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Search giant Google suffered a stinging and surprising problem in Italy on February .

Twenty-four, when a Milan court found 3 company managers guilty of privacy violations re a questionable clip posted on Google's YouTube video-sharing service in 2006. Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the 3 mencurrent Google chief legal officer David Drummond and chief privacy advise Peter Fleischer, and previous CFO George Reyesto half year postponed terms but cleared them of defamation charges, while acquitting a 4th suspect, Arvind Desikan, on all charges. The keenly awaited and closely-watched call marked a big challenge to the base principle that Web Service Providers and hosting platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter aren't accountable for the content of the material that users upload. Google called the ruling astounding and promised to appeal. The case poses a critical query for the liberty that the Net is built, declared company spokesperson William Echikson in a videotaped statement posted to the BBC's Web site. The YouTube video in question showed a bunch of Italian ***** ridiculing and hitting an autistic boy at a college in Turin.

After it was uploaded in Sep , 2006, it shot to the most viewed section on YouTube, where it remained for 2 months. An Italian advocacy group for folk with Down syndrome moaned about the video to YouTube, which removed it and cooperated with authorities in indentifying the bullies, who were finally apprehended and handed community service by a juvenile court. But the advocacy group, Viva Down, was not satisfied and sought charges from Milan's public prosecutor.

Most legal gurus expected the Google execs to be exonerated of legal charges, given that they were uninvolved with the video. ( What's more, the event in query a touch predated Google's $1.65 bln purchase of YouTube. ) Google's Echikson echoed that position in his reaction after the decision. "None of these 3 staff had anything to do with this videothey did not upload it, they did not film it, they did not review itand yet they've been found guilty," he announced.

Google could fare better in its fight if the case moves to EU courts. There, it'd be ruled by Safe Harbor Rules of the 1995 EC Data Protection Directive, which should protect the neutrality of hosting platforms. The Italian court failed to limit the responsibillity of Google managers for the uploaded video on such a basis came as a surprise to lawyer Andy Millmore, the head of law suits of London legal company Harbottle & Lewis, who was not concerned in the case. "The call attaches responsibility on a wider basis than we would have predicted," Millmore says.

Were the choice to be defended, the effect on Google and many other corporations would be gigantic. The Guardian paper notes in a February . Twenty-four story, "the clear implication of this call is that each video should be screened before it is put up on the site." Yet staying abreast of the volume would be a Herculeanand intensely expensiveeffort that would destroy YouTube's prospects of ever turning a profit : According to the Guardian, more than twenty hours of video are uploaded each minute to YouTube around the planet. Aside from the pricetag and logistical challenge, the Italian call raises critical questions on online privacy, liberty of speech, and the autonomy of interactive forums like YouTube or Facebook. The Guardian observes that Italy has been particularly assertive lately in pressing legal issues concerning the Web and Web 2.0. Tax authorities there have pursued eBay to learn the identities of its customers. The Milan public prosecutor asked Yahoo to bare the identities of suspected perpetrators who had sent emails thru its service. And Facebook has been hit with demands by the inside ministry to turn over the names of subscribers who were presumably concerned in groups that glorified the Mafia and suggested violent harm to Italian P. M. Silvio Berlusconi. Such intersections between law enforcement and developing types of communication are inevitableand even fascinating, to that extent that they supply a more clear legal framework going forward.

After all, each new medium must be probed and graded by the market and the courts.

But as unlucky and offensive as the YouTube video was, Google's chiefs were not any more accountable for it than an Italian mayor would be for offensive speech roared across one of his town's public piazzas. The Italian case against the Google 3 will possibly be overturned. Till then, the result is providing sufficient fodder for freedom of speech in enraged tweets and forums across the Web.