3 Google executives are criminally convicted — in Italy — based on Google's hosting of a video that some Italian students uploaded.

Incredible! And Google even took down the video as soon as it was notified and helped the authorities find and punish the students.

And how horrendous was this video? It depicted bullying. The child bullied had Down syndrome, but still.

ADDED: From the Official Google Blog:

[The conviction] attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming. 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. The belief, rightly in our opinion, was that a notice and take down regime of this kind would help creativity flourish and support free speech while protecting personal privacy. If that principle is swept aside and 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.