Ultimately, the police identified the student responsible for uploading the video and she was sentenced to 10 months community service. However, they proceeded to go after Google for the fact that the video appeared on Google Video.
The defendants are David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes who were charged with criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. In an outrageous breach of free speech rights, a judge in Milan convicted David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code.
It is another example of how the West is steadily criminalizing speech with as little as a whimper of objection. Countries like Italy are allowing defamation, privacy, and blasphemy claims to chip away at a core foundation of Western Civilization. This Court showed precious little concern over the implications of its ruling for the Internet specifically and free speech in general. The ruling is another wake-up call for civil libertarians that we need an international campaign in support of free speech to address these insidious trends.
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