You may remember The Italian Job, a 60s movie about a gang of British thieves who pulled off a spectacular gold heist in the northern Italian city of Turin. Now, 40 years later, the tables have been turned, and it is the Italians who are doing the job. And they are doing it on Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), the 10 year-old search-engine company with a $113 billion market cap, which has made its fortune by transforming free data into gold.
Like the movie, the Italian job on Google happened in Turin. The story began on Sept. 8, 2006, when four Turinese high school students uploaded a three-minute, eleven-second cellphone video onto the Italian language site of Google Video. The clip showed these four male teenagers taunting and hitting another student, a 17 year-old with Down Syndrome. This profoundly offensive video remained up on the Google Video site for two months, presumably generating a few nuggets of gold for Google because, in accordance with its business model, advertising space was sold to third parties alongside the free, unedited video. Then, on Nov. 7, after two complaints about the content of the video, one of which was from the Italian Interior Ministry, Google finally removed it.
So is this the end of the story... another example of moneybags Google laughing all the way to the bank? Not if Milan public prosecutor Francesco Cajani has anything to do with it. Fast forward to Jan. 23, 2008. Peter Fleicher, Google’s Paris-based "Global Privacy Counsel," was in Milan about to give a speech at the university. But before he had the chance to enlighten students with Google's policy on individual privacy, Fleicher was met by five Italian police officers who presented him (as well as three other Google executives including David Drummond, Google’s most senior lawyer) with a criminal summons. By allowing the Down Syndrome video to be broadcast on Google video, the legal case argues, these executives were in breach of Italian law, and they could each, in theory, be locked up for 36 months in an Italian jail.
The trial gets underway in a Milanese court this week, and Google's defense will, no doubt, argue that under EU law, third-party content is not the responsibility of Internet service providers. The Italian case, on the other hand, will argue that as a media company, Google is responsible for policing the content on its Website.
"But we get 200,000 videos a day," I can hear a Google lawyer explain. "How can we possibly police each and every one of these videos?"
But that's no excuse, I would argue. Google can't have it both ways: It can’t make money on the content, but take no responsibility for this content when it flouts the law. For better or worse, Google is a media company that should, like all other media companies, have responsibility for the content posted on its site. And given the company’s phenomenal profit margins, Google could actually afford to hire a small army of flesh-and-blood editors (people, not an algorithm) to guarantee that no more self-evidently illegal videos, such as the disgusting Down Syndrome cellphone example, get published on its site.
Just as Barack Obama has urged American citizens to take on more personal responsibility, so I think that Google needs to take on all the responsibilities of a mature media company. That's what the ongoing billion-dollar Viacom lawsuit against illegally posted content on YouTube is all about. And that’s also been the presumption of a number of other non-Google lawsuits against Web 2.0 sites that publish destructive third-party content, such as the recent case of a Californian pediatric dentist who is suing the consumer review site Yelp over a posting that questioned her billing practices.
The movie version of The Italian Jobended anti-climactically with the British thieves and their gold hanging precipitously over a cliff. I hope this week’s Italian job on Google has a more decisive ending. Google enables the posting of content on its video sites, and the company needs to take full legal responsibility for that content. Perhaps 36 months in an Italian jail for four of Google’s top executives would be the most effective way of unambiguously communicating this message to the "Do No Evil" plutocrats at the Googleplex.
— Andrew Keen, Silicon Valley author, broadcaster, and entrepreneur
Google and Facebook have it both ways right now. They remove copyrighted content from their sites, claim to own content for potential future profit, and then backpedal when confronted with content-related complaints like the Italian job cited in this blog.
This underscores my point that businesses change out of necessity and profit motive only. That's the nature of the beast. Legal action and consequent legislation seem to be the main means of ending the forked-tongue syndrome.
Google had come up with an algorithm to filter out copyrighted content from its you tube videos. They'd better make a new one for these but of course not a practical measure. They took advantage of so called Web 2.0's user generated content to make revenue which also implies they are responsible for what shows up on their site.
Good point that raises the complexity part of the issue. If an office camera was not intended to be a "live service" of the company and the incident was caught by somebody and posted, then I'd say the fault is mine alone. If there was a scenario in which the office encouraged bad behavior to create interest on their site, then the office has a problem.
I'm not a big Google fan; they're too big for me to be comfortable with them. I am a big fan of Internet freedom, and I'm thus very reluctant to advance the notion that a website is responsible for user-submitted content if they remove offensive material when there's a complaint.
I can see your point and agree that the source of the offense (the offender), bears the brunt of the guilt. However just say that in the office antics scenario, the whole event was recorded on company cameras and then broadcast to anyone visiting the company's website, indefinitely. This could cause damages to the offender and the offended and I can't see how the company hosting the video would not be partly responsible.
Yellow Pages...which I though Verizon actually sold of the print pubication earlier in the decade is going to be "hurting" to keep their revenue stream @ it's current rate. What is the ROI on a yellow pages ad x 5 figures($$$) today and what will it be as it is STATIC annually in 5 years?
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The provider offers a service, not the actual content. Now I understand that the curator of this site probably does police the comments and removes whatever content he/she/they deem offensive. I do so on my sites, too. But that is more of a courtesy to users than an obligation.
Pick up your local Yellow Pages and you will probably find at least one instance of false advertising per page. The Yellow Pages makes a lot of cash from its content. Nobody would ever consider making the Yellow Pages part of their eventual lawsuit against any of the advertisers in it.
When you will understand why it's not reasonable to hold the Yellow Pages accountable for what its advertisers publish, you will undrestand why it is not reasonable to hold this site accountable for the contents of this comment.
You claim it would be a simple matter for Google to hire editors to review the submissions, make determinations as to legality of content, etc. I strongly disagree.
1 - Google would have to hire an army of attorneys to act as editors, for each nation of the world, since no two nations follow the same codes, regulations and laws. What's legal in one is a stoning offense in another.
2 - By taking the position you would have them take, they become censors. There are few things as damaging to the free exchange of ideas as censorship, of any kind, even well meaning censorship.
3 - It would be far too simple for people, given the power they would need to become the legality censors you advocate, to abuse their power by removing video they don't like, or find personally offensive, or just don't get.
I also disagree with your contention that Google is a media company. They are not. They are a service company with a hosting repository. That they make money off of being so is beside the point, and a red herring on your part, and the part of others.
Blaming Google for the illegal acts of users is no different than blaming U-Haul when one of their trucks is used for illegal purposes. Just as we would all consider U-Haul another victim in such a situation, we should equally consider Google a victim in this one.
I think responsibility for an offensive, damaging, illegal posting rests with those who post it. That's the heart of this issue. A damaging and illegal act can be prosecuted and used as the basis for a claim of civil liability. Running a board, running a video site, isn't a damaging and illegal act, it's just a business. If Google were to solicit offensive, illegal, or damaging videos they for sure they are liable. If they fail to remove something when notified that it's a problem, then they are also likely at risk. Those are bad acts. But running a board, a forum, or a video site isn't bad per se. It can be used badly, just as you can hurt someone with a car or a book. That doen't make restraint on cars and books a good thing.
Let me offer another example. I come visit you in your office. While there, I utter an offensive comment. You tell me to leave and I do. Are you (and your company) responsible legally for my bad act just because I was there and you didn't put your hand over my mouth? How could you know what I was going to say.
The fault here lay with the people who posted the video, and I'm concerned that this somehow makes it seem that another party is at fault. Unless Google was negligent in dealing with the situation, or advertised that they took responsibility for all content, then I'm afraid I can't agree that they have done anything wrong here.
Good post, Andrew. Something like this should have been immediately taken down, not taken down in two months, and not taken down after not one but two complaints. The idea that Google made a cent off of this video is sickening.
But then it's always the same old issue. If we were to hold Google responsible for the content it hosts, who decides what content to take down? Is this a universal standard, a standard determined by each company, by each editor?
I think it's safe to say that this particular video was not deserving of its airtime, but I also don't doubt that someone else would disagree.
Those are good points and distinctions, Tom... But I also think it overlooks the questions of scale and, for lack of a better phrase, intent. Me posting an MP3 file of some pop lick I can't get out of my head and have to share with the world is one thing; building a site that expressly encourages the "re-purposing" of video content that may or may not be legal are different things entirely.
Movie theater owners have to make sure they're not showing pirated films; we routinely prosecute software pirates for illegal re-use. We even go way off the rails (like the RIAA) to ensure content rights are respected.
I'm less inclined to give YouTube/Google a free pass over this.
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