The Italians have a saying, Masnick. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. And although they’ve never won a war or mass-produced a decent car, in this area they are correct.

Perhaps the Italians are, in a round about way, just letting us know that in five years, their very own technological advances will leapfrog Google’s. Google will be required to watch and approve every video manually or else Italy would desire being disconnected from the whole of Google. After all, the rubberstamp market affects nearly 83% of Italian households, and is very far reaching effects.

I’m not quite surprised as you are, I being italian myself. Our law is so draconian, and our law representatives so backward, that I’m actually more surprised about how little time it took them to get to this sentence than about the sentence itself.

Btw, there was *NO* sign of this case or ruling whatsoever in the media, just as a simple indication of the state of things around here.

I hate this f***ed up country. There seems to be very little revolutionary signs, but while they get things rolling, we’re going to swallow a lot more of this crap.

Little mikee m, what are you not telling us, did the execs try refusing to give the video to the police after it was taken down? Did they try to do something else that would wrap them up as accomplices after the fact?

Little mikee m is notorious for telling us only the part of the story that furthers his agenda and nothing else, and even trying to deny that there is even more to the story than just his little agenda furthering piece.

In my point of view, the decision made by Italian authority is unfair decision. Everybody can upload and download in you tube. According to the You Tube, there are 65,000 news videos uploaded daily. I don’t think the Google employees be able to check all the videos every minutes and seconds. They can miss some or many videos. It’s not big issue.
In this incident, the Google already removed the video from you tube and they provided the information of the up loader to the authorities. Actually, the Italian authorities should thank to them instead of suing them.
I found the one thing that wrongly done by Google. They took nearly two months to remove the video. We do not know why they took so long to remove the video. Only Google will know the answer. Even they delay to remove; these 3 employees should not receive that kind of jail term.

A few words about the privacy law for which Google exec were condemned.
In Italy you cannot publish a video or a picture of a kid without the parents’ consent.
This law adds bureaucracy that is probably unbearable to an american, but it also protects the children and children in Italy are sacred (and often spoiled).
Google created an ecosystem where you can violate this law without being liable.
To an american Italian laws could sound like a terrible limitation of free expression, but the law really was meant to protect the citizens. Another interesting aspect of this law is that you cannot keep a database of other people’s data without their consent, so a positive aspect of this law is that Italians receive very seldom phone calls with commercial offers because you can oblige a company to remove your name and data from their database within 30 days, including your phone number.
A few more bits of information to understand the italian culture:
In the US freedom is more than a value, I would dare to say it is a religion while in Italy human dignity is considered a value more important than freedom. As every generalization, this statement cannot be precise, but if you know a bit both countries the cultural difference on this point is IMHO evident.
More than 80% of Italians honestly trust the police (Carabinieri), so most italians don’t see the Police as people helping the Gov’t to control the citizens, but rather as people doing a difficult job and protecting the people.
I don’t know anybody, also far left, stating that in Italy you cannot freely and publicly express your dissent.
Actually dissenting with the Gov’t in some places is as common as talking about the weather (this was equally true of the previous Gov’t when Berlusconi was not in charge).
Media are an issue, especially most TV channels being too close to the Gov’t in every sense, but that is, IMHO a different story.