Did Google Ignore an Italian Takedown Notice?

The verdict on the Italian YouTube court case verdict seemed pretty clear: sentencing Google execs to jail time for an invasion of privacy in a video posted (by someone else) on the UGC site was, well, “absurd,” as we said two weeks ago.

But some new evidence is coming out that may just justify at least the “guilty” verdict from the Italian court—since that’s all the Italian judge released (i.e. he didn’t publish his reasoning). According to TechDirt, there are now reports that Google may have ignored a takedown notice on the video.

…Oooooor not. While Google Translate is woefully inadequate in translating the Italian article intelligibly, it appears that the takedown requests in question (if they exist) might actually be from users—i.e. people without legal standing—via the site’s feedback form. Although that could certainly alert the company that inappropriate content had been submitted by a user, it’s a far cry from an official legal filing.

It’s also hard to tell because Google hasn’t apparently responded adequately to requests from the prosecution to provide copies of any legal takedown notices (although I believe the article says they have provided a copy of one such filing: “Google Inc. has sent not only evasive replies on the comments made [on the video page] but also on removal requests (having produced only one on that SB)”). Furthermore, the EU has no guidelines on what constitutes a sufficiently fast response to a legal takedown notice (or even a clearly defined process for filing takedown notices).

Still, it hardly makes sense to sentence executives who probably never saw any takedown notices (whether or not they were filed), didn’t abuse the child in question, didn’t tape said abuse and didn’t post the video, to jail time for invasion of privacy. TechDirt points out a fine for ignoring (or losing) a takedown notice would be a far more appropriate penalty.

What do you think? Did Google receive a takedown notice? Who should be punished, and how?

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Ahhhhh To Be Young and Mobile

It appears that it is finally safe to say that if mobile hasn’t completely arrived it is certainly in the room and recognized for its potential. Should we declare 2010 as the ‘Year of Mobile’? Sure, why not. There will be others and honestly it means nothing to hype it. Let’s look at what’s actually going on at street level.

Over at the ZDNet’s  Between the Lines blog, Larry Dignan tells us about a survey from the Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay did some research among 360 smartphone users that follows up some initial research he did in the mobile advertising space. Here is some of the information that you may find interesting

• 67 percent of respondents said that smartphones increased their Internet usage for personal use and 45 percent said work related usage rose.
• 95 percent of users use the same search engine for the PC and mobile.
• 37 percent of respondents say they are clicking on more paid search links and seeing more display adds. Users 18 to 34 found mobile ads to be more relevant than their PC counterparts. Older users panned mobile ads across the board.

As Dignan points out, I agree the major piece of data to be gleaned from this is the fact the younger the mobile user is the more likely they will be responsive to mobile ads. The older users referred to breaks out in this chart below.

I’m not surprised by this and I hope the rest of the industry will take heed. When it comes to mobile there may not be an audience unless your product or service skews young. This is likely to change over time but for now it’s the younger set that will allow mobile and advertising to be used as a phrase while others think that the separation of the two is the better way to go.

LA Times Social Media Guidelines Lead to Much More

The LA Times has updated their social media guidelines for their journalists and there is the usual ruckus about everyone being too restrictive. Originally written in March of this year the update makes sense since the 8 months or so that have passed since the first take is like a lifetime in the social media world. In fact, the real story here may be that the LA Times hasn’t taken a ‘set it and forget it’ approach to their social media guidelines so please take note everybody.

Editor & Publisher and the Huffington Post are both talking about the updates. Interestingly enough, I heard about it from @michacha101 who is one of those people that I have no idea why I follow on Twitter but have gained value from doing so. Having said that (and given them a plug) I am learning more about the openness of the social media environment and the value that can be taken from it. Journalists drool over this kind of exposure and availability of information. Trouble is that for the sake of ‘objectivity’ or ‘political correctness or whatever there will always be rules and regs that restrict just how effective the medium can be.

The Huffington Post tells us that some of the LA Times policies include

Integrity is our most important commodity: Avoid writing or posting anything that would embarrass The Times or compromise your ability to do your job.
Assume that your professional life and your personal life will merge online regardless of your care in separating them.

Even if you use privacy tools (determining who can view your page or profile, for instance), assume that everything you write, exchange or receive on a social media site is public.

Just as political bumper stickers and lawn signs are to be avoided in the offline world, so too are partisan expressions online.

There’s a lot of detail that I am leaving out here and here’s why. I have to give the LA Times credit for being on the ball. You see the Huffington Post had only one comment but it was from Andrew Nystrom / L.A. Times social media guy / @AdNys who was completely transparent by saying:

Thank you for writing about our new Guidelines. For the record, here are links to:

- The full text of our revised Social Media Guidelines: http://latimes.com/socialmedia — our original Guidelines were issued in March 2009, before the WaPo or WSJ (and most other major media outlets) issued theirs.

- Our directory of 200+ L.A. Times(@lat¬imes)-rela¬ted Twitter accounts: http://latimes.com/twitter

- The full text of our 2007 Ethics Guidelines (currently under revision): http://latimes.com/ethics

Hope this is helpful. I welcome all feedback.

Nice move.

So let’s recap. As a result of the social media ‘world’ I got data from someone that was of interest, that was about information that can be seen both positively and negatively depending on your point of view but was ultimately made completely transparent by the source which ultimately reflects positively on them. Pretty cool.

So if you really think that people care about where you are walking and what you see it’s likely that you are just really enamored with yourself. What people really want is information that helps. Thanks to everyone who helped here.

Is Google Deliberately Sabotaging Bing’s Search Listing?

Despite the millions of dollars Microsoft is spending in an attempt to get us to use Bing, it’s apparently still well aware of the hand that feeds it.

A lot of searchers are still conditioned to begin all web browsing at Google, and Microsoft knows that it’s crucial that Bing is easily found. So, you can imagine their angst at seeing the following in a search for Bing:

Yep, the second result for Bing suggests searchers might wan to stick with Google for a while. Now, if you read the snippet, you’ll see why we even got to this situation–a power outage last Friday temporarily took out Bing’s Travel site.

Apparently, Google’s spider has been on vacation since then:

Notice, Google hasn’t re-indexed the page since July 4th! Do you smell a conspiracy theory? Since when does it take Google that long to revisit a site as popular as Bing?

Bing employees may not be crying foul, but they’re disturbed enough to send a public tweet to Google.

It’s kind of hard to puff up your chest and go cap in hand at the same time, don’t you think?

(via)

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Flickr Connects to Twitter – Better Late Than Never

VentureBeat reports that Flickr is finally enabling its users to tweet their photos on the service.

What took them so long? Flickr now has a built-in feature that lets members tweet their photos. “You can upload directly to Flickr and Twitter simultaneously, or tweet a photo already on Flickr, using a special short Flic.kr URL,” says the company’s FAQ. It also explains how to post photos from your phone, and how to tweet from Flickr.

Flickr spelled out the “how to’s” in the following from their PR firm

To use Flickr 2 Twitter, members need to first authorize Flickr to post to their Twitter accounts. Once authorized, members will be able to tweet photos from the “Blog This” button on their photo page or from their mobile devices.

Mobile uploading is possible once members enable their Upload by Email settings (unique Flickr email upload address + “2twitter”). After you’ve successfully tweeted your Flickr photo, it will look something like this.

Is there anything else out there that hasn’t joined the Twitter trend?

Clean Tweets: New Add-On Zaps Twitter Spam

If you use Twitter regularly, you probably know spam is a growing problem — particularly with Twitter’s search engine and the way it surfaces trending topics. Danny Sullivan described how spammers are targeting hot keywords in his Twitter’s Real Time Spam Problem article 10 days ago.
Since Twitter hasn’t addressed the problem yet, the folks behind [...]

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