The following post will cover what happened in the Google executives' trial in Itay from a legal point of view .
It explains which criminal sections were in the indictment, how they work, how the Electronic Commerce directive exempion works in Italy and why the electronic Commerce Directive did not apply in that particular case.
We still do not have the complete ruling (only the verdict).
My best guess, so is that the possible mistake made by Google is that they did not go for a formal consulting with the Italian Privacy Authority following the rule of sect. 17 before launching the service. It would have provided them with advice on how to deal with possible situations like this one, where users committed a crime (failing to comply with Data Protection code) using their service.
But even this is not a solution in my opinion, as it would require a service like Google Video or YouTube to ask each country for their specific rulings and exceptions, leading to a very complex legal situation.![]()
