News Bits: Google Execs on Trial Over Bully Video

Written by Erin Barker

Tuesday, February 3. 2009 at 11:20 AM EST Post a comment

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Four Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) executives are on trial and facing jail time this week in Italy, over the 2006 posting of a video of four bullies taunting a boy with Down syndrome.

The three-minute cellphone video, shot in a Turin classroom, culminated with the 17-year-old boy being hit with a tissue box. One of the bullies posted it to Google Video's Italian site in September 2006, and all four have since been punished.

Google quickly removed the video after receiving complaints, but Milan public prosecutor Francesco Cajani argues that it never should have been posted at all, leveling criminal charges of defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data against David Drummond, Google’s SVP and chief legal officer; former CFO George Reyes; Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel; and one more unidentified exec from the Google Video team in London.

None of these execs directly handled the video in question, but the charges they now face carry a maximum sentence of 36 months.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time an individual has been criminally charged for violation of data protection laws that occurred by the company he or she works for," Trevor Hughes, the executive director of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, told The New York Times.

Google released a statement expressing sympathy for the victim and his family, but compared the lawsuit to "prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post."

And the search giant has a point: With more than 200,000 videos uploaded to Google Video each day, should Google be responsible for screening each one and getting permission from its subjects before allowing it to be posted?

The trial is expected to be fought out for months.

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