“It’s the first time a Google employee has been convicted for (violation of) privacy anywhere in the world,” Google spokesman Bill Echikson told AFP.<\/p>\n
“It’s an astonishing decision that attacks the principle of freedom of expression,” he added.<\/p>\n
Each executive was given a six-month suspended sentence for violation of privacy, while a fourth was acquitted. All four were acquitted on a charge of defamation.<\/p>\n
The mobile phone video, uploaded on Google Video where it remained for nearly two months in late 2006, showed four students bullying the teenager with Down’s syndrome in front of more than a dozen others who did not intervene.<\/p>\n
The bullies were suspended from their school in Turin, northern Italy, for the rest of the academic year over the episode, which sparked a national furore.<\/p>\n
“None of these four people had anything to do with the video,” Echikson said. “They didn’t film it, they didn’t upload it, they didn’t review it. Nonetheless they were held criminally responsible.”<\/p>\n
In a statement posted on its official blog (googleblog.blogspot.com) after the ruling, Google said: “The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police.”<\/p>\n
It added: “European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence.”<\/p>\n
Of the four executives on trial, David Drummond, chairman of the board of Google Italy at the time; George De Los Reyes, then a board member who has since left the firm; and Peter Fleischer, who was responsible for privacy issues, were convicted for violation of privacy.<\/p>\n
Arvind Desikan, who was in charge of the video section at the time, was acquitted of all charges.<\/p>\n
Echikson said the court ordered Google to publish the court decision in the Italian press and to pay unspecified fines.<\/p>\n
“If we are responsible for vetting each photo, each video, each posting … then the web as we know it will cease to exist,” he said. “The technical benefits will disappear.”<\/p>\n
The Italian decision comes as Google is embroiled in a row with China involving the opposite end of the freedom-of-expression spectrum –alleged censorship.<\/p>\n
The Internet giant last month threatened to shut down its Chinese-language search engine google.cn unless it is allowed to deliver unfiltered Internet search results in the world’s most populous country.<\/p>\n
Google launched the ultimatum over what it said were cyberattacks aimed at its source code and at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world.<\/p>\n
US President Barack Obama said last month that he was “troubled” by the cyberattacks on Google and wanted answers from China, which has the world’s largest number of online users at 384 million.<\/p>\n