Internet: is the liability tide turning against internet publishers?

In Milan, Italy, a judge has found against three employees of Google. He found that they are responsible for the activities of the company (a common practice in Italy) in relation to a video clip calculated to cause embarrassment which the company published.

Before Google bought YouTube, it developed its own fledgeling service. It was on that service that someone posted video of an autistic schoolboy being abused in a Turin street.

The Judge, Oscar Magi, said that he was not finding Google at fault for being the place where the video was posted. That, he said, was akin to blaming the owner of a wall for graffiti placed upon it. But because the page contained revenue generating, or potentially revenue generating, aspects to it, Google was making a commercial exploitation and that, said the Judge, was a reason to find it culpable.

Google's response was, as usual, to claim that it has all the rights and no one else has any: "this conviction attacks the very principles of freedom on which the internet is built," the company said. "If these principles are swept aside, then the web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear."

Those are grand claims - and recently in the UK Google won on a case on, basically, an argument that Google is too big to manage and therefore cannot be held responsible for anything that happens.

Amazon.Com has the same kind of approach: one author who is the victim of an anonymous false and malicious "review" which is a libellous attack on him and his work - and has nothing to do with the book supposedly being reviewed - is trying to reach an agreement with Amazon.Com. But so far the response from its "customer service" department has been that they will not consider removing the offending, and offensive, comments and will not disclose the identity of the poster. He says he is preparing a last ditch attempt to settle it by a direct plea to Jeff Bezos but if that is unsuccessful he will have to resort to court action for libel in which Amazon.Com is a principal defendant.

The Milan case is not the only case against internet companies but it is the first (we believe) that Google has lost. As public opinion turns against the posting of material that is generally offensive, on the "all good men have to do for evil to triumph is to do nothing" principle, internet companies may well find that they have to behave much more responsibly.

And that, surely, is a good thing.

And in another aspect to the same issue, a shopper was dissatisfied with the product he got from a merchant on eBay. The shopper published a negative review - which was, somewhat adjectival. The merchant has sued the author of the review claiming defamation and harm to his business. The case is continuing.