What did I tell ya?  Google’s in the news again.  But this is an issue even bigger than Google.

Google’s blog surfaced an article today about an Italian prosecution of 4 of it’s executives for criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code.  Three, were convicted of failure to comply with the Italian privacy code, while all 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation.

The crime? Some idiots at a school in Turin, Italy posted a video of themselves bullying an autistic child.  Google’s response was not only to take down the video as soon as Italian Police made them aware of it, they assisted the police in identifying the culprits which led to a successful prosecution.  Nonetheless, a prosecutor and judge in Milan thought Google needed to pay which resulted in convictions.

This is a mindset that could bring the internet to a halt.  As Google says, if “sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.”

I encourage you to read the full post.