Cyber-bullying cases put heat on Google, Facebook

The internet was built on freedom of expression. Society wants someone held accountable when that freedom is abused. And major internet companies like Google and Facebook are finding themselves caught between those ideals.

Although Google, Facebook and their rivals have enjoyed a relatively "safe harbour" from prosecution over user-generated content in the US and Europe, they face a public that increasingly is more inclined to blame them for cyber-bullying and other online transgressions.

Such may have been the case when three Google executives were convicted in Milan, Italy on February 24 over a bullying video posted on the site - a verdict greeted with horror by online activists, who fear it could open the gates to such prosecutions and ultimately destroy the internet itself.

Journalist Jeff Jarvis suggested on his influential BuzzMachine blog that the Italian court, which found Google executives guilty of violating the privacy of an autistic boy who was taunted in the video, was essentially requiring websites to review everything posted on them.

"The practical implication of that, of course, is that no one will let anyone put anything online because the risk is too great," Mr Jarvis wrote. "I wouldn't let you post anything here. My ISP wouldn't let me post anything on its services. And that kills the internet."

Matt Sucherman, a Google vice president and general counsel, wrote in a blog post that the company was "deeply troubled" by the case, saying it "attacks the very principles of freedom on which the internet is built." Legal experts have been more sanguine, saying the verdict in Milan will most likely end up an outlier - unable to stand the scrutiny even of the Italian appeals courts, never mind setting legal precedents elsewhere.

But in sentencing the executives to six-month suspended jail terms, the court may have seized on a growing desire to hold internet companies responsible for the content posted by users.

If the trend takes hold, it could put the companies on the defensive, forcing them to spend more time defending such cases or fending off calls to restrict content in some way.

China polices the web and demands cooperation from web companies, while the US has stuck up for internet freedom in the face of censorship by more repressive governments.

But social pressure often comes from the ground up, as Facebook recently found out in Australia.

In that case Facebook pages set up in tribute to two children murdered in February, eight-year-old Trinity Bates and 12-year-old Elliott Fletcher, were quickly covered with obscenities and pornography, prompting calls for the social network to be more accountable for its content.

"To have these things happen to Facebook pages set up for the sole purpose of helping these communities pay tribute to young lives lost in the most horrible ways adds to the grief already being experienced," Queensland Premier Ann Bligh wrote to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a letter released to the Australian media.

Calls for prosecution of cyber-bullying first reached a peak with the case of a suburban mother accused of driving a 13-year-old girl, Megan Meier, to suicide in 2006 by tormenting her with a fake MySpace persona.

Lori Drew, the mother of a girl with whom Meir had quarreled, was found guilty of misdemeanor federal charges in a case dubbed the "MySpace Suicide" in the US media, but a judge later dismissed her conviction on the grounds that the prosecution was selective the law unconstitutionally vague.