In China, the search giant is battling hackers and the government, who may be one and the same. In Europe, the company is being hauled in front of an antitrust review. And Italy? Total disaster.

Yesterday, an Italian court convicted three Google (GOOG) executives of privacy violations in a case that stems from a clip uploaded to Google Video in 2006. The executives, who include former CFO George Reyes, have been sentenced to six-month prison sentences.

And that verdict follows a December ruling whereby an Italian court found the company guilty of copyright violations on YouTube, the video site it bought in 2006. Mediaset, the broadcaster that brought the suit–and which is controlled by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi–is looking for more than $730 million in damages.

Google has responded to the video convictions with an outraged blog post. Note that the language is more forceful than the company used to describe its China problem. But also note that the company isn’t threatening to pull out of Italy altogether. Maybe it should.

Serious threat to the web in Italy
2/24/2010 01:57:00 AM
In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved. In these rare but unpleasant cases, that’s where our involvement would normally end.

But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees–David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video’s existence until after it was removed.

Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants–David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes–for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. All 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation. In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload. We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question. Throughout this long process, they have displayed admirable grace and fortitude. It is outrageous that they have been subjected to a trial at all.

But we are deeply troubled by this conviction for another equally important reason. It 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.

These are important points of principle, which is why we and our employees will vigorously appeal this decision.

Posted by Matt Sucherman, VP and Deputy General Counsel–Europe, Middle East and Africa

And Google (GOOG) appears to have lost a tussle in Italian court today.

Mediaset, a commercial broadcaster controlled by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has won a copyright-infringement ruling, and a Rome court has ordered YouTube to remove all of Mediaset’s content from the site.

Variety:

The broadcaster began legal action in July 2008 following a trawl through the YouTube site revealed 4,643 clips and 325 hours of unauthorized Mediaset material, the company claimed.

In his written report, judge Tommaso Marvasi referred in particular to the prevalence on YouTube of Mediaset’s Italo version of “Big Brother,” which he described as the most important reality show on Italian television. It is also the Mediaset program most viewed on the Internet.

In a statement, Mediaset said that the ruling was historic because for the first time the rights of the broadcasters and program editors to their exclusive products had been fully recognized.

Mediaset is reportedly looking for more than $730 million in damages, but no word on how that phase of the trial will proceed.

YouTube’s response, via a spokesman:

We are considering our next steps, including a possible appeal. Under European and Italian law, service providers such as YouTube are not responsible for screening the content people upload. But we actually go beyond the law by offering copyright holders effective tools which allow them to manage how and whether their content is made available. It’s a programme called Content ID. More than 1,000 broadcast partners including Rai and Fox Channels Italy have chosen to use it. Mediaset could simply join these other partners and use the tools as well. Alternatively, it would be enough for them to provide us the URLs of the videos and we would remove them.

Win some, lose some. Earlier this year, YouTube–along with most other Web companies that rely on user-generated and/or uploaded content–was celebrating Veoh’s U.S. court victory against Universal Music.

If that ruling stands, it appears to put almost all of the onus on content owners to keep their stuff off of video sites. Which could pose a problem for Viacom (VIA) and its billion-dollar lawsuit against Google.

So says the social network service, cautioning that it will be keeping an eye on users who chatter about the attack, which left 73-year-old Berlusconi in the hospital with a broken nose. New York Times:

“Promoting violence, or posting threatening content, is not permitted on Facebook,” the social-networking site said. “We will take quick action to respond to reports, and remove any content reported to us that makes direct threats against an individual.”

Facebook has shut down the largest fan page for Massimo Tartaglia, the man who is accused of hitting Mr. Berlusconi on Sunday with a statuette of the Milan cathedral, after it had amassed almost 100,000 users in less than 48 hours.

That said, Facebook still has at least three groups dedicated to chattering about Tartaglia. Take a look:

I get the sense that these groups aren’t wholly critical of Tartaglia, so I’m not sure why Facebook hasn’t shut them down too. But maybe I’m missing something. I passed two semesters of Italian in college, but only in the most technical sense, in that I didn’t actually fail. And the Web translation services I’ve been trying don’t seem to offer much help.

Here, for instance, is Google’s attempt to render the description of the largest Tartaglia group into English:

13/12/2009 BERLUSCONI IS SUFFERING FROM AN OBJECT metal or timber, a miniature of the Cathedral of Milan, a 42 ENNE, born in 1967, to be precise Massimo Tartaglia PRECISELY!

So. I know I have at least one reader who can translate this stuff for me, and I’m reaching out to him now. Meantime, anyone else want to take a shot?

UPDATE: Thanks to the Italian reader who offers this insight and anecdote:

The two big ones that are neither pro nor against, they’re just “for discussion”. Seems to me like [only] the pro-tartaglia groups were censured. The Italian government was making a big deal about there being pro-tartaglia groups.
Also, as soon as this happened I got an email from someone I know suggesting I become a fan of Tartaglia. But now if I go back to the email and click on it, it goes back to the homepage.

So another angry finger is pointed at Google (GOOG). Not that the company seems to care all that much. “YouTube respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously,” Google said in a statement. “There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs.”

A predictable reply, but one that does little to address the fact that YouTube’s efforts to help rights owners easily manage their content haven’t exactly been working. If they were, Mediaset SpA wouldn’t have found 325 hours of its programming on the site, and earlier this month I wouldn’t have been able to watch the entire “Sex and the City Movie” as a series of YouTube clips.

So another angry finger is pointed at Google (GOOG). Not that the company seems to care all that much. “YouTube respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously,” Google said in a statement. “There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs.”

A predictable reply, but one that does little to address the fact that YouTube’s efforts to help rights owners easily manage their content haven’t exactly been working. If they were, Mediaset SpA wouldn’t have found 325 hours of its programming on the site, and earlier this month I wouldn’t have been able to watch the entire “Sex and the City Movie” as a series of YouTube clips.