Online rights activists are divided Wednesday over an Italian court’s guilty verdicts against Google executives who were convicted on privacy charges for not blocking a video that made fun of a child with Down’s syndrome. All agree the controversial ruling runs counter to longstanding United States and European Union ’safe harbor’ laws immunizing online service providers for what users do — but the activists are mixed over what the decision means and how much importance should be place on it.
Leslie Harris, the president of the influential Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology, argued the ruling would be used by authoritarian regimes to justify their own web censorship.
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