February 1, 2012
"Action by governments to restrict access to Facebook in their countries could substantially harm our business and financial results. It is possible that governments of one or more countries may seek to censor content available on Facebook in their country, restrict access to Facebook from their country entirely, or impose other restrictions that may affect the accessibility of Facebook in their country for an extended period of time or indefinitely. For example, access to Facebook has been or is currently restricted in whole or in part in China, Iran, North Korea, and Syria. In addition, governments in other countries may seek to restrict access to Facebook if they consider us to be in violation of their laws. In the event that access to Facebook is restricted, in whole or in part, in one or more countries or our competitors are able to successfully penetrate geographic markets that we cannot access, our ability to retain or increase our user base and user engagement may be adversely affected, we may not be able to maintain or grow our revenue as anticipated, and our financial results could be adversely affected."

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Facebook’ s Registration Statement on Form S-1

facebook’s remark against local governments’ censorship in the Form S-1 statement

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April 18, 2010
The Google trial in Italy: the motivation behind the conviction

Summary. On april the 12 the document with the judgement was finally released. The document shows the motivation behind the conviction of the three Google’s executives in Italy and provides more insight in the case and on the rules of law the conviction was based on. I’ve been talking extensively about the trial, the indictment and the verdict when the latter was made public in a post available here (further references and story behind the beginning of the trial can be found in the post). Back then the only public news were the legal basis of the indictment and the verdict but not yet the reasons that led to the conviction. Since now this is public I’ll be discussing the content of the judgment and what are the relevant consequences left after the trial for Internet service providers in Italy. This post is based on the column I wrote for Apogeonline (aGoogle Translation is available with a copy and paste of the text) and on the conversations I had with Peter Kaptein, whom I thank very much for stimulating me to write this post. The translation of some sentences from the judgment are not official but mine so it might be not accurate. The views expressed in this post, also, are my own personal.

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February 25, 2010
The Google trial in Italy: the motivation behind the conviction

Summary. 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 is this: Google made a possible mistake to 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.

Preface. Yesterday I interviewed one of the lawyers who defended the employees from Google in the Italian trial:  Giuseppe Vaciago (available here in Italian and herewith a Google translation).

I have been writing twice about the trial in my columns for Apogeonline: one writtenback in 2006, when everything started, and the other written hours after the news of the Google executives` conviction spread.

The post is a summary of the interview and both of my articles and of a conversation I had via Skype with Peter Kaptein while I was trying to explain him what was happening here but this post expresses my personal view only.

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(Source: elvlog.wordpress.com)

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