(Thumbnail image: International Business Times)

Google is appealing an Italian court conviction of three of its executives for failure to comply with the country's privacy laws.

In 2006, four Italian classmates uploaded a video to Google showing the group harassing a young boy with Down's Syndrome. Google removed the video within hours of a formal complaint, but prosecutors argued the video should never have been uploaded in the first place.

The case is raising questions about exactly who is responsible for Web content.

A reporter from FOX News says monitoring the thousands of online videos posted to the Web each day just isn't possible.

"What you have here is essentially is an Italian judge ruling that the Google executives should be responsible for all the video posted on the sites that they own. ... The numbers are just amazing. If you look at every single minute of the day, there are some 20 hours of video being uploaded onto YouTube alone."

But a reporter for Canada's CBC News is critical of Google's uploading policy and says the prosecutors were defending what he says is most important in this case: human dignity.

"Now prosecutors insisted the case is not about, was not about, censorship. One prosecutor, as he walked out immediately after the ruling, said that a company's rights cannot prevail over a person's dignity." 

A former UK information commissioner tells BBC News the whole case is ridiculous. 

"It is like prosecuting the post office for hate mail that is sent in the post.... I find it worrying that the chief privacy officer who had nothing to do with the video has been found guilty. It is unrealistic to expect firms to monitor everything that goes online."

A Sky News report suggests this could be the beginning of the end.

"If it stands, it's going to mean the definite death knell of social media, the death knell of being able to put things up online for people who use YouTube. And clearly, that's not an appropriate way forward."

Despite those fears, a Mercury News editorial suggests there’s no reason to believe this verdict will set a precedent.

“But the reaction — ranging from head-scratching to condemnation, even among privacy advocates — has been heartening. … [W]e're hopeful that this backlash will keep other countries from following suit. It should also help persuade an Italian appeals court to rethink the verdict.”

And this isn't the first time Google has had trouble oversees. Check out our story about Google's threat to shut down its operations in China earlier this year. 

Writer: Brandon Twichell

Producer: Nathan Giannini