Why are Italy and France trying to kill the Internet?

OK, that headline was admittedly a bit of naked, attention-baiting hyperbole, but a couple of recent legal cases in Paris and Milan have got advocates of universal web access muttering under their breath.

First there was the conviction of Google in an Italian criminal court for hosting a user-generated video of some teenage boys harassing an autistic child. The New York Times reports that Google took down the video within two hours of receiving a request from Italian police, but by then the clip had already been publicly accessible for two months.

An judge in Milan, Oscar Magi, sentenced three Google executives in abstentia to six months in jail for invasion of privacy, a ruling the company called "astonishing." Italian prosecutors were apparently able to convince Magi (who hasn't released the arguments underlying his ruling yet) that Google was acting as a direct content provider, not simply as a conduit, because service providers are supposedly protected from liability by European Union trade rules.

Web freedom proponents have called the ruling alarming, but have consoled themselves with the fact that Italy is a special case. Web use in the country is low compared to the rest of Western Europe, and President Silvio Berlusconi has a serious dog in the Internet-regulation fight. Berlusconi is a mogul who is not only the dominant player in privately-owned media in Italy, but who also indirectly influences publicly-owned media by virtue of his office.

Imagine Roger Ailes in the White House or Rupert Murdoch in 10 Downing Street and you start to get the picture. Web providers who host video are the competition, so chilling them just makes good business sense.

Yet now from our Friends at the Citizen Media Law Center at Harvard comes news of a criminal case in France that can only be described as bizarre.

A New York University Law School professor, J.H.H. Weiler, is facing a criminal charges in Paris for refusing to take down a negative review of a book about the International Criminal Court written by an Israeli law professor, Karin Calvo-Goller. Weiler, published the online review in his capacity as editor of the site Global Law Books, but it was written by law professor from Germany.

Calvo-Goller asked Weiler to take down the review, saying it contained factual misstatements and went beyond mere opinion. Weiler reexamined the article and refused, saying it met generally-accepted standards for book reviewing and criticism. So Calvo-Goller brought a criminal libel complaint in France against Weiler, who is now faced with the prospect of having to fly to Paris to defend himself at trial.

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Again, there are some local quirks at work here. Unlike in the US, where a legal gatekeeper would make a preliminary finding before sending a citizen complaint on to criminal prosecution, referral of such cases in France is automatic and does not imply that Calvo-Goller's case has merit.

But the simple fact that France has allowed a case involving three law professors based, respectively, in New York, Israel, and Germany to go forward has advocates of press, academic, and web freedom alarmed. Although Calvo-Goller was born in France, studied there, and may hold dual citizenship, jurisdiction in the case seems to hinge mostly on the simple fact that Weiler's web site is accessible in France.

Imagining the Pandora's Box of litigation that could ensue if the case is allowed to go forward is enough to keep one up at night. But the harassment value alone of forcing someone to fly across the Atlantic to face merit-less criminal charges is, frankly, just as chilling to the notion of free access to information over the web.

Reykjavik is looking better all the time.

(Eiffel Tower photo by Geoff Livingston, used under a Creative Commons licence)