This week an Italian court surprisingly convicted three Google executives over the uploading of a video in which an autistic teenager was bullied. Despite removing it within a matter of hours after being notified by the Italian police, David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes were all found to be guilty of violating Italian privacy laws.

This is not the first time the Google giant has had problems with privacy laws. Just last week Google’s new social networking site Buzz came under fire from The Electronic Privacy Information Centre who lodged a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission claiming Google breaks consumer protection law. It will be interesting to watch how that develops.

However, this latest development threatens to set a dangerous precedent in Italy in which sites can be held accountable for what’s hosted on their servers. This could have major ramifications for sites which rely on user-generated content such as social networking sites.

The video in question was removed on November 7th 2009 after a complaint from the police, and according to European Union laws this should have been enough to prevent them from being liable since the content was immediately removed once they received notification, however in the eyes of the Italian judge this was not enough.

If this is the case, then to avoid future threats all content will need to be moderated before appearing on the site. This could prove to be quite an issue, since more than 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute from around the world to YouTube. To watch all of this would require 1,200 members of staff/couch potatoes!

So if moderation is not possible then what are the possible implications for other sites which rely on user-generated content? Could Twitter suddenly be found accountable for any libel which is tweeted? Is Flickr responsible for every image uploaded that violates its terms of service?

Whether or not this will set a worldwide precedent remains to be seen. Google have already stated they will “vigorously appeal” the decision, and hopefully the charges will be dropped (especially since those charged were in no way responsible for the content, and were simply held accountable by virtue of their position within Google, according to David Drummond, one of those convicted).

If however the convictions are upheld then this will send shockwaves around the internet. If other countries were to adopt a similar stance to Italy then the looming threat of legal action could cause sites to suspend operating in certain countries (or at least dramatically change the way in which content is moderated), thereby limiting the freedom of the internet and the benefits it offers.