Will Italy lose Google or the internets?

[ejp626]

According to this piece Italy v Google Italy is effectively saying that Google Video and presumably YouTube must pre-screen every video uploaded to make sure that it doesn't violate their privacy laws. It isn't good enough to remove offending content when notified of a violation, which is basically how every other modern country handles the situation. Frankly, I would imagine this is impossible. Can you imagine if it took a week or so to gain clearance for posting a YouTube video? The kicker is that Italy is considering making things even tougher for content hosts, although this is just in a preliminary phase:

Italy has been a difficult market for Google and other American Internet companies. A law currently being debated in the Italian Parliament would increase such companies’ liability for potential legal issues arising from content available on their sites.

Frankly if I were Google, I would just say F.U. Italy and block anyone from Italy from accessing YouTube rather than bowing to this ridiculous mindset.

Edited February 24, 2010 by ejp626

[porcy62]

According to this piece Italy v Google Italy is effectively saying that Google Video and presumably YouTube must pre-screen every video uploaded to make sure that it doesn't violate their privacy laws. It isn't good enough to remove offending content when notified of a violation, which is basically how every other modern country handles the situation. Frankly, I would imagine this is impossible. Can you imagine if it took a week or so to gain clearance for posting a YouTube video? The kicker is that Italy is considering making things even tougher for content hosts, although this is just in a preliminary phase:

Italy has been a difficult market for Google and other American Internet companies. A law currently being debated in the Italian Parliament would increase such companies’ liability for potential legal issues arising from content available on their sites.

Frankly if I were Google, I would just say F.U. Italy and block anyone from Italy from accessing YouTube rather than bowing to this ridiculous mindset.

Many thanks!

The above law is still a project of law involving several issues like copyright's and personal privacy's infringiment and offensive and illegal contents. Though I think it's a absurd law and that our goverment is much more interested in some sort of censorship, expecially if one consider the fact that our PM, Berlusconi, is a mass media tycoon, I don't believe Google will do anything, just look at what they did in China.

[Brad]

Privacy laws in Europe tend to be a lot tougher than ours.

[ejp626]

Privacy laws in Europe tend to be a lot tougher than ours.

Yes, but EU directives still set up a "safe haven" for internet hosts where they are not responsible for pre-screening content, merely removing it when notified of various privacy or copyright violations. I suspect Google will succeed with an appeal to some higher EU court, but if not, they probably will block people with Italian IP addresses. The difference between this and China (where it looks like they may be leaving the market after all), is the system Italy is pushing onto them would cost them millions of dollars.

[porcy62]

Privacy laws in Europe tend to be a lot tougher than ours.

Yes, but EU directives still set up a "safe haven" for internet hosts where they are not responsible for pre-screening content, merely removing it when notified of various privacy or copyright violations. I suspect Google will succeed with an appeal to some higher EU court, but if not, they probably will block people with Italian IP addresses. The difference between this and China (where it looks like they may be leaving the market after all), is the system Italy is pushing onto them would cost them millions of dollars.

I don't think we'll be block, maybe you are not accustomed with italian affairs: after all the bs our politicians could say, common sense will prevail, otherwise we'd be extinct since Julius Caesar.

[Neal Pomea]

From the Washington Post article on this story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/24/AR2010022401170.html?hpid=sec-business

"The prosecutor's case emphasized that the video had been viewed 5,500 times over the two months it was online, when it climbed to the top of Google Italy's "most entertaining" video list and had more than 80 comments, including users urging its removal.

Google argued that it was unaware of the offensive material and acted swiftly to remove it after being notified by authorities, taking the video down within two hours."

Sounds to me like Google was negligent. How could they have been unaware of their own "most entertaining" video list? And who are the "authorities" that finally got Google to delete its indexing? What about the users urging its removal?

I am not satisfied with the press I have seen reporting on this. It's all so one-sided in favor of an absolute immunity for Google and supposed freedom of the Internet.

[Big Wheel]

Sounds to me like Google was negligent. How could they have been unaware of their own "most entertaining" video list?

Think about it this way. Of 20,000 Google employees, maybe - MAYBE - 2000 work on Youtube. ~1200 of these are engineers and have zero hands-on contact with the videos that are actually submitted. They only build the product. Most of the rest are in finance, product management, marketing, partnerships, etc. - also no contact with the enormous number of submitted videos. If I had to guess there are fewer than 100 people around the world doing Youtube community management and support. Say, 50 in the US, 30 in Europe, 20 in Asia/Australia. Tops. Of those 30 in Europe I doubt there are more than 3 focused on Italy and Italian videos. Their jobs entail way, way more than a daily perusing of the numerous automatically generated top lists on Youtube. They do things like fight spammers engaged in massive spam uploads, identify actual bugs, etc. The sheer scale of these products is so huge that it's easy to miss problems concerning a single video.

And who are the "authorities" that finally got Google to delete its indexing? What about the users urging its removal?

Again, operating a product like Youtube means you have no choice but to prioritize relentlessly. Sure, a lot of people may have flagged this video - but there are probably millions of flaggings done every day on a site with at least 100 million videos on it. Given that the offending video had fewer than 100 views for every day it was up, it's quite likely that there were way more flaggings of other videos and this one sat on the bottom of the pile for awhile. (And forget about answering, or even reading, every email that comes in. And routinely reading through the comments on videos? Are you kidding?)

Edited February 25, 2010 by Big Wheel

[Jazzmoose]

How could they have been unaware of their own "most entertaining" video list?

This is just a wild guess, but perhaps said list was compiled not by a human, but by some machine able to keep track of such statistics...

[porcy62]

In Italy, there are new 'offensive' contents on Facebook everyday, but the company is much more quick to act against it, maybe Google should employ some more people working on contents, they will not going to bankrupt for it. And the analogy with postman is not correct, I mean that even a postman should be trained not to deliver parcels that makes a sound like a 'tic tac' IMHO.

[Big Wheel]

In Italy, there are new 'offensive' contents on Facebook everyday, but the company is much more quick to act against it, maybe Google should employ some more people working on contents, they will not going to bankrupt for it. And the analogy with postman is not correct, I mean that even a postman should be trained not to deliver parcels that makes a sound like a 'tic tac' IMHO.

Are you saying that Youtube should be automatically blocking some videos upon their upload? Youtube already does this for a lot of copyrighted material, to a pretty sophisticated degree. But that's relatively easy to do because "all" that is is comparing data in your database of copyrighted material with what's being uploaded. You can try to develop systems to flag potentially offensive videos automatically, but by doing so you're committing yourself to a game of cat and mouse. It's not easy to develop systems that reliably catch the bad stuff without having deleterious effects on the people with the good stuff; a signal of an "offensive" video is rarely as obvious as a ticking package. How do you analyze a video that has kids making fun of another autistic kid to know it's offensive? You can look at the tags, but there might not be any and they might be misleading. For instance, if you set up a rule that says "if the video contains a tag of 'Hitler,' require manual review", you're going to be inundated with hundreds of parodies of Downfall for every instance of actual neo-Nazi propaganda.

And even if you manage to do this, the people uploading the bad stuff get better and better at getting around you. So Youtube appears to rely on crowdsourcing (flagging by users after the video is live) to determine what needs to be policed.

[porcy62]

In Italy, there are new 'offensive' contents on Facebook everyday, but the company is much more quick to act against it, maybe Google should employ some more people working on contents, they will not going to bankrupt for it. And the analogy with postman is not correct, I mean that even a postman should be trained not to deliver parcels that makes a sound like a 'tic tac' IMHO.

Are you saying that Youtube should be automatically blocking some videos upon their upload? Youtube already does this for a lot of copyrighted material, to a pretty sophisticated degree. But that's relatively easy to do because "all" that is is comparing data in your database of copyrighted material with what's being uploaded. You can try to develop systems to flag potentially offensive videos automatically, but by doing so you're committing yourself to a game of cat and mouse. It's not easy to develop systems that reliably catch the bad stuff without having deleterious effects on the people with the good stuff; a signal of an "offensive" video is rarely as obvious as a ticking package. How do you analyze a video that has kids making fun of another autistic kid to know it's offensive? You can look at the tags, but there might not be any and they might be misleading. For instance, if you set up a rule that says "if the video contains a tag of 'Hitler,' require manual review", you're going to be inundated with hundreds of parodies of Downfall for every instance of actual neo-Nazi propaganda.

And even if you manage to do this, the people uploading the bad stuff get better and better at getting around you. So Youtube appears to rely on crowdsourcing (flagging by users after the video is live) to determine what needs to be policed.

No, I am saying that if Google would have some more people analysing the flagging of users, the offensive stuff would remain online for a shorter time. From what appear on newspaper, the fact that such video was online for two months and was one of most viewed was a serious aggravation for the court. It's obvious that one can't set a software to block contents, but one should have enough people to examine the most relevant flagging.

[ejp626]

No, I am saying that if Google would have some more people analysing the flagging of users, the offensive stuff would remain online for a shorter time. From what appear on newspaper, the fact that such video was online for two months and was one of most viewed was a serious aggravation for the court. It's obvious that one can't set a software to block contents, but one should have enough people to examine the most relevant flagging.

Don't disagree with you, but it will always be hard to know how many people would be necessary to make a "good faith" effort. I also don't know how many people actually did flag the video. If none did, then YouTube would have no reason to investigate. If many people did, then I would be more sympathetic to the court's ruling.

I have heard that it can be notoriously difficult if you are a "little fish" to get YouTube to take copyright violations seriously and that should change too.

[Big Wheel]

No, I am saying that if Google would have some more people analysing the flagging of users, the offensive stuff would remain online for a shorter time. From what appear on newspaper, the fact that such video was online for two months and was one of most viewed was a serious aggravation for the court. It's obvious that one can't set a software to block contents, but one should have enough people to examine the most relevant flagging.

Don't disagree with you, but it will always be hard to know how many people would be necessary to make a "good faith" effort. I also don't know how many people actually did flag the video. If none did, then YouTube would have no reason to investigate. If many people did, then I would be more sympathetic to the court's ruling.

I have heard that it can be notoriously difficult if you are a "little fish" to get YouTube to take copyright violations seriously and that should change too.

Exactly. We're talking about a video with 5000 views; that's virtually nothing. The news stories tell us that people complained in the comments - but comments are not flaggings.

As for copyright stuff, it's often hard to sort out the legitimate complaints in this area from the stupid ones. Many "little fish" can't get a major corporation's attention because they don't understand what they need to do to get a major corporation's attention, not because the corporation isn't listening. So you'll see people angry because they sent 5 complaining emails to an inbox that isn't anywhere close to the legal department, when all they had to do was call up their lawyer and have the lawyer contact the proper address, or even just fill out an online form that's been developed specifically to streamline copyright complaints.

Edited February 25, 2010 by Big Wheel

[porcy62]

Exactly. We're talking about a video with 5000 views; that's virtually nothing. The news stories tell us that people complained in the comments - but comments are not flaggings.

It was one of the most viewed in Italy, so I'd not say 'virtually nothing', and the news stories didn't report the percentage of flaggings and we don't have the complete sentence neither, that will be published in a month, so we are talking about 'virtually nothing'.

Edited February 25, 2010 by porcy62

[Big Wheel]

Exactly. We're talking about a video with 5000 views; that's virtually nothing. The news stories tell us that people complained in the comments - but comments are not flaggings.

It was one of the most viewed in Italy, so I'd not say 'virtually nothing', and the news stories didn't report the percentage of flaggings and we don't have the complete sentence neither, that will be published in a month, so we are talking about 'virtually nothing'.

"Most entertaining" by user votes, not most viewed. (Actually, it doesn't look like there is a "most entertaining" category - there's "most discussed," "top rated," "top favorited," "most viewed" - which look like lists of 100 videos in each of YT's 14 categories for every different country.) That's 14*4*100 = 5600 videos per country, every single day.

I just reset my country in Youtube to Italy and clicked through the current "most viewed" list. This video is currently the 97th most viewed in Italy, and it already has 3000 views despite being up only 24 hours. The other video took 2 months just to get to 5500 views.

Edited February 25, 2010 by Big Wheel

[porcy62]

Exactly. We're talking about a video with 5000 views; that's virtually nothing. The news stories tell us that people complained in the comments - but comments are not flaggings.

It was one of the most viewed in Italy, so I'd not say 'virtually nothing', and the news stories didn't report the percentage of flaggings and we don't have the complete sentence neither, that will be published in a month, so we are talking about 'virtually nothing'.

"Most entertaining" by user votes, not most viewed. (Actually, it doesn't look like there is a "most entertaining" category - there's "most discussed," "top rated," "top favorited," "most viewed" - which look like lists of 100 videos in each of YT's 14 categories for every different country.) That's 14*4*100 = 5600 videos per country, every single day.

I just reset my country in Youtube to Italy and clicked through the current "most viewed" list. This video is currently the 97th most viewed in Italy, and it already has 3000 views despite being up only 24 hours. The other video took 2 months just to get to 5500 views.

Ok, I am not really interested in defending a verdict I consider stupid. If you're right the verdict will be reversed in the next trial and the justice will prevail, like in the mainstream hollywood's movies.

I was simply pissed off by the naive picture of a corporation as a champ of freedom and democracy.

[Big Wheel]

To correct myself real quick: the video in the trial wasn't even on Youtube, according to the Washington Post story. It was uploaded onto Google Video. Google Video has changed so much since the Youtube acquisition that I don't even know how to evaluate the claims in the story (right now, Google Video doesn't appear to support comments or display how many times a video was viewed).

[Neal Pomea]

I was simply pissed off by the naive picture of a corporation as a champ of freedom and democracy.

I still don't see much balanced press coverage of this.

Maybe the big story is this:

How much does Google care about our privacy?

Google would definitely NOT want that to be the story.

They want it to be about Google as the non-judgmental host or conduit of information, but they will lose big time if the public begins to suspect that Google does not respect their privacy.

To the person on the street, I bet it won't matter if viewers should have flagged the video instead of commented on it. Google's defense will sound like 'You should have said Simon says!' I bet most people on the street won't care if the list of most entertaining videos was generated by a 'bot or some hot shot. The issue will still be privacy.

Anyway, it looks like the story may have run its course. For me, the bigger case is whether Google's settlement with the American Association of Publishers will allow it a preemptive monopoly of the market with Google Books.

[ejp626]

I was simply pissed off by the naive picture of a corporation as a champ of freedom and democracy.

I still don't see much balanced press coverage of this.

Maybe the big story is this:

How much does Google care about our privacy?

... The issue will still be privacy.

Anyway, it looks like the story may have run its course. For me, the bigger case is whether Google's settlement with the American Association of Publishers will allow it a preemptive monopoly of the market with Google Books.

Well, there is a huge generational issue, which definitely breaks Google's way and that is the young-uns don't care at all about privacy, don't seem to even understand the concept and will post anything and everything on the Web. Maybe they've just been conditioned by the growing number of security cameras in the public arena in the US and way, way more in the UK. If the State doesn't give a shit about privacy, why should Google be different?

To them the idea that someone don't understand the difference between an unread (by Google) comment and flagging means that that person is an illiterate moron who probably talks to the computer and expects it to answer. No sympathy.

[porcy62]

I think Google, and most of the big companies simply don't care about complains unless these complains come under the radar of other mass medias, television and newspaper, at that point bad exposure may harm their business, so they care. A legal action if successful is bad exposure.

Another problem is that all this internet stuff is new and evolvig faster then legislation supposed to regulate it, so the courts around the world haven't got any precedents and rely on existing legislation based on old mass media.

Said that I still don't think that the lack of appropriate laws is an excuse to stigmatise every legal action against dotcom company as an assasination attempt to freedom and democracy.

This is an old vice of every new business, not very different from the rant coming from Wall Street when the goverment want stricter rules for derivates and futures trading.

Making money is not equal to social progress, expecially in a long perspective, that is the reason because we elect our goverment otherwise we should elect CEOs. I guess Thomas Jefferson would have called it 'democracy'.

Edited February 26, 2010 by porcy62

[Shrdlu]

My son does a lot of Youtubing, and that site will automatically delete any vid that has a portion of a recognizable, copyrighted song in it. How ridiiculous!

[Neal Pomea]

What genre of music is YouTube blocking? I see many videos of copyrighted songs, even lots of YouTube links posted here, where you would think that's frowned upon. What is your son listening to? It's a rare take down, in my experience.

[Big Wheel]

What genre of music is YouTube blocking? I see many videos of copyrighted songs, even lots of YouTube links posted here, where you would think that's frowned upon. What is your son listening to? It's a rare take down, in my experience.

The blocking is not by genre, it's usually by label because Youtube only blocks what a label has filed a complaint about. If EMI hasn't registered its songs in Youtube's "block this" database, then none of those songs will be detected and blocked.

[Neal Pomea]

Sounds like the majors know how to say Simon says. Threat of suing for copyright infringement catches the attention.

On a tangent, Onion has this article on Google and privacy.Google Responds to Privacy Concerns (about Google Buzz)