Google hit by privacy convictions

Three executives from internet search firm Google have been convicted of privacy violations over allowing a video of a handicapped boy being bullied to be posted online.

A judge in Milan sentenced the three to six-month suspended sentences but absolved them of defamation charges in a case that has been closely watched for its implications on internet freedom.

The video, uploaded on Google Video where it remained for nearly two months in late 2006, showed four students bullying a teenager with Down's syndrome in front of more than a dozen others who did not intervene.

The bullies were suspended from their school in Turin, northern Italy, for the rest of the academic year over the episode, which sparked a national outcry.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, has said it considers the trial a threat to internet freedom.

It argues that pre-screening the thousands of hours of footage uploaded every day onto sites like YouTube would be impossible.