Of Nick and Google, again…
Ugh! I totally forgot something important in my article about Google this morning. Though thats okay because it was a pretty long rant already, however at this point I am posting an abnormal number of times in a single day…
Some Italian high school students uploaded a video of an autistic classmate to Google video. Let me start by saying this is terrible and cruel, and I cannot even imagine how cruel bullying must be in a post internet world. Google complied with the Italian law enforcement and handed over the details of the users who uploaded it. This is correct practice. If someone breaks the law, even if its over the internet, they are prosecutable, and content hosts are responsible to comply with law enforcement. I have done this many times and complied with Canadian law enforcement on some very interesting cases.
Apparently though this is not enough in Italy. Four Google Italy employees, including one who had left the company in 2008 were arrested, of which 3 were convicted of violating the videoed boy’s privacy rights. The courts demand that Google should have vetted the privacy of the content that was uploaded before sharing it with the world. REALLY? I mean are they serious? I’m sure they must realize how many videos are uploaded to Google/Youtube/etc every minute of every day? And to check to make sure EVERYONE in the video has signed a release as to their privacy? Heck its not feasible at a few videos per day, let alone the 20 hours of video uploaded to Youtube alone every minute of every day. This would be stupid coming from an armchair politician bitching on an internet forum, let alone the policy makers of an entire country. Seriously this worries me about the sanity of the law makers and future of the country.
It doesn’t stop at video, it could be pictures uploaded to Facebook, of which there are over a hundred million PER DAY. Should Facebook check EVERY photo to make sure nobodies privacy is being encroached upon? Get a clue!
My other complaint is why does every local government think they should be able to police the internet? I think Google should just pull its local offices out of Italy and then just let Italy decide if they want to block Google or not. Let all these insane countries play internet nanny for their citizens, maybe they can get a bulk deal on Cisco gear along with China and Australia… Hey Italy thanks for Ferrari but no thanks for your draconian attempts at internet policy!
Yup, there is people backing that. I had a discussion (on a forum, so yeah…) with one of those, and the funny part is that it works like this “ideally”: YT should check that everything uploaded complies to local laws, and then make it public, because otherwise “thousand” of people will have seen that video meanwhile it’s been online. Not all the internet needs to be like that. If you point out that it just means uploading a rejected video to a different service, then that’s another part of the intertubes that needs to be monitored. Also, why not to sue the ISP for providing the bandwith? Easy: if you are using something that requires you to sign with real anagraphics then it’s ok, since the shit falls on you directly. Point out that all they are really requiring so loudly is to have real, verified data in YT accounts so that there will be a few steps less to track you back in case of some law breaking content being uploaded (after it’s been deleted due to viewers flagging)…. and then the discussion is over, because it’s impossible to reason with you. Ehe.
Luckly enough we are pretty lazy an deep in bureacratic shit, so nothing ever happens. But still they try. Gambling sites that won’t pay local taxes are blacked out of ISP DNS, same happened to The Pirate Bay. Then they blocked TPB IP. And actually were hoping to have their server confiscated, even if it’s outside of italy’s legal reach. Another funny thing is that a politician remarried with a sort of loose morals woman: hey Google, take her pictures out of your search plz.
i’ll never remember who said that internet is a set of tubes, but our politicians aren’t even “tube smart”.
Well gambling sites makes sense a bit, its a big problem in the US too, and I’m honestly not sure how we handle it in Canada.
Do people really want to have to verify themselves with some sort of government ID just to post videos? Post blog comments? Where does it stop? Anonymous speech is required to have proper free speech. Worse still, even if they required Italians to provide some sort of verifiable ID before posting videos, anyone with true malicious intent would use a proxy, shell or TOR and just post through America.
Unfortunately the internet needs to remain free of policing, let content providers who are diligent in dealing with take down requests a lone :) IMO at least! :D
Fortunately, that was a single person wanting more checks. Not a pool large enough to make some stats, but still shows that some people think that way.
I personally see no problem on how things are handled by YT and similar: if a content gets reported, then it’s taken down. Also, as other persons where pointing out, it would be hard if not impossible to check everything before it becomes public, and doing so would be expensive enough to convince the provider of the service to just shut down that money sink :D
I’m sort of against complete anonymity. It’s a power too great, and gets abused. As usual the root of the problem is people itself….. really hard to solve.