The BBC ran a story back in October regarding Google and Italian privacy laws:
[A] video, posted on Google Video in 2006 shortly before the firm acquired YouTube, showed a teenager with Down’s Syndrome being bullied by four students in front of more than a dozen others.
Prosecutors argue that Google did not have adequate content filters or enough staff to monitor videos.
They also argue that Google broke Italian privacy law by not preventing the the content from being uploaded without the consent of all parties involved.
According to the NY Times:
Giuseppe Vaciago, a lawyer for Google, told the court that it also was not Google’s responsibility to acquire the consent of people who appeared in the videos; that was the duty of those who uploaded the videos… “How is it possible to even imagine that Google could get the consent of people who appear in videos put online?” Mr. Vaciago said after the hearing, which was held behind closed doors. “How could the company check if consent has been given? Whoever uploads the video has to ask for the consent of those in the video. This is a rule that applies to all video platforms on the Internet.”
The prosecuters rested their case in November, asking for a one year jail sentence for three Google execs (senior vice president and chief legal officer David Drummond, global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer and former chief financial officer George Reyes) and six months for a fourth, (Arvind Desikan, now head of consumer marketing for Google in Britain).
The final arguments on Google’s behalf are scehduled for Wednesday, with responses from the prosecutors on Jan 27. Prosecutors have submitted a 119-page document with evidence they say shows that Google must have known about the video long before it was taken down. Mr. Vaciago has commented that he concentrated on addressing the question of the consent of those appearing in the videos thus far, and will be addressing the accusation that Google either knew the video was up and did nothing to take it down immediately, or showed negligence by not knowing, at his Dec 23 appearance.