Are the wild west days of the Internet over?

Italy would like to think so.

This week the most serious threat to Freedom of Speech online since the internet has been in existence may be the Italian court descision to indict 3 Google executives.

Italy has sentenced them to prison time for content in a video that some anonymous Italian YouTube user uploaded. This Italian user has since been punished with community service only.

This event marks a serious change in the censorship, or prior lack of, that exists on the internet.

Many people in and outside of our industry, are extremely concerned over what this could mean to providers of online content; Many theorize that it signals the beginning of the end for free speech and blogs online.

Left unchecked, this movement could spiral out of control and nations with less freedom of speech than the United States could dictate how Americans use their freedom online.

This however is not an isolated incident; a German court has sued Google over its feature called “street view”.

Germans are notoriously protective of their privacy, and Google street view is simply not anonymous enough for their liking. Its not as though Google is giving out that sensitive of information from the US perspective, but the fact is that the German decision has the potential reduce functionality everywhere.

Google’s initiative to digitize all the world’s books may end after a Paris court ruled that “Google had committed acts of copyright violations” by digitizing 4,000 of works from one of France’s biggest publishing houses, La Martiniere. This French lawsuit will prevent people from all of the nations of the world from having online access to the 4,000 literary works.

Are the Italian, French and German courts actually trying to serve some measure of justice here, or make a scapegoat of yet another American company?

As we have seen all too many times with companies like Microsoft, foreign courts love to levy torts and summary payment judgements against American entities.

Then, if that wasn’t concern enough, for American business, they have stepped up their campaigns against each other! Microsoft is now going after Google in conjunction with another company.

I suppose that Microsoft was desirous to see what the view was like from the “Plaintiff” box instead of their long stretch lately in the “Defendant” seat.

Having said that, both Microsoft and Apple have had their own lawsuits between each other but this find themselves also sharing a defendant box against the Plaintiff “Emblaze” over an intellectual property issue.

If this still isn’t strange enough for you; consider what is happening with XEROX.
The company who has probably been responsible for more acts of “copying” protected work, directly or indirectly, by the use of its products, has decided to file suit against Google and Yahoo for pilfering intellectual property.

Kettle and Pot, enough already!

A newer site is just tempting fate with an application entitled “Chatroulette“.

Essentially it is a web cam chat site that utilizes Russian Roulette style play because you randomly get a web cam of a stranger to chat with. The potential lawsuits for decency, pornography, child exploitation, etc are endless here.

Given the litigation industry’s business model which currently taxes Americans approximately $250 billion annually. and as a percentage of the US GDP, America spends twice as much on tort litigation as Germany and three times as much as Britain or France.

In the aftermath of the outcome of these new lawsuits, and in the wake of legally irresponsible websites such as “Chatroulette” we need to prepare ourselves to endure the next challenge or lawsuit, foreign or domestic to our business and reputation online.

If you are concerned that your online reputation is more “Lawsuit Roulette” than strategy, Metamend has online professionals to assist you in protecting your business from these very challenges.