3 Google employees have been convicted in an Italian court today after supposedly breaching Italy's privacy laws over a horrific video of children bullying an autistic classmate was uploaded to Google Video in 2006.

The court indicted 4 Google employees (who had absolutely nothing to do with the video prior to its removal for ToS violations) for criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code, although the defamation charge was dropped, as was one employee.

This case shows how much current legislation is behind the times, if platform providers - and individual persons - can be charged for the content users upload (when we all know YouTube is just a dumb-pipe between content and end users) to sharing sites, then something has to change.

Common sense would dictate that the persons filming a clip for internet distribution have received everyone involved's permission to appear, however, that was not thought to be the case here.

Google is appealing the decision.

[Google Blog]