Italian Court Rules That Google Violated Privacy



Is it really "impossible", or is it that they don't feel like spending the few thousand dollars a day it would take to hire a team of human editorial reviewers?

Let me tell you something, if you purchase Google AdWords, every advertisement you set up goes under a "pending review" process. Why does Google have the capital to hire a team of human editorial reviewers for AdWords, but not for YouTube?

One day, from the halls of 149 New Montgomery Street, we'll hear a lot of cry-baby responses to a similar lawsuit. They will wail, "But, you're hurting mah freeeeedomz!!" and "You can't take away mah freeeeee culture, maaaannnn!" And I will just laugh at them.

Because ADWords is Goog's life's blood and YouTube is a cash-sink.

Plus in America where, I hate to say, it really counts they still have the shield of DMCA section 230.

They say that 13 hours of content are uploaded every minute on YouTube. To really review a movie, you would have to watch the whole thing. You could probably watch it at a bit faster than normal playback, say 1.5 times speed, but that still means you're facing the need to spend at least 12,480 hours reviewing every day.

That's a lot to make it through. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but the actual cost to Google would probably be at least double that, $14.50 an hour, so you're looking at $180,960 per day in reviewing costs (perhaps you could outsource that to India for say $5 an hour, but even then you're looking at $62,400 a day).

That comes out to about $66 million a year. Now, $66 million is a small portion of Google's bottom line, but that's still a major outlay, and while Google doesn't break out revenue for YouTube in it's statements, I imagine that it would be a significant line item for the YouTube business.

It would also represent a major increase in the Google workforce. Assuming they each work a 40 hour week and get 2 weeks of vacation, you get 2,000 worker hours/year. You'd need to hire almost 2300 people to do all that work, which would be more than a 10% increase over Google's present workforce. Bringing in 2300 minimum wage workers would undoubtedly have a negative effect on Google's corporate culture. They could, of course, outsource it to a contractor, but either way, it's not Google's style. They prefer to solve problems with algorithms not manpower.

As for the AdWords issue. Well, it takes a matter of seconds to review a short text ad, and every single AdWords purchase means revenue, whereas YouTube videos don't, so it's no wonder that Google reviews AdWords.

Good analysis. The economics seem to argue more in the direction of "reasonable cost" rather than "prohibited expense." The massive hidden costs passed on as burdens to third parties is a seldom discussed consequence of "free" as a price point.

Apparently 3 google execs were convicted of privacy violations today because they didn't remove a video of some kids beating up an autistic kid fast enough. The video was posted by the kids giving the beating.

I presume the usual suspects think that's a great thing?

Wow! That news sounds worth discussing.

Should probably merge this with here http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=28687

Why do you hate Cafe Madeleine, sir?

Seriously, though, here's a bold and twisted idea:

The Berlusconi regime has been a disaster, especially for Italian justice. The corruption, which was always there, has become a tidal wave, and the craziness has become legendary. Look at the notorious Monster of Florence case, the Amanda Knox case, and the insane prosecutor on both. Or anything that involves criticism of Berlusconi.

So, here's the idea. Find a BLP of a prominent Italian politician that has been vandalized with defamatory statements, and not fixed for some time. Feed the information to said politician, and suggest prosecuting the Wikimedia Foundation officials who "allowed it to sit there on their servers". Might make an interesting experiment.

It seems that the 13 hours per minute figure is somewhat dated. The New York Times erroneously reports a figure of 20 hours per hour, which is plainly false. THe correct figure is 20 hours per minute as reported in The Times, Forbes, and The Guardian. Updating my analysis for this figure, my back of the envelope calculation suggests that this would cost Google $100 million.

The Guardian further reports that YouTube lost between $100 million and $500 million last year. This means that adding a moderation feature as suggested would increase Google's losses on YouTube 20-100%.

Daunting, if you committed to watching every video all the way to the end. An economics lecture at Stanford, maybe you wouldn't need to watch more than 15 seconds of the 9-minute video. Maybe you also build a reputation rating system for frequent posters. And maybe you crowdsource the problem a bit -- allow "trusted" reviewers access to the "Remove video" button.

Believe me, this is just Google doing the bare minimum of content management under the protections of Section 230. The usual.



You mean something like this?

(Thanks to Tarantino for finding that one... back on January 9, 2009.)

Those WRers who cheer on a government prosecuting people because a site they maintain allows public participation and something abusive made it up briefly might end up in a situation where somebody tries to prosecute WR, or any other online unmoderated forum, which is just as capable of being used for abuse. This sort of unbounded liability would be the death knell to Internet freedom if fully enforced.

Which raises an interesting question —

• How come we don't have any videos of JD's beating up on DT ??? ‡

Jon

‡ Nothing about this rhetorical question and satirical video-play should be construed as advocating violence against any person or pseudo-person.

Heh, sorry


I doubt WR is big enough to be worth stomping, but agree with you otherwise.

If I understand correctly, google removed it when the Italians requested they do so, which isn't how WP does it.

I'm guessing you didn't read the rambling, meandering, article? Understandable.

The Italians have said Google is guilty because they profited from the indignities suffered by an identifiable third party, and (apparently) without permission.

Seems entirely reasonable to me, and an easy extension of normal personality rights enjoyed by everyone, even those Google executives.

Of course, Google insists that any threat to their loosey-goosey content model is a threat to civilization itself, and retards like you swallow it hook, line, sinker, pole, canoe, fisherman, engine, the rest of the lake.

"What's good for Google Executives is good for the Internet!"

Ever notice much porn on YouTube? They don't have an issue regulating that, do that? I can't remember who made this argument, but I think it's a valid one. If they can regulate whether they have porn, they can mostly certainly regulate whether they have things like copyright violations (which the site is constantly full of). It mostly involves user reporting.

Well, the whole issue is that user reporting isn't good enough anymore.

I am decidedly anti-libertarian but also intensely interested in providing the means of facilitating discussion. I believe in discourse and do not believe that anyone saying anything in all venues is the best way to achieve that discourse. I do support 230 type immunity for forums that facilitate the ideas of their participants absent a unified editorial objective, like creating an encyclopedia. To my mind their common enterprise makes them a corporate (non-legal use) speaker and they are presenting their own collective work, not the work of others. I do find a complete and blanket immunity to be not conductive to responsible conduct but I still support it to get the benefits obtained when the specch of others is facilitated. I do believe that other societies might choose others means of addressing the issue without being the Orwellian dictatorships you see under every bed. In the present case discussed in this thread Youtube is much more like WR than WP. It provides a means of presenting the works of independently acting posters. I would not seek to deprive it of protection. Still Italy may well seek some kind of economic analysis, or reasonable man test for imposing liability on websites that host the works posters without my going into a panic. Google's world wide penetration of all things internet makes them subject to that jurisdiction in a way that WR is unlikely to encounter.

Oddly I believe your excessive concern is derived from the truncated and limited discussion which has been available on a predominately libertarian internet. I think libertarians who have long frequented Usenet, BBS, and web 2.0 forums have encountered very few people who do not give them draw-from-the-hip agreement. They have some difficultly adjusting to a forum in which a range of ideas are presented.

I've read several articles about this case. From what I can see, Google removed the video immediately upon notice, and cooperated with the authorities to find and prosecute the actual perpetrators of the video (and the assault that the video documented). What more are any of you expecting them to have done; commit ritual suicide ala Japanese culture?

Yes, and post the full ceremony on Seppukutube.

Jon

I think the Italian court would want Google to look at the content before posting it for the world to see. This has only been a "ridiculous demand" for a brief time now. In the past it would be a threshold responsibility. The problem is it does not fit in with a business model with a "free" price-point. Under such a model all costs and burden must be transferred to third parties, including the basic editorial decision of which content to host and which content is inappropriate.

Google had $6.5 billion in 2009 in net income (after operating costs, taxes, etc.)

Even if it did cost them $50,000 a day to set up a pre-screening process before content was posted on YouTube (and I doubt that with a "trusted provider" system it would even cost that much), that's still only 3 tenths of 1% of their net income.

Somebody find me a very tiny violin so that I may play it while Google executives cry from their Segways.

Outsource to India etc and divide that by, what, 4 ... India would love to have the jobs.

The costs are not in wages but offices and management, so outsource that to homeworkers.

The whole "free culture", or whatever you call it, prefers to rob and pass on the costs of dealing with their shit to someone else.

It is not new. It is just a further extension of the 'robber baron' mentality that America attempts to pass off as capitalism (suggesting that it is not).

Invade ... rob ... get big quick ... then build vast defensive structures whilst being able to afford potent legal defence. In these case, Youtube, Wikipedia etc the invasion and robbery is of the common, shared and private property of knowledge and the structures of knowing.

Blanket immunity is a bad idea, and places like WP are pretty good reasons why.

The immunity should be conditioned on the presence of mechanisms to minimize the damage.

As MZMcBride notes, the almost complete lack of porn on YouTube is a pretty good indication of their capabilities. Not only that, today you can't even upload a video with soundtracks owned by certain record companies anymore, as YouTube now scans all the uploads and immediately mutes and flags them automatically. I believe they are (if not finished) crawling their entire database similarly.

What I think this means is that YouTube cares about the external appearances (no porn has a larger good-will value than porn, and may well even attract a larger and more diverse crowd of creators and consumers), money (and the prospect of losing it in court ... for what purpose?). Maybe to that list we can add criminal prosecution. Rather blunt, and rude, but there it is.

There was an article on CiF on The Grauniad yesterday (here) - one thing I didn't realise was that they do try to regulate copyright violations, but the first line of defence isn't user reporting but a machine :

Of course, the problem in Italy had absolutely nothing to do with copyrights. Yes, with copyrighted work when you can compare against something known, it's easy to detect with an algorithm. The problem is that videos like the Italian one have no reliable signature. How does a program tell if someone is being picked on in a video? If you know the answer to that question, don't answer here. Patent it and you'll be a millionaire because no one else has any idea how to do it.

Much has been made of Google's reliance on technological fixes and eschewing low end human labor. But what about the Great Steal Every Book Caper? I don't think anyone has sent out such a motley team of thieves-in-the-employment-of since Fagin sent out his army of Dodgers. Apparently if low end work allows them to pillage they can do it, but if the money is spent to avoid harm to others...not so much.

Or, better yet, they could just appoint a bunch of pasty-faced, overweight tweenage jobsworth volunteers sans meaningful lives, to police screwtube for free.

They could reward them with cute lil Googstars to keep up their morale.

What could possibly go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...

You mean, like Wikipedia?

Eggactly.
You get the gist of my jest.

Sure, WP does a great job removing harmful content in a timely manner!

The difference is that you can't sue Wikipedia in the USA, thanks to old Section 230.

But, you can (apparently) sue Google in Italy.

So, there's the rub.

Well, it wasn't actually a lawsuit, but rather a criminal case, which is significant. The victim received no remedy and the Google executives faced no actual punishment.

Please excuse my ignorance of Italian law but this makes no sense. In a criminal case in most countries, there is a lawsuit brought by someone. In the US, it is the local District Attorney representing "the people". In a criminal case in most countries, the defendants face some sort of punishment, whether it be a fine or community service or prison or (especially in Texas) a death sentence. I cannot see any point in a criminal trial if the defendents cannot be punished. What am i missing?

Italy is, and I'm not an Italian lawyer so this is all from a laymen's perspective, a civil law country and has only a semi-adversarial system so rather than a criminal case taking the familiar form of U.S. v. John Doe, cases are just Case of John Doe. That may be wrong, but I am sure of the other pieces.

Under Italian law, first-time minor offenses (such as the one of which the Google executives were convicted) always result in a suspended sentence, which is to say no real punishment. So, under Italian law, the Google executives faced no possible criminal penalty.

This then leads into the second part. Neither the Google executives nor Google, Inc. faced the possibility of civil liability to the victim as they would've in a civil lawsuit. This is what poses a real threat to a corporation - the prospect of big monetary payouts to someone they've harmed. The Google execs were all Americans anyway, even if they had been sentenced to 40 years in prison, that wouldn't not have mattered even slightly, other than preventing them from visiting Italy for vacation. The US would never have extradited them to Italy. On the other hand, if Google had been ordered to pay, in a civil lawsuit, $20 million (a purely arbitrary figure) to the victim, then there is every reason to believe that they would have been compelled to actually pay the figure. A civil lawsuit would have had at least the potential for a real impact on Google.