Four Google executives go on trial in Italy Tuesday criminal charges of defamation and privacy violation.
The charges relate to a video posted to Google Video in 2006, showing four Italian youths teasing a boy with down syndrome. Google removed the video when it was highlighted, but Italian authorities are claiming that the video should never have been allowed to go live on the site in the first place.
According to the NY Times , the officials charged are: David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer; George Reyes, its former chief financial officer; and Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel. The fourth defendant wasn’t named
All four could face jail time if found guilty of the charges.
While it’s sad to see a case like this, it does make a change to see Americans charged for an offense in a country they don’t reside, vs the regular American practice of charging foreign nationals for activities that are perfectly legal in their own countries, in particular online gambling. Here’s hoping the Obama Administration condemns the trial, if only to create a nice new level of hypocrisy.
