An eight-year legal saga has
now come to an end. Yesterday, in Rome,
the Italian Supreme Court (Cassazione) acquitted me, as well as two other
Googlers, for violating Italian privacy law in a case that stemmed from a
user-generated video.
A year ago, the lower Italian
Court of Appeals overturned my
conviction (and 6-month-suspended jail sentence) by the trial court. I am pleased that well-reasoned legal principles had
prevailed in the Court of Appeals. The
Supreme Court will issue its written opinion in due course.
In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the
Italian prosecutor asserted—in addition to arguing that employees like me can
be held criminally responsible for user-uploaded videos that we had no
knowledge of and nothing to do with—that platforms like YouTube should be
responsible for prescreening user-uploaded content and obtaining the consent of
people shown in user-uploaded videos. I, and the many others who have
voiced their support, viewed this as a threat to freedom of expression on the Internet.
I look forward to returning to
Italy to enjoy this glorious country. I
would like to thank my many colleagues at Google and in the legal and privacy
community for their support for my defense over the years. And although I have never met him, I hope
that the young man who was humiliated in the video that generated this case lives
with dignity and happiness.
