Italian Judge Cites Profit as Justifying a Google Conviction

That verdict was the first to hold the company’s employees criminally responsible for content posted on its system. It prompted outrage on the part of the American ambassador to Italy and widespread accusations that the Italian judiciary was trying to muzzle a free Internet.

But in the 111-page reasoning, the judge, Oscar Magi, said that the Internet was not an “unlimited prairie where everything is permitted and nothing can be prohibited.” Instead, he wrote, there were laws regulating behavior and if those laws were not respected, “penal consequences” could ensue.

On Feb. 23, Judge Magi handed three Google employees six-month suspended sentences but cleared them of defamation charges. In Italy, corporate executives are held legally responsible for a company’s actions. Judge Magi said that Italian defamation law did not apply in this case, and he wrote that he hoped that that legal void could be filled.

The video of an autistic teenager being harassed by classmates was posted on Google Video in September 2006. It was viewed over 5,500 times over a two-month period and made it to the top of Google Italy’s “most entertaining” video list.

It was removed only after Vivi Down, an Italian association representing people with Down syndrome whose name was mentioned in the video, complained to the police. Google quickly removed the video once it was notified about it.

Judge Magi did not say that Google had to monitor all the content uploaded to its platforms but suggested that the company could be more vigilant. He also said Google had an obligation to make European privacy policies clear to third-party users of its platforms. At the time that the video was posted, those policies were so poorly known as to be ineffective, he wrote.

On Monday, Google criticized Judge Magi’s reasoning. “As we said when the verdict was announced, this conviction attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built,” the company said in a statement. “If these principles are swept aside, then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.”

Google said it would appeal the decision.

Prosecutors in the case said the decision showed that Google had violated Italian privacy laws. Italy prohibits the use of someone’s personal information with the intent of harming them or making a profit.

“He embraced our arguments,” said Alfredo Robledo, one of the prosecutors. He cited a passage in Judge Magi’s ruling that said: “In simple words, it is not the writing on the wall that constitutes a crime for the owner of the wall, but its commercial exploitation can.”

Some Internet experts said they were perplexed by Judge Magi’s ruling. Juan Carlos de Martin, the founder of the Nexa Center at the Polytechnic University in Turin, which studies Internet use in Italy, said he thought the reasoning would throw a lot of organizations and institutions into legal limbo as they awaited a final ruling on the case by Italy’s highest court, which could take years.

“The legal uncertainty could discourage business and social initiatives; no one wants to be criminalized because of what they host online,” he said.