“In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload,” wrote Matt Sucherman, Google VP and Deputy General Counsel – Europe, Middle East and Africa at the time. “We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question.”

Finally, this past December, the decision was overturned, and the execs were acquitted. Details of that ruling became pubic earlier this year.

It didn’t end there, however. The three executives are heading back to court, as the prosecutor has appealed the acquittal, reports ComputerWorld. The publication points to a personal blog post from Fleischer, who writes:

In December of last year, an Italian Court of Appeals overturned my conviction—as well as that of two other Googlers—for violating Italian privacy law in a case that stemmed from a user-uploaded video. I was pleased that well-reasoned legal principles had prevailed, and was hopeful that that would be the end of this long saga. Last week, however, the Italian prosecutor appealed the Court’s decision to the Court of Cassation (the Italian Supreme Court). This case, unfortunately, is not over. In its appeal to the Court of Cassation, the Italian prosecutor asserts—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, view this as a threat to freedom of expression on the Internet. I’m disappointed that this case is not over, but continue to believe that ultimately justice will prevail.

If justice does not ultimately prevail, then this could create some pretty big problems for the user-generated content Internet that we’ve all come to know and love. We discussed this back when the execs were convicted.

“In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload,” wrote Matt Sucherman, Google VP and Deputy General Counsel – Europe, Middle East and Africa at the time. “We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question.”

Fast forward to this past December when the decision was overturned, and the execs were acquitted. Details of the ruling have now been made public, as Reuters reports, saying that the court ruled “Internet platforms like Google cannot be forced to filter every video uploaded by users without endangering freedom of thought and their own functionality.”

Had the decision gone the other way, it could have had huge ramifications for the web, social media and user-generated sites. How many executives want to risk going to prison because of something a total stranger uploaded to their site? How many executives of such services would already be in danger of facing such action?

So, yeah, we’ll chalk this one up as a win for the Internet.

Facebook is apparently down across much of Europe at the moment with citizens of Italy, Norway, Germany, the Czech Republic and others saying that the site is down. At the center of it all is Anonymous Own3r, the man who claims to be taking down Facebook country by country. He uploaded a PasteBin document earlier today detailing vulnerabilities that he has found in Facebook. The attacks appear to be taking advantage of said vulnerabilities.

Here’s the latest from Twitter:

Follow @AnonymousOwn3r

Anonymous Own3r
@AnonymousOwn3r

hello @facebookhttps://t.co/dR6hZzdq who is your daddy? #tangodown by: @AnonymousOwn3r

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
56 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Follow @AnonymousOwn3r

Anonymous Own3r
@AnonymousOwn3r

yes shit now you are fuked http://t.co/PZWg1p0V#tangodown by @AnonymousOwn3r

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
50 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Follow @AnonymousOwn3r

Anonymous Own3r
@AnonymousOwn3r

@facebook doesn’t matter how much servers you have i have half of all world wide cyber servers owned by me and under my control

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
44 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Once again, it looks like our dear Anonymous Own3r is taking advantage of some downtime for some attention. Well, he’s gotten it, but it’s the wrong kind of attention. He was proven to be full of it during the GoDaddy attack, and he’s proven it again this time. He’s now asking the BBC to give him credit for Facebook downtime that occurred back in March. It seems out friend doesn’t check dates on news stories.

Beyond Anonymous Own3r’s own delusions of grandeur, Facebook is still down for many people across Europe. It’s likely similar to the downtime that happened back in March that took down Facebook across most of Europe. We’ve reached out to Facebook for a comment, and we’ll update this story once we hear back.

During the aftermath of the loss, some English fans took to Twitter and stupidly used racial insults aimed at the two Ashley’s to express their anguish; and now, as reported by the BBC, it appears as if some of these fans may be facing some criminal charges for their tweets. The pushback was spearheaded by the West Midlands Police force, which also made extensive use of Twitter to counteract these misguided tweets, going as far advise Twitter users who may have been offended by the comments to also file reports.

The following tweet embed contains some of the racist language in question:

Follow @GlenMitchell1

Glen Mitchell
@GlenMitchell1

“@johnbcfcmillman: It’s all youngs fault you dirty black CUNT!!!!!!” Even lovelier. @sowadally @wmpolice.

Follow @WMPolice

West Midlands Police
@WMPolice

@GlenMitchell1 http://t.co/yyaAZLeb to report hate crimes which happen on or offline.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
18 hours ago via Twitter for iPad · powered by @socialditto

The West Midlands Police also responded directly the person who tweeted the racist language, @johnbcfcmillman, informing him of his offense:

Follow @WMPolice

West Midlands Police
@WMPolice

@johnbcfcmillman Your comments may constitute a public order offence. We have advised a complainant how to report this officially to police.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
18 hours ago via Twitter for iPad · powered by @socialditto

Another Twitter user, @Lapwnage, thought he could apologize his way out of the mess he created by tweeting, “All I got to say is this was just a joke, you guys need to relax, police know I was kiddin around and they won’t bother me hopefully, cheers.”

The WMP shut that nonsense down in a hurry:

Follow @WMPolice

West Midlands Police
@WMPolice

@Lapwnage Wrong. Your comments may constitute a public order offence. We have advised complainants how to officially report this to police.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
17 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

It should be noted that both @Lapwnage and @johnbcfcmillman’s Twitter accounts no longer exist, but the WMP was prepared for that, as well:

Follow @WMPolice

West Midlands Police
@WMPolice

@shivamLM We are well aware of this but every online interaction leaves a trace which specialist investigators can identify.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
5 hours ago via CrowdControlHQ · powered by @socialditto

London’s Metro Police force as also acknowledged these incidents and is taking the appropriate action:

Follow @metpoliceuk

Metropolitan Police
@metpoliceuk

We are aware of alleged racist comments on Twitter following last night’s England game and have launched an investigation

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
6 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Last week, I said something about “so much for sports being a unifying force.” Unfortunately, thanks to the “it was just a joke” stupidity of a few Twitter users, that adage once again is proven to be suspect. It could be argued, however, that the responses of the fans who issued complaints against these tweets also prove there may be some truth to that statement after all. In other news, how does the notion that Twitter interactions can be considered hate crimes fly in the United States?

He is on his honeymoon in Italy with new wife Priscilla Chan, who looks indifferent to the fact that they can’t get any money out. It’s surprising that he doesn’t carry about 20 freshly minted 200 Euro notes in his wallet at all times. He could have stuffed that backpack full of them and called it chump change.

Some people have pointed out on Gizmodo’s discussion board that a lot of European ATMs will only identify cards with security chips in them. The U.S. is behind on this technology, only offering the chips on some cards – Which pretty much makes them useless, as most ATMs don’t recognize them.

Zuckerberg simply ran into one of those inconveniences that sometimes happen during travel. I’m sure he went to a bank or other money transfer service and had no problem walking out with stacks of cash.

[via: Gizmodo]

TorrentFreak points out that KickAssTorrents has only been in operation for a few years after getting its start back in 2009. The relatively young site has since shot up through the torrent rankings to become the third most popular torrent tracker on the net.

With such fame also comes greater scrutiny from governmental forces who view such sites as harbingers of piracy and content theft. That’s exactly what a court in Italy has done as it has just concluded an investigation into the site. They have found the torrent tracker to be a “super pirate platform.”

The investigation also led to some interesting statistics about the site in general. It is host to 10 million torrents and receives over 3 million visits daily from pretty much all over the world. It’s problematic in Italy because the country is the third most popular country of origin.

According to the Guardia di Finanza, a department under Italy’s Minster of Economy and Finance, the site is more offensive than others because it profits off of piracy through advertising. They estimate that KickAssTorrents brings in $8.5 million a year from advertising.

As we all know by now, these kind of censorship tactics don’t help curb piracy whatsoever. People will obviously find a way around the censorship, like they have with The Pirate Bay in the UK, using simple DNS switchers or proxies.

TorrentFreak points out that the specifics of the blockade are not being made immediately known, but the GdF has only mentioned kickasstorrents.com so far. The funny thing is that kickasstorrents.com is no longer in use by the Web site. It only servers to redirect users to the new site, kat.ph.

It remains to be seen if the Italian blockade will take this into account or only block the already useless domain. If so, it will just once again prove that law enforcement that’s backed by the copyright industry is generally incompetent when it comes to enforcing Internet law.

During a Champions League match between AC Milan against Barcelona, the AC milan fans decided to have some fun. They put up this mosaic that has Pac Man chasing after a ghost wearing Barca colors. The words below say “Let’s Eat Them!” in Italian!

Although the game ended in a scoreless draw, it’s nice to know that the fans over there aren’t all about rioting and that they know how to have some fun!

Italian fans are known for being fanatical about their soccer. Maybe not as much as Egypt….but they have been know to go into a spagetti frenzy every now and then.

Italian police have launched an investigation, and have seized 1,000 tons of Sorbitol from local businesses so far. The artificial sweetener is used in cakes, ice cream and diet foods, and is widely available for purchase online. The Italian Health Ministry released a statement directing anyone who bought the product on eBay to contact authorities, adding that “there is no need for a general health alarm” on products containing Sorbitol.

EBay has stated that it is “profoundly pained by what has happened,” and is cooperating with authorities. The company is blocking the sale of Sorbitol until the cause of the death and illnesses is explained.

Cargill, the maker of the fatal batch of Sorbitol, stated, “according to our internal investigation, the batch in question at the time of its dispatch (from Italy) conformed to our rigorous standards for product quality and safety.”

The names of the suspects have not been released at this point in time.

Brescia Police Chief Lucio Carluccio said anti-terrorism investigators identified the Moroccan suspect from Internet traffic, including a Facebook page on how to assemble explosives and references in other contexts to holy war, or jihad, a term often used by Islamic extremists against the West.

The chief suspect had been under investigation for seven months and authorities decided to arrest him after he started using a Google maps application to zoom in around areas surrounding the synagogue to case security: “There were a series of clicks to zoom on a police car, and to zoom on the anti-sabotage columns” Carluccio said.

Incriminating evidence against the man is piling up; authorities confiscated two flags emblazoned with Nazi swastikas at the suspect’s residence, along with detailed descriptions of how to build a car bomb and the quantities of chemicals needed to make an explosive. However, the chief suspect was very cautious in his planning; according to Carlucci,”He paid a lot of attention to his behavior to avoid that anyone would become suspicious.”

Italian police claim the man was using his “exceptional” computer skills to create super-secret groups on Facebook to plot an atrocity.”

The woman has been arrested in London by a British counter-terrorism team that has been cooperating with investigators in Milan. A Metropolitan police spokesman said she was arrested: “… under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

London and Italian authorities have not established a link between the suspects and continue to search the woman’s home in South London.

She is currently in custody at a South London police station.

My wife was curious about just how good a bargain she had landed. The stamp in the bag boasted “Made In Italy”.

I figured it would only take 4 seconds of Google and we’d know. But, I was quickly flummoxed. I searched the name of the manufacturer.

No luck with “di rito” in the U.S. So, I expanded to Florence Italy. I quickly determined that ‘di rito” does not have its own web presence. Odd, for this kind of workmanship.

I ended up finding the name on the sites of a few distributors. But, they were in Italian. So, Google Translate came in handy. Among other things, I learned that a “pelletteria” was Italian for “leather goods”. And, I finally got an address:

VIA FAENZA, 50/52 – 50123 Florence (FI) – Tuscany

On to Google Maps.

Well, we were right in Tuscany. By this point I was more excited about where than bag was from than how much it might be worth. I grabbed the little Street View guy and dragged him to the map.

Unfortunately, the street I was aiming for had not been photographed. But adjoining streets had. And, I was soon looking right down Via Faenza.

The street, no wider than alleys in the U.S., was under construction at the time the Street View van went by. But, you can see down far enough to see what business is like. This is where my bag was born!

I decided to swing around and see what the area was like.

To people in Italy, this might not be a big deal. For me it was thrilling.

I have used Google Street View twice to look at houses and neighborhoods when moving. We’ve checked out schools, workplaces, found area businesses, all without being within 500 miles of the place.

Last week, I was reading Stephen King’s book “11/22/63″ (go read this book, not spoilers). In it, he describes some areas in Dallas, Texas in 1963, including a church and an alleyway. I used Street View from my iPhone to check out how the area looks now. And, I did it sitting in a waiting room – Kindle in one hand, iPhone in the other.

Sometimes we gloss right over these modern-day miracles because we understand them. We would be disappointed if we didn’t see leaps of progress in gadgets and software.

But, sometimes, all this just looks cool.