Yet it continued. I have a problem with this. Advocacy groups should not simply by reason of being advocates, gain some legal right to press a case where the victim has withdrawn. Yeah, I know, there's "friend of the court" type of stuff that goes on all the time, but maybe it's time that concept is restricted. If I decide to go and form some group about something, I shouldn't by such action suddenly gain some advantage in law that would allow me to enter cases that as an individual I'd have no power or right to do so. Isn't that a form of bullying too? That may not apply here since in this instance the judge himself is continuing the case. However this is a civil case, not a criminal case, and typically when a plaintiff withdraws from a civil case, it's dropped.
http://pulse2.com/category/vivi-down-association/
A boy with down syndrome that was at the center of a lawsuit in a trial against several Google executives withdrew from a lawsuit. He withdrew from the case this past Wednesday. However the trial will continue as Judge Oscar Magi accepted the role of the plaintiff. The judge will be representing the interests of people suffering from Down syndrome. The boy decided to withdraw from the lawsuit because it was not in his best interests to proceed. Michela Malerba, Google?s lawyer also expressed regret about what happened.
Who's at fault here beyond the obvious, which is the bullies who uploaded the video to Google? Does Google share some responsibility for the video? Should there be a legal time frame of non culpability in which such video can be seen before being removed? Should the clock start ticking ONLY when contacted by the aggrieved party in regard to such video? Think about Reginald Denny instead, during the South Central riot in Los Angeles some years ago. Was his "privacy" violated by everyone in America seeing him dragged from a truck, beaten and hit in the head with a brick till he was unconcious? One could argue that such videos when posted actually are for the public good, giving us a call to action against such bullies. In this particular case it brought the action to attention of proper authority and the video itself was used to bring punishment to the ones involved in the bully action. Should Google be faulted for leaving such a video up, or did it not serve a greater good?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-Google-execs-convicted-of-apf-1104575966.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
Three Google executives were convicted of privacy violations Wednesday in Italy because bullies posted a video online of an autistic boy being abused -- a case closely watched due to its implications for Internet freedom.
In the first such criminal trial of its kind, Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three to a six-month suspended sentence and absolved them of defamation charges. A fourth defendant, charged only with defamation, was acquitted.
Google called the decision "astonishing" and said it would appeal.
"The judge has decided I'm primarily responsible for the actions of some teenagers who uploaded a reprehensible video to Google video," Google's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer, who was convicted in absentia, said in a statement.
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