The Italy Court decision holding Google executives guilty of violating the privacy rights of the subject of a video uploaded is another recent case focusing on Internet privacy.
This case now brings into fore the question of liability when internet privacy rights are violated. Is the Platform owner/ website owner the one liable for the breach when he or she merely provides the avenue by which the right is violated? or should the "victim" go after the uploader instead and just force the website/platform owner to reveal the true identity of the user who uploaded or posted the defamatory statement?
We will have to see if the decision holds up in the higher courts. I think this decision poses a good and practical question of liability when it comes to violation of privacy rights over the web. While I disagree with the decision in the sense that it obliges platform providers to act as censors of every material uploaded, I do think there is still a need to re-evaluate how rights may be protected when the medium of transgression is the web.
- Aaron Ho (13th Entry)
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Maybe we are not yet ready to answer the questions brought about by this decision, for many reasons... Quoting from wired.com:
“It attacks the very principles of freedom on which the internet is built,” Google lawyer Matt Sucherman wrote on Google’s blog. “If that ’safe harbor’ principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — 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.”
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