German court rules against YouTube over copyright‏

Associated Press

 

A German court ruled Friday that Google Inc.'s subsidiary YouTube LLC must pay compensation after users uploaded several videos of performances by singer Sarah Brightman in violation of copyright laws.

The Hamburg state court said the standardized question to users about whether they have the necessary rights to publish material is not enough to relieve YouTube of the legal responsibility for the content, especially because the platform can be used anonymously.

The wording of the court statement appears to be a major blow to YouTube's business model, but Google Germany spokesman Henning Dorstewitz told The Associated Press YouTube will appeal the decision detailed in the 60-page ruling.

YouTube must not publish those videos any more and provide information to settle the amount of compensation in at least three cases in which Brightman videos were uploaded, the court said.

Arnd Haller, director of legal affairs at Google Germany, said the court ruling disregards the current e-commerce directive of the European Union.

"This decision results in a substantial legal uncertainty for all providers of video platforms, opinion forums, social communities, blogs and many other Internet services in Germany," Haller said in a statement.

The plaintiff was not identified and a court spokesman could not be reached for comment. The court statement only said the plaintiff has claimed to be the copyright holder for several of Sarah Brightman's performances.

Google said in a statement that the plaintiff was Frank Peterson. He is a German composer and producer for Brightman and other artists, according to his website.

Germany: Would-Be Employers Can't Do Social Network Checks

CBS News

Ever feel that those shots of you doing a keg stand in a bikini might be hindering your career? German politicians say they have a solution: ban potential employers from looking at applicants' Facebook accounts.

A law that passed through the German cabinet Wednesday makes looking at any closed social network illegal, but looking at professional networking Web sites, like LinkedIn, or running a Google search on an applicant, would be OK.

The measure still needs to go through parliament.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière told reporters Wednesday that future employers shouldn't be looking at information they would only want to show to friends like "wild photos from their college time." It would also be illegal to try and "friend" a potential employee to find out personal details.

Social media expert Klemens Skibicki, a professor for marketing at Cologne Business School, thinks the measure would be incredibly difficult to enforce. Much of the information can be found by third party search engines such as 123people (http://www.123people.com/) and it would be difficult to determine if the employer was using a fake account or an IP address changer to access data.

"How does one prove that they were discriminated against like that?" Skibcki asked. "This law can't effectively stop anybody from searching social network information about applicants."

Christian Solmecke, a lawyer with the German Institute for Communication and Law on the Internet, thinks that individuals should control who has access to their social networks and that the government should not interfere, but that it can be difficult for people - especially teenagers - to understand how information they post on the internet could affect them in the future, as well as how to make that data private.

The measure also prohibits companies from videotaping employees in "personal" locations such as bathrooms, changing rooms and break rooms, reports Der Spiegel. Seems like that would be a given, but in 2008, a scandal emerged when discount retailer Lidl spied on workers in the bathroom and collected personal information about them.

Also off limits? Most monitoring of employees telephone calls and e-mail use, even during company time. If monitoring occurs, businesses must inform their employees.

The country, with a history of government monitoring that includes the Gestapo and Stasi, has some of the strongest privacy laws in the world.

The Facebook legislation comes as there is increasing controversy over Google Street View in Germany. The consumer ministry is expecting the number of citizens requesting to opt out - have their property blurred on Google Street view and expunged from Google servers - to rise above 200,000 as many people worry that having such data on the internet is a violation of their privacy.

Google Balks at Turning Data over to Regulators

NY Times

 

BERLIN — Google has balked at requests from regulators to surrender Internet data and e-mails it collected from unsecured home wireless networks, saying it needed time to resolve legal issues.

In Germany, Google said it was not able to comply with the Hamburg data protection supervisor’s Thursday deadline to hand over data the company had collected — inadvertently, it says — while roving cars were compiling its Street View photo map archive.

Ironically, the company implied that German privacy laws were preventing it from turning over the information, even to a government agency.

“As granting access to payload data creates legal challenges in Germany which we need to review, we are continuing to discuss the appropriate legal and logistical process for making the data available,” Peter Barron, a Google spokesman in London, said in a statement. “We hope, given more time, to be able to resolve this difficult issue.”

The Hamburg data protection supervisor, Johannes Caspar, expressed his disappointment. In a statement, he said the state prosecutor, Lutz von Selle, had assured him that complying with the request would not constitute “criminal behavior” by Google.

“Therefore there is no apparent reason to still withhold the data from us,” Mr. Caspar said, while noting that prosecutors in Hamburg, where Google has its German headquarters, have opened a criminal investigation.

Mr. Caspar did not specify what steps he might take next.

Meanwhile, the privacy commissioner in Hong Kong, Roderick B. Woo, threatened unspecified sanctions after Google did not respond to his request to inspect data collected in the territory by the roving cars. Mr. Woo said Google had ignored a Monday deadline to turn over the information.

“I am dismayed by Google’s apparent lack of sincerity in its handling of this matter,” Mr. Woo said in a statement. “I do not see that Google is taking the matter seriously enough. Unless some remedial measures are taken by Google promptly, I shall have to consider escalating the situation and resort to more assertive action.”

A Google representative in Hong Kong could not be reached immediately for comment Thursday.

The standoffs increase the chance that Google may face fines and legal action in Europe and Asia.

The company has said its cars collected 600 gigabytes of “fragmentary data” from unsecured Wi-Fi networks in 33 countries and Hong Kong. It has declined to describe the data in more detail, and says it was gathered inadvertently because of a programming error.

Criticism of the search company’s privacy practices has been mounting in Europe, where on Wednesday an advisory panel to the European Commission accused Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, which are all U.S. companies, of violating European Union data retention rules by keeping information typed into their search fields from individual computers for more than six months.

Although fines and administrative sanctions in privacy cases tend to be limited — in Germany the maximum penalty is €50,000, or $61,500 — one privacy expert said Google’s lack of compliance with regulators’ requests could damage its reputation.

“Google’s refusal to hand over the data will be seen as a declaration of war by European regulators,” said Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, a London organization representing data protection groups in 40 countries. “This is about sovereignty and a country’s right to determine on its citizens’ behalf what is right and what is wrong.”

Google, based in Mountain View, California, has offered to destroy the data, but has not allowed regulators to see and verify what it has collected. Google has destroyed data collected in Denmark, Ireland and Austria at the request of local regulators.

But eight other European countries — Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Belgium — have asked Google to retain data collected in those nations, which may be used as evidence in future legal proceedings.

In the United States, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Jon Leibowitz, told Congress last week that his agency would look into Google’s actions.

Some have questioned Google’s assertion that it gathered the data inadvertently.

“If the company is fighting this so hard, it suggests there is more to this than meets the eye,” said Mr. Davies, of Privacy International. “The real question is: What was Google collecting from unwitting individuals and why? So far, nobody really knows.”

One privacy lawyer said Google might be wagering that paying fines and enduring negative publicity was preferable to giving regulators insight into its data collection practices.

“Remember that Microsoft’s reputation took a hit for a decade in Europe while it faced its antitrust suit here,” said Ulrich Börger, a privacy lawyer in Hamburg at Latham & Watkins, a U.S. law firm. “But at the end of the day, the negative publicity did not affect the company’s business bottom line in Europe.”

Regulators and prosecutors may be hard-pressed to compel Google to relinquish hard drives that are not being kept in their countries.

“Our understanding is that the data collected, including Wi-Fi data, is held overseas in the United States,” said Karen Curtis, the Australian privacy commissioner.

Prosecutors in Hamburg may also have difficulty bringing charges because Germany has no legal concept of corporate criminal liability. Hamburg prosecutors would have to prove that individuals working for Google deliberately broke wiretapping laws.

Proving that the driver of a Street View recording vehicle had such knowledge and intent may be difficult, said Ulrich Börger, a privacy lawyer in Hamburg at Latham & Watkins, a U.S. law firm.. “This is not going to be an easy prosecution,” he said.

A Chinese novelist’s lawsuit against Google over its online library is going ahead in court after settlement talks failed, The Associated Press reported from Beijing.

The novelist, Mian Mian — known for lurid tales of sex, drugs and nightlife — filed suit in October after her latest book, “Acid House,” was scanned into the library. Google says it removed the work after receiving Ms. Mian’s complaint, but the author is suing for damages of 61,000 renminbi, or $9,000, and a public apology.

A Beijing court held a hearing Wednesday after talks ordered by the judge failed to produce a settlement, said Sun Jingwei, Ms. Mian’s lawyer. The next court date has not been set, Mr. Sun said. A Google spokeswoman in Beijing, Marsha Wang, declined to comment.

Google Faces German May 26 Deadline on Street View Data on Privacy Concern‏
Bloomberg

Google Facing Heat And New Legal Troubles With Street View Data In Europe

Google Inc., the owner of the world’s largest search engine, was asked by Germany to provide details by May 26 on data it erroneously gathered for the Street View mapping service, deepening its European woes.

“We need to see the used software to understand what was really saved,” Johannes Caspar, the data-protection commissioner of Hamburg, said in an interview.

German regulators are investigating how cars Google employed to drive around taking pictures for Street View ended up with private data from Wi-Fi networks that weren’t password- protected. Google said yesterday it deleted data mistakenly gathered from Wi-Fi networks in Ireland and was reaching out to do the same in other countries.

The Mountain View, California-based company is increasingly colliding with Europe’s data regulators who say it is neglecting privacy as it introduces features such as Google Buzz and Street View. Google, which has 79 percent of the search-engine market in Europe, will likely face further scrutiny and restrictions on the continent.

“I would expect market regulators to scrutinize Google more the bigger it gets and I think Google could put up a good fight,” said Alexander Wisch, a media analyst at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research in London.

Officials from 30 European countries last week said they want Google to further improve blurring techniques used to disguise images in Street View and consider manually tweaking images where faces or license plates can be recognized.

‘Privacy-Centric’

Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said personal data the company erroneously gathered for Street View was not used in any way. Speaking at a conference outside London today, he said Google negotiates “hard” with governments on privacy issues. It has the most “privacy-centric” policy, he said.

“As a society we haven’t figured out what we want to do with all this new technology and what’s appropriate,” Schmidt said. “Societies will determine the outcomes differently.”

The European Union has been critical of Google.

“It is not acceptable that a company operating in the EU does not respect EU rules,” European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News. Reding told Google co-founder Larry Page in a meeting last June that “Google’s activities in the different EU member states related to Street View are subject to the control of the national data protection authorities.”

Page said today that the focus of regulators should be on harm done rather than on the potential for it. He said there was no actual harm resulting from the company’s policies.

European Troubles

“Google made a mistake, but they disclosed it,” said Massimiliano Trovato, a media and telecommunications regulations expert at the Bruno Leoni Institute in Milan. “They’re working with privacy regulators in the countries involved and, most importantly, they haven’t used the data collected.”

Concern about Google’s data-collection is among many run- ins the company has had with authorities in Europe.

In February, three Google employees were sentenced to six- month terms by an Italian court, which found them guilty of privacy violations. The case stemmed from a video clip that was uploaded to Google Video in 2006, which showed a group of school students bullying an autistic classmate.

A Paris court in December found Google’s book-scanning project violated some publishers’ and authors’ copyrights.

Germany’s Caspar said he plans more meetings with Google this week, including talks about a tool on Street View that would allow users to reject pictures of their property. Caspar is leading the probe because Google’s country headquarters are in Hamburg.

Other Conflicts

In a separate e-mailed statement today, he said, “The people responsible at Google have to use this case as an opportunity to once again adjust company policy toward a more transparent management of data protection.”

A Google spokeswoman based in London said the company’s priority is to delete data mistakenly collected in “the quickest and safest way.”

Caspar asked that Google not entirely delete all the information it has inadvertently collected since that will make any legal assessment difficult. “The data should be immediately removed from the operating business and only be used for clarification,” he said.

In the U.S., Google Buzz, a service introduced in February that lets people share photos and comments, created an outcry after it pulled users’ contacts from Google Gmail accounts automatically and displayed them to others.

Google is being sued in a California court over the service, after a letter sent to federal antitrust authorities in March by 10 members of Congress.

“I tend to feel some of these things are teething problems, but still Google could end up being restricted over some of the things they do,” said Sam Hart, a media analyst at Charles Stanley in London.

Germany Lashes Out at Google for Privacy Breach

Associated Press

Germany's consumer protection minister strongly criticized Google for a widespread privacy breach and insisted Saturday the U.S. Internet giant must cooperate better with data protection authorities.

Google Inc. issued an apology Friday, acknowledging it has been vacuuming up fragments of people's online activities broadcast over public Wi-Fi networks for the past four years while expanding a mapping feature called "Street View."

Minister Ilse Aigner said the "alarming incident" showed that Google still lacks an understanding of the need for privacy.

"According to the information available to us so far, Google has for years penetrated private networks, apparently illegally," her office said in a statement Saturday.

The ministry also accuses Google of withholding information requested by German regulators.

Only two weeks ago, Google was telling Germany's consumer protection authorities that it was only recording the network's names and addresses. Repeated questions about whether the company was gathering even more data remained unanswered, the statement said.

"Maintaining people's trust is crucial to everything we do," Alan Eustace, Google's top engineering executive, wrote in a blog post. "We are acutely aware that we failed badly here."

Google has characterized its collection of snippets from e-mails and Web surfing done on public Wi-Fi networks as a mistake and said it has taken steps to avoid a recurrence. The company said it only recently discovered the problem following the inquiry from German regulators.

"Street View" provides photographs of neighborhoods taken by Google cameras. The service has been enormously controversial in Germany and other countries as privacy groups and authorities fear that people - filmed without their consent - could be seen doing things they didn't want to be seen doing or in places where they didn't want to be seen.

The German ministry is now demanding that Google follow through on pledges to disclose its activities to data protection authorities in all countries.

"It also has to be disclosed to German data protection agencies which information is registered and how the illegitimately gathered data of unprotected wireless networks will be deleted," Aigner's ministry said.

Google gathered about 600 gigabytes of data from Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries, including the United States. Google plans to delete it all as soon as it gains clearance from government authorities. None of the information has appeared in Google's search engine or on other services, according to Eustace.

The latest incident has prompted Google to abandon its effort to collect Wi-Fi network data.

In an apparent show of its commitment to privacy, Google also said it will introduce a new option next week that will let it users encrypt searches on its Web site as an added protection against unauthorized snooping.

German Government Warns Against MS Explorer Use

AP

BERLIN (AP) - Microsoft Corp. on Saturday rejected a German government warning against using Internet Explorer until a patch can be developed to fix a security flaw, saying the problem is not a threat to general users.

The Federal Office for Information Security, or BSI, told Germans to avoid use of all versions of Explorer after the security hole led to hacks against Google and others.

Microsoft confirmed the weakness earlier this week after Google announced that hackers in China had pried into e-mail accounts of human rights activists. The company said, however, that the hole could be closed by setting the browser's Internet security zone to "high."

But the BSI insisted that such measures were not sufficient.

"Using Internet Explorer in 'secure mode,' as well as turning off Active Scripting makes attacks more difficult, but can not fully prevent them," BSI said in a statement released Friday.

Thomas Baumgaertner, a Microsoft spokesman in Germany, said the company was aware of the warning, but did not agree with it, pointing out that the attacks on Google were by highly motivated people with a very specific agenda.

"These were not attacks against general users or consumers," Baumgaertner said. "There is no threat to the general user, consequently we do not support this warning.