Internet, if you need some good first hand hints in english about the Google trial in Italy, please take a look at Elvira Berlingieri’s place:

Many things have been said so far. As for now, anyway, no one knows what the judge stated in his decision since it has still to be made available to the public. I’d like to give my take trying to explain what we know now about the verdict and to give an overview about the laws stated in the indictment.

So the first hard question to give an answer to is if it’s possible, according Italian law, to deem the executives of a content provider be liable for a crime committed by their users.

The case law decided on the 24 of February gives two different answers to this question, both very interesting and possibly scary at the same time.

During the trial, in fact, Google’s executives have been indicted with two charges: defamation and illicit processing of personal data.

The judge has acquitted all of the Google employees for the charge of defamation which means that the Italian court itself acknowledged that internet content providers have no obligation to control the content their users upload on their servers. The acquittal verdict was, in fact, “not guilty”. This opinion is shared by one of the Google`s executives lawyers, Giuseppe Vaciago who thinks that the acquittal from the charge of defamation can exclude an obligation for providers to control their users` content.

As for the second charge, instead, we have a completely different scenario. As for now, as Vaciago himself stated, we only know that actually the charges for the failure to comply with the privacy regulations were two, but we do not know yet for which of the two (or if for both) the Google executives were found guilty.

Please, continue reading on Elvlog