essay–should read this online discussion between Adam Thierer and John Palfrey about whether Communication Decency Act §230 requires amendment: Dialogue: the future of online obscenity and social networks – Ars Technica Sphere: Related Content Related posts Web Liability Without Section [...]
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The Boston Sunday Globe Ideas section carried a longer article by Drake Bennet, titled “Time for a Muzzle,” asking whether it is “time to rethink free speech” online. Bennet focuses on privacy interests affected by “[t]he online world of lies and rumor [that] grows ever more vicious,” rooting his discussion in the famous Brandeis/Warren Harvard [...]
Monday, February 16, 2009
Citizen Media Law Project says farewell to JuicyCampus.com, wistfully noting that the site’s passing means there will be no lawsuit to test the scope of Section 230. As the CMLP post notes, the 9th Circuit’s decision in Fair Housing Council v Roommates.com provides an argument that JuicyCampus’s encouragement of defamatory postings mades it a co-developer [...]
Sunday, February 15, 2009
On the other hand . . . the Internet is filled with nasty stuff. Juicy Campus is gone–it was “launched as a cesspool, and it died because it never evolved into anything else” (source)–but it was never more than a pimple on the Internet’s hate-spewing, vicious, inane, juvenile, lowest-common-denominator underbelly. Comments on most every site [...]