The latest news that an Italian court has convicted three Google execs has sent a reverberating shudder around the social networking community.

3 Google employees, Peter Fleischer, David Drummond and George De Los Reyes, all received suspended six-month sentences and were accused of breaking Italian law by allowing a video relating to a bullying incident involving an autistsic teenage to be posted online.

The fact that any court has been able to secure a prosecution may well send out a message to other online companies that allow videos to be uploaded without being being moderated has to be a landmark ruling.  But what effect will it have in relation to the control and censorship of online video content?  While the employees were obviously not involved in the incident itself, does the ruling infer that the online company bears a degree of responsibility and therefore is party to the offence by providing the service which allowed it to be viewed online?

By virtue of the way they operate (and therefore make money), most online video ‘repositories’ offer a free and unregulated upload service.  This also means that there is very little control over the videos that can be viewed online, other than length and size of video along with advisory guidelines on content. All complaints usually have to be made through a lengthy online form on the video website. So  unless an individual makes a complaint and it is then upheld, any video can can be aired without restriction unless the company are informed otherwise. However this ‘passive’ system of moderation now faces a serious challenge. This latest ruling  is an attempt to redress the balance, effectively making the company itself responsible for its own content (which sounds kind of obvious really).

But what are the implications for other social media websites that operate in a similar way?  Or is this just an isolated incident and likely to be overturned on appeal?  And in broader terms how will it affect our own FOI on the web?

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