World - The Internet was built on freedom of expression. Society wants someone held accountable when that freedom is abused. And major Internet companies like Google and Facebook are finding themselves caught between those ideals.

(Photo)Attendees await the beginning of the unveiling of the Nexus One Android smartphone, the first mobile phone the internet company will sell directly to consumers, during a news conference at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California January 5, 2010

Although Google, Facebook and their rivals have enjoyed a relatively "safe harbor" from prosecution over user-generated content in the United States and Europe, they face a public that increasingly is more inclined to blame them for cyber-bullying and other online transgressions.

Such may have been the case when three Google executives were convicted in Milan, Italy on February 24 over a bullying video posted on the site -- a verdict greeted with horror by online activists, who fear it could open the gates to such prosecutions and ultimately destroy the Internet itself.

Journalist Jeff Jarvis suggested on his influential BuzzMachine blog that the Italian court, which found Google executives guilty of violating the privacy of an autistic boy who was taunted in the video, was essentially requiring websites to review everything posted on them.

"The practical implication of that, of course, is that no one will let anyone put anything online because the risk is too great," Jarvis wrote. "I wouldn't let you post anything here. My ISP (Internet Service Provider) wouldn't let me post anything on its services. And that kills the Internet."

A seemingly stunned Chris Thompson, writing for Slate, said simply: "The mind reels at this medieval verdict."

'POLICEMEN OF THE INTERNET'

And Matt Sucherman, a Google vice president and general counsel, wrote in a blog post that the company was "deeply troubled" by the case, saying it "attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built."

Legal experts have been more sanguine, saying the verdict in Milan will most likely end up an outlier -- unable to stand the scrutiny even of the Italian appeals courts, never mind setting legal precedents elsewhere.

But in sentencing the executives to six-month suspended jail terms, the court may have seized on a growing desire to hold Internet companies responsible for the content posted by users.

"I actually think that this is probably not a watershed moment because the Google convictions violate European law and ultimately they will be overturned," said John Morris, general counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology.

"Having said that, yes we are quite worried about the trend in other countries to suggest Internet service providers and Web sites should be the policemen of the Internet," Morris said.

If the trend takes hold, it could put the companies on the defensive, forcing them to spend more time defending such cases or fending off calls to restrict content in some way.

China polices the web and demands cooperation from web companies, while the United States has stuck up for Internet freedom in the face of censorship by more repressive governments.

But social pressure often comes from the ground up, as Facebook recently found out in Australia.

In that case Facebook pages set up in tribute to two children murdered in February, 8-year-old Trinity Bates and 12-year-old Elliott Fletcher, were quickly covered with obscenities and pornography, prompting calls for the social network to be more accountable for its content.

"To have these things happen to Facebook pages set up for the sole purpose of helping these communities pay tribute to young lives lost in the most horrible ways adds to the grief already being experienced," Queensland Premier Ann Bligh wrote to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a letter released to the Australian media.

THE 'MYSPACE SUICIDE'

"I seek your advice about whether Facebook can do anything to prevent a recurrence of these types of sickening incidents," Bligh said in the letter.

A Facebook spokeswoman responded that the popular social network, which has more than 400 million users worldwide, had rules to check content and that any reports of hate or threats would be quickly removed.

"Facebook is highly self-regulating and users can and do report content that they find questionable or offensive," the spokeswoman, Debbie Frost, said.

Calls for prosecution of cyber-bullying first reached a peak with the case of a suburban mother accused of driving a love-lorn 13-year-old girl, Megan Meier, to suicide in 2006 by tormenting her with a fake MySpace persona.

Lori Drew, the mother of a girl with whom Meir had quarreled, was found guilty of misdemeanor federal charges in a case dubbed the "MySpace Suicide" in the U.S. media, but a judge later dismissed her conviction on the grounds that the prosecution was selective the law unconstitutionally vague.

But Meier's death and a series of child exploitation cases linked to News Corp's MySpace brought pressure on the site to increase its security measures and may have cost it in its apparently losing rivalry with Facebook for social network dominance.

Such issues point to the business risks for the likes of Google and Facebook as they seek to reconcile demands for accountability with the impossibility of monitoring everything posted on their sites.

"We are a society that expects companies and people of authority to take responsibility, not only for their own actions but for the actions of those beneath them," said Karen North, director of the Annenberg Program on Online Communities at the University of Southern California.

"The difficulty is, we've created an Internet culture where people are invited to put up content, but the responsibility falls in both directions," North said. "(On the Internet) we all share the responsibility to monitor the content that we find and for our societal standards to be maintained."
 

Taipei - A Taiwan student on Tuesday unveiled a lifesaver which can greatly increase a person's chance of survival after falling into the sea.

The product, called LIFEON, looks like an ordinary plastic life preserver but is a high-tech device, inventor Sheng-cheh said.

"It has a chlorophyll solar cell which is automatically charged within 10 seconds after coming in contact with water, and can heat up the lifesaver to human body temperature for 72 hours," he said at a National Taiwan University of Science and Technology exhibition.

Apart from keeping the person warm, the preserver has compartments that hold water and food, he noted.

It is also equipped with a GPS global-positioning system to help rescuers locate it in the sea.

Feng's invention won Germany's 2010 International Forum Design Award last week. He said his university is looking for a company to mass-produce it.

Geneva - An executive at internet giant Google said Tuesday that Washington's latest move to encourage service providers to expand their work into Iran, Cuba and Sudan was a "great accomplishment."

"Hopefully it will help ... activities all over the world take a small step in what is certainly a long road ahead," said Robert Boorstin, an official in Google's communications division.

He was speaking at a human rights forum in Geneva.

Boorstin said that internet freedoms were under threat, both in Western democracies and in countries with fewer liberties, but in different ways.

He cited China and Italy as countries that have recently taken steps against online rights.

"Google was strangled by the Chinese regime," the executive alleged, saying his company refused to censor searches to the extent done by Baidu, its local competitor in the world's most populous country.

The US company said in January it might pull out of China, owing to attacks on its servers. Google opened its Chinese site in 2006.

In Italy, Google bosses were recently convicted of privacy violations, after videos were posted to websites. Company officials insisted they did not control what users uploaded and the content was removed once complaints were received.

The US Treasury Department said Monday it was easing restrictions on US companies that export internet services and software to Iran, Cuba and Sudan, long-time foes of Washington.

The administration hopes that access to web-based communications will foster more open societies.

However, Boorstin warned that "internet freedom does not bring about real freedom and what happens online does not necessarily happen offline."

Companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are expected to gain from the move, having been stifled by strict export controls.

However, executives have questioned how deeply they will be able to penetrate markets where the internet remains under tight government restrictions and supervision.
 

World - Four in five adults believe access to the Internet is a fundamental right -- with those feelings particularly strong in South Korea and China -- and half believe it should never be regulated, according to a global survey.

(Photo)A visitor uses a computer at a showroom of Samsung Electronics at the company's headquarters in Seoul January 7, 2010.

A poll of 27,000 adults in 26 countries for the BBC World Service showed 78 percent of Internet users believed the Web gave them greater freedom, while nine in 10 said it was a good place to learn.

Respondents in the United States were above the average in believing the Internet was a source for greater freedom and they were also more confident than most in expressing their opinions online.

However, others felt concern about spending time online, with 65 percent of respondents in Japan saying they did not feel they could express their opinions safely online, a sentiment that was also felt in South Korea, France, Germany and China.

The issue of Internet freedoms hit the headlines earlier this year after the world's largest search engine Google Inc threatened to quit China, the world's biggest Internet market, over strict censorship rules.

Of the 27,000 surveyed, more than half agreed that the "Internet should never be regulated by any level of government anywhere."

That belief was particularly strong in South Korea, Nigeria and Mexico while residents in Pakistan, Turkey and China were the least likely to agree, with only 12 percent, 13 percent and 16 percent respectively strongly agreeing.

Google launched its China search site in 2006, and complies with local laws requiring censorship of certain content such as pornography and sensitive subjects such as the banned Fulun Gong spiritual movement and Tibetan independence.

Other international groups such as Microsoft and local players including China's search leader Baidu must also comply with those laws.

"Despite worries about privacy and fraud, people around the world see access to the Internet as their fundamental right," said Doug Miller, the chairman of GlobeScan which conducted the survey. "They think the Web is a force for good, and most don't want governments to regulate it."

Over 70 percent of respondents in Japan, Mexico and Russia said they could not live without the Internet.

Almost 50 percent of those who used the Internet said they most valued the ability to find information. Over 30 percent valued the ability to interact and communicate with others while 12 percent saw it as a source for entertainment.

Of the areas of concern, the poll found that fraud was the greatest worry, ahead of violent and explicit content and threats to privacy.